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As a teacher who has attended several dozen graduations, as an
adult who can remember having been there myself, with all the
attendant confusion and mixed emotions, I often wish there was
something we could give to our graduates beyond just a diploma. A
diploma, after all, speaks only to the past: "This is what your
life has been about-this is what you have achieved. Done.
Finished." But it is not by accident that the word commencement is
synonymous with graduation: commencement means a new start or
beginning, implying the future rather than the past. So it seems to
me that we are partially derelict in our duty to our graduates in
handing them words on a diploma that only testify to what they did
in the past at this ceremony-to truly mark commencement, we should
also hand them words about what they can do in the future. Toni
Morrison once wrote, "If there is a book you really want to read
but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." Here is
that book-the words I wished I had been handed when graduated, the
words I wish I could hand to my students when they graduate, the
words I wish we could hand to all of our students when they
graduate.
As a teacher who has attended several dozen graduations, as an
adult who can remember having been there myself, with all the
attendant confusion and mixed emotions, I often wish there was
something we could give to our graduates beyond just a diploma. A
diploma, after all, speaks only to the past: "This is what your
life has been about-this is what you have achieved. Done.
Finished." But it is not by accident that the word commencement is
synonymous with graduation: commencement means a new start or
beginning, implying the future rather than the past. So it seems to
me that we are partially derelict in our duty to our graduates in
handing them words on a diploma that only testify to what they did
in the past at this ceremony-to truly mark commencement, we should
also hand them words about what they can do in the future. Toni
Morrison once wrote, "If there is a book you really want to read
but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." Here is
that book-the words I wished I had been handed when graduated, the
words I wish I could hand to my students when they graduate, the
words I wish we could hand to all of our students when they
graduate.
Jesse Jackson once said of Martin Luther King, Jr., "Thinking about
him is like thinking about the prism, the sun shining through a
glass from as many angles as you look. You know there is another
set of rays, and as many angles as you think about Dr. King, there
is yet another set of angles with which to analyze him." Author and
depth psychologist Jennifer Leigh Selig approaches King from the
angle of a cultural therapist, a radical conceit that extends
therapy beyond the bounded container of the consulting room and
into the cultural milieu, and beyond the narrow purview of the
licensed few and into the hands of the committed many. During the
Civil Rights Movement, Selig illustrates how King put America on
the couch, talked with her about her issues, challenged her to see
her psychological dis-ease, and marched with her along the path of
healing, toward her own integration. And just as common wisdom says
that therapists can only take clients as far toward wholeness as
they have traveled themselves, it is illuminating to look at King's
psychological health for hints about why he was able to succeed,
and where he might have failed, to heal his "client," the soul of
America. Drawing upon the mythic roles that possessed King-the
deliverer, the prophet, and the martyr-savior-and the mythic goal
that obsessed him-the creation of the beloved community-this book
is a fascinating and ground-breaking exploration of the psyche and
mythos of one man and his country struggling toward integration.
A contribution to the growing cannon of literature on the Occupy
Movement, this collection of essays engages Jungian, archetypal,
and depth psychological ways of understanding how Occupy is living
in the collective imagination, or, how psyche is occupying
collectives through the movement. The tension between the 99% and
the 1% is amplified by some authors through images of the Villain
and the Hero, Positive/Negative Father Complex, the body-head
split, and notions of ensouled action versus degrees of
soulessness. Other authors indwell the between spaces with
storytelling, embodied imagining into the fractured skull of Scott
Olsen, and questions of how to situate movement and its edges.
Working alchemical stones of hope, this book is a dynamic
conversation into the unconscious complexes of Occupy that
remembers to cast a critical eye on the potential failings of its
own epistemological structures.
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