Joanne Wieland-Burston - Archetypal and Cultural Perspectives on the Foreigner

In this era of intense migration, the topic of the foreigner is of paramount importance. Joanne Wieland-Burston examines the question of the foreign and foreigner from multiple perspectives and explores how Jung and Freud were more interested in the wide phenomenon of the foreign in the unconscious rather than in their own personal lives. She analyses cultural approaches to the archetype of the foreigner throughout history using literary, cultural (as seen in mythological texts and fairy tales) and psychological references, and interprets the scapegoating of foreign minorities as a projection of the monster onto the foreigner. The book includes contemporary perspectives on immigration and displacement throughout, from analysing patient case material, the archetypal needs of people who join terrorist groups, feelings of alienation, and the work of Palestinian-German psychologist Ahmad Mansour. Throughout this personal and highly topical study, Wieland questions and studies C. G. Jungs own reflections on himself as a foreigner and her own personal experiences.

This book will be vital reading for Jungian psychotherapists and analytical psychologists in practice and in training, as well as for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, archetypal studies, identity politics, and courses examining the experiences of displaced persons, refugees, migrants and minority groups.

Joanne Wieland-Burston is an American-born Jungian analyst who studied in Zurich, Switzerland (19771981) and presently practises in Munich, Germany. She is a training analyst, supervisor and instructor at the International School for Analytical Psychology in Zurich and lectures internationally. Her background is in literature and art history.

Joanne Wieland-Burston offers us a book that is quite clear, profound, and excellently documented, on our relationship with the foreigner within us, around us, and afar. It provides observation, investigation, analysis, and personal experience that are of practical use to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, researchers in the social sciences, and each one of us.

Christian Gaillard, Dr. Psy., training psychoanalyst and supervisor, former President of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, former Professor at the National Academy of Fine Arts, Paris, and author of The Soul of Art: Analysis and Creation, Texas AM University Press

In this impressive and thoughtful book, Joanne Wieland-Burston helps us come to terms with the other in ourselves and in the world around us. This is a most timely and useful book, full of essential insights into the times we live in.

Murray Stein, PhD, author of Jungs Map of the Soul

Joanne Wieland-Burston having been herself involved with migration and alienation explores the theme of the foreigner from manifold angles based on her background as a Jungian analyst and her studies in literature and art history. Her fascinating and differentiated work centers mainly on the modern faces of the foreigner. Giving deep insight in the dominant topic of our culture she deals with the archetypal roots, cultural complexes, scapegoating, alienation of the self and brings all the aspects down to the practical work in psychotherapy. A truly wonderful and inspiring book!

Kathrin Asper, PhD, supervisor, training analyst and lecturer at ISAPZURICH

ARCHETYPAL AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FOREIGNER

Minorities and Monsters

Joanne Wieland-Burston

First published 2020

by Routledge

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2020 Joanne Wieland-Burston

The right of Joanne Wieland-Burston to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-34580-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-34581-2 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-43765-6 (ebk)

On preparing this book for publication I came to realise that I have been involved with the topic since early childhood. This has to do with the situation of the family I come from and my own migratory past. I will describe my personal relationship to the topic of the foreigner in the introduction to this book.

As a Jungian analyst in training I had to deal with the multifaceted attitude of C. G. Jung toward foreigners. Some of his remarks (those on Jewish people) I found deeply upsetting; his personal situation as a foreigner I find it easier to empathise with. And I do wonder the extent to which many aspects of Jungs theoretical work were influenced by his own extremely disturbing experiences of feeling like a foreigner. As we shall see in the following pages, the man Carl Gustav Jung plainly shows to the interested researcher many different ways of experiencing and appreciating the foreign.

Throughout my years in clinical practice I have found the topic fascinating on many levels. So many of my clients have had to deal with feelings of alienation, many of them themselves expats or children of immigrants. Some have been, or felt like, outsiders in their own society being nerds, homosexuals, overweight, or just in some way different from the others. I have approached the topic from various angles in many lectures in the past ten years.

In the meantime, innumerable politicians, lawyers, writers, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists have devoted so much time and energy to the phenomenon of the foreign in society that it has become a dominant topic in contemporary culture.

My perspective is that of a Jungian analyst with a background in literature and art history and a deeply concerned foreigner.

For myself the ever repeated encounters with my situation as a foreigner, with my own foreignness within has often been painful, sometimes hardly bearably so. But, coming to accept it as a fact, a matter of fact that is so intimately part of my identity, has made the situation not only easier to bear; it has become a koan for my life.

Encounters with foreigners are what we call archetypal experiences. The Hebrew Bible is full of stories of such encounters, from Avram and Sarais encounter with the strangers who prove to be angels, to Moses experience as a foreigner, to the 40-year-long wanderings of the Hebrew tribes through foreign lands.

At the present time the first quarter of the twenty-first century the topic of the foreigner is so omnipresent that it is extremely difficult to write about it. Most of the questions and excitement revolve around immigrants and their integration in society. These people are refugees from political turmoil, people fleeing poverty and seeking a better future for themselves and their children; they are often of different cultural and religious backgrounds and may have a different skin colour from the local population. It is in this context that the political discourse has become more focused on the topics of racism and anti-Semitism. The literature abounds from articles in the media to erudite essays and even plays and novels.