At Pacifica Graduate Institute, we are deeply distressed and aggrieved by the senseless, ongoing violence directed at black members of our communities. We grieve Mr. George Floyd’s death as the latest hate-motivated tragedy in a society riven by dehumanization and lack of empathy for fellow citizens based on mindless racist projections. This deep stain on the American soul has a long and dreadful history, and despite great efforts to educate, reform, retrain, add body cameras to police attire, there has not been effective, lasting change in overall behavior by police departments throughout the country. The legacy of systemic racial oppression continues to shape how we perceive ourselves and one another, and must actively be countered if its virulence is to be checked, and its lethal effects transformed. The results of this oppression include the differential health care being offered during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which African Americans and other people of color are suffering mortality at a much higher rate than white populations, especially those with better access to health facilities and PPEs.

by Joseph Cambray, PhD, Pacifica Graduate Institute President

Pacifica Graduate Institute has been the premier academic institution devoted to depth psychology from its inception about 50 years ago. Our overarching vision integrates multiple, diverse perspectives on the human psyche—the totality of our being, including conscious and unconscious mental life as well as how we are embedded and engaged in our environments, cultural and natural; traditional referred to as the soul. We offer a wide range of transformative programs designed to enrich soul-centered knowledge (taking psychology as the logos of the psyche) through experience and disciplined practice. Though our various programs have differing emphases, we draw upon many shared foundations, including but not limited to psychological processes based on the notion of an “unconscious” component to our mental life; psychotherapeutic, environmental, and social justice best practices, in conjunction with mythological, archetypal, and cultural studies, drawing upon the humanities as well as the sciences and the arts. While other select academic programs scattered around the world include depth psychology as a part of coursework, none are so profoundly rooted in this discipline. This is part of what makes Pacifica unique, as do our extraordinary faculty and staff, and the unique settings of our two campuses.

A guest post by Mary A. Wood, Co-Chair, Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life Program

“And no bird weeping a lament / no bird crying the song of its honey voice / in the leaves of Spring’s many flowers / could outrun him / Pan, in song” –“Hymn to Pan,” The Homeric Hymns

"Masked God." Mixed media collage, by Mary A. Wood

Normalizing Non-Ordinary Experiences: An Interdisciplinary Approach. A blog post by Melissa Nazario, based on an interview with Ann Taves, Ph.D. by Bonnie Bright, Ph.D.

Listen to the full audio interview with Ann Taves here. (approx. 28 minutes)

If you began hallucinating, perhaps seeing or hearing things that no one else could perceive, how would you interpret this unusual experience? Ann Taves, Ph.D., professor of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara and presenter at Pacifica’s upcoming Trauma and Transcendence conference in June 2018, became interested in this topic back in the mid-80s, when there were a lot of people who were being diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. She had a friend who had been abused as a child and who apparently had multiple personalities, or dissociated identity, as the clinicians now call it. Ann says that because she came from a very rational sort of family, it had never dawned on her that our minds could experience changes like what it does with disorders, and she credits knowing her friend and hearing her talk about her experiences as the point at which, for Ann, the door first opened into the range of what was possible.

Video Transcript: 

Dr. Alejandro: Bernardo, I'd like to ask you: what is human vocation? And what is the origin of the term and of the concept behind it?