Bpf Scientific Meeting, Critical Changes: Taking a new approach to teaching theory in relation to diversity
In this talk, Jane Johnson and Helen Morgan will discuss how they engaged with and challenged the colonial, heteronormative and gender biased roots of traditional psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic thinking in order to create a new, more diverse BJAA training curriculum. Their work recently won the Diversity in Training Award 2023 (BPC). Date: 11/01/2024 Time: 8:30pm-10:00pm online via Zoom.
Description
**Public event, please register here!**
In common with many other analytic training institutions the BJAA is committed to increasing diversity within its membership. But the forces that maintain systems of privilege are powerful and sustaining energy to effect change is challenging. In particular, we have been increasingly concerned within the BJAA about how certain Jungian analytic and psychoanalytic theoretical concepts are rooted in ideas that support white supremacy and assumptions about gender and sexuality. We were hearing an increasing number of responses from trainees to primary texts where references to ‘the primitive’, the place of women, and attitudes towards homosexuality were experienced as painful and offensive. Tired of the standard response of a few seminars on ‘race’ at the end of the four-year training we believed a complete overhaul of the curriculum - its content and its delivery - was required. Recognising that we as trainers have much to learn, we started with small reading groups of BJAA members in order to explore together some of these problematic theories and, from this, a new approach to teaching theory grew. It was launched in the Autumn of 2022.
Whilst recognising this is very much work in progress, the presentation will explore the history of this development, the ethos of the new approach and some of what we are learning along the way.
About the speakers
Jane Johnson is a psychotherapist and Jungian analyst in private practice. She is a senior member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation (BPF) and a training analyst for the British Jungian Analytic Association (BJAA). Her background is in psychodynamic psychotherapy training and teaching, including as a past Jungian director of the MSc Psychodynamics of Human Development (Birkbeck College, London University).
Helen Morgan is a Fellow of the British Psychotherapy Foundation and is a training analyst and supervisor for the British Jungian Analytic Association within the BPF. She has written a number of papers on the subject of racism and psychotherapy and her book, ‘The Work of Whiteness. A Psychoanalytic Perspective’ was published in 2021 by Routledge. She is also co-author with Fanny Brewster of the book Racial Identities published by Routledge in 2022 as part of their ‘Jung, Politics and Culture’ series.
Jane and Helen are co-chairs of the group that delivers a psycho-social approach to teaching theory in BJAA clinical trainings.