May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time dedicated to raising awareness and promoting the importance of mental health care. At Pacifica Graduate Institute, we recognize the significance of mental health and believe in the power of depth psychology to address and enhance mental well-being. Our unique approach and emphasis on depth psychology contribute to a holistic understanding of mental health and provide transformative tools for personal growth and healing.

I do not intend to, nor can I, speak of Judaism or Jewishness for all Jews; rather, here I intend to share my perspective as a Jewish person. In its history spanning millennia, Jews from all over the world have forged their own understandings.

Growing up, Judaism to me came to mean valuing knowledge and healthy debate, as well as working towards a more perfect world through fighting for greater justice, not just for Jewish people, but all people. Being young and only having limited wisdom, I had a sense that things were improving in the world for Jews. Surely only a few more decades, and antisemitism would be at all-time lows. How could antisemitism roar onward, at least in the United States, with atrocities against Jews taught about in routine fashion in school? In retrospect, this perspective was the result of great naiveté and the fortune and privilege to grow up in an area where I felt reasonably safe as a Jewish person.

Phil Garrity is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He recently had a piece in the book Gemini and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Mythology. I’m delighted to speak with him about twinship, otherness, and his work and experience with critical illnesses.

Angela: You recently contributed an epilogue, along with your twin brother, to the book Gemini and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Mythology, edited by Kimberley C. Patton, who is your former professor at Harvard Divinity School. Tell us a little about the book and also what it was like to co-write the epilogue with your twin.

Camille Jarmie Harris, Ph.D. has recently joined the faculty at Pacifica in the Clinical Psychology program. This is Part II in the conversation I had with Dr. Harris about her work and teaching in hermeneutic analysis.

Angela: What is it like working with infants in a therapeutic setting, since as you say, they cannot thrive without being in relation to the family?

Camille: From Ages 0 to 5, I work within the context of the family, often times supporting the parents to understand their children and work through challenges they’re experiencing themselves so they can be present and available to their baby. A birthing parent and family in the post-partum period might be experiencing a whole range of emotional experience that can be related the stress of pregnancy, birth, and psychological transition into parenting, and can sometimes lead to emotional challenges that affect ability to interact and connect with baby. There are diverse expectations about what this time is “supposed” to be like that are informed by personal experience as well as by the larger context of culture. So I help parents to understand the challenges they might be having, understanding who this baby is, to learn to trust their intuition and empower them to understand themselves and their own children in terms of the behavior they see. I work to empower a sense of knowing in those early years.

Camille Jarmie Harris, Ph.D. has recently joined the faculty at Pacifica in the Clinical Psychology program. I’m excited to hear more about her work and teaching in hermeneutic analysis.

Angela: We share an undergraduate alma mater in UCSC (Go Banana Slugs!), where you majored in psychology with an emphasis in social psychology, then to Portland for a Master’s in Community Mental Health Counseling with an emphasis in Children and Adolescents. And this led to your Ph.D. here at Pacifica, in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in depth psychology. I think it’s informative for potential enrollees to see the widely different paths by which people arrive at Pacifica. Is there a theme or inspiration that carried you through your academic journey and what most appealed to you about the Clinical program here?

César Chávez Day is a day to honor the legacy of one of the most important civil rights leaders in American history. Chávez was a labor leader and activist who fought for the rights of farm workers in California and across the United States. He founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) union and led efforts in support of better wages, working conditions, and protections for agricultural workers.

What is an archetype? On first hearing the term, you might think it means something like “stereotype.” But archetypes are far richer and more interesting than that, and provide one of the foundational aspects of Jungian depth psychology. One of the earliest beginnings of the idea may be Plato’s writings in the fourth century B.C.E.. Although he did not use the actual term archetype (in Greek, “arche” original, and “typos” form), he did use the term eidos, translated as either Form or Idea. But it was not until the Swiss psychologist, and the founder of analytical psychology, C. G. Jung took up archetypes in works such as The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious in the first half of the 20^th century that it came into prominence in theoretical and psychological discourse.

As Keiron Le Grice, Pacifica’s Co-Chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Studies specialization of the Depth Psychology program, describes Jung’s view of archetypes, “[They] are the universal principles, patterns, and powers that move us all and shape our lives from the collective unconscious—the containing psychological matrix underlying consciousness. They are the governing principles in the background of experience that together comprise a kind of thematic framework within which our lives unfold. The archetypes manifest within and through our thoughts and feelings, drives and desires, and through circumstances and events in the world. They are not causes in the usual sense, but they are enacted by and revealed through causal chains of events.”

Jung focused primarily on a few foundational archetypes, including the shadow, anima, animus, and the Self. Taking myths and symbols as expressions of the psyche, and therefore reflective of the psyche, Jung identified a number of other archetypes, which Le Grice describes as “the hero, the mother, the child, the trickster, the archetype of the spirit (of which the wise old man is one form), rebirth, and Dionysus.” These have trickled down in popular perception into categories such as the sage, the innocent, the explorer, the rebel, the hero, the trickster, the lover, the caregiver, etc.

By Dr. Leonie H. Mattison, Ed.D. 

Black History and Women's History Months are always an inspirational time throughout the country, as we celebrate the many ways Black Americans and women have helped shape our national story and fueled U.S. innovation. These months are opportunities to unite and honor those who fought and continue to fight for our freedom, equality, empowerment, and human rights. To recognize those who opened doors, stepped out on faith, took the elevator up, and sent it back down to bring us up. Yet, these months are at a precarious time for the Black and women communities.  

In celebration of the historical achievements of Black/African Americans for our country and specifically for our community, Pacifica Graduate Institute and its Alumni Association hosted a landmark celebration on Friday, February 17 at their Lambert Road Campus.

In keeping with this year’s national theme, Black Resistance, as chosen by The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Institute emphasized the message with a directive to: “Honor the Past, Embrace the Present, Celebrate the Future.”

Dear Pacifica Community,

As we continue our celebration of Black History Month, we wish to pay tribute to a few of the many influential, historical black psychologists and educators who made significant contributions to their fields and to advancements in civil rights and social justice.

• Drs. Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark were a husband-wife team whose landmark research on internalized racism, famously known as the “Doll Study,” was instrumental in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Course case that declared segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.  The first African Americans to earn their PhD’s in Psychology from Colombia, they then opened their own agency in 1946, the Northside Center for Child Development, the first full-time center offering psychological and casework services to families in Harlem.  Dr. Clark was also the first African American tenured professor at the City College of New York and the first African American president of the APA.

• Dr. Francis Cecil Sumner, known as the “Father of Black Psychology,” was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology (1920) and helped in the founding of the psychology department at Howard University, an HBCU.  A pioneer in the field of race psychology, notably in themes of variations in mental health and the judicial system, Dr. Sumner also had a significant influence in his advocacy for African-American education.

• If Dr. Sumner is termed the “Father of Black Psychology,” Dr. Joseph White is known as the “Godfather of Black Psychology.”  An advocate for the creation of “Black Psychology,” Dr. White worked to expose the explicit whiteness in the field and fought to found the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) in 1968 within the APA.

• Dr. Inez Beverly Prosser was the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology in 1933.  While her life was tragically cut short a year later, the legacy of her pioneering endeavor and passion for education live on. Prior to getting her PhD, she spent years teaching, researching, and mentoring young people.  Her doctoral dissertation research focused on the study of the psychological effects of segregation on Black students.

• Dr. Robert Williams’ development of the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity, an intelligence test geared towards black speech and experiences, was groundbreaking work to demonstrate the inherent racial bias and unfair discrimination in education and standardized testing.  Dr. Williams also helped in the founding of ABPsi, coined the term “Ebonics” referring to African American Vernacular English, and was the first Black psychologist at a hospital in the state of Arkansas. 

• Dr. Margaret Lawrence was the United States’ first African America female psychoanalyst, as well as the first Black female physician certified by the Board of Pediatrics.  Overcoming childhood tragedies and racist-driven roadblocks throughout her education, she was driven to becoming a healer.  Initially drawn to medicine, she began her career as a pediatrician and then pursued child psychiatry  She dedicated her life to the underserved and children’s mental health with her therapy focusing on play and artwork.  Her pioneering programs and methods in child psychotherapy in schools, day care centers, and clinics are still used today.  One organization that Dr. Lawrence was associated with was the Harlem Family Institute, where Pacifica Faculty, Dr. Fanny Brewster, was also connected with several years.

We encourage you to read more on the lives and work of these and many others who worked to advance Black psychology and education.  Please also find additional related resources in our Graduate Research Library’s DIVERSITY LIBRARY GUIDE.

Sincerely,

Dr. Lee                                    Dr. Fanny Brewster

President & CEO                    Core Faculty & Chair of Diversity & Inclusion Council