Carolyn Bates

I am honored to serve as North American Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Analytical Psychology. Many years ago, I relied on the clinical richness of the Journal to enhance my own analytic training and my clinical development. Now, in my work as a training analyst I find the Journal to be a continuing rich resource for analytic candidates. Since 2020 I have served on the journal's editorial committee as co-editor in the launching of the Journal’s ‘Clinical Commentaries’, wherein three senior analysts respond to an anonymously written vignette from positions of clinical reflection and reverie. As have editors before me, I will strive to strengthen the relationship between the Journal and candidates-in-training, who can so richly benefit from its diverse and nuanced clinical perspectives and its application of analytical psychology to culture and civilization.

I come with a background in Science Education. My doctoral work at the University of Texas in Austin was followed by a clinical internship with an inpatient population. My encounters with such significant suffering in individuals with oft-times mentally ravaged minds strengthened my understanding of both the destructive and constructive capacities of the unconscious. My graduate training in psychodynamic and psychoanalytic theory and my analytic training in developmental theories have provided me the opportunity to consider multiple theoretical persuasions and parse the ways in which they inform one another.

I have served as adjunct faculty at Saybrook University, guest lecturer for doctoral students at the University of Texas and am a senior training analyst and case consultant for my home society, the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. As a training analyst, facilitating several case colloquia over the years has clarified for me many of the challenges in analytic training, including challenges inherent to developing a candidate’s analytic attitude.

For the last thirty years I have dedicated my time nationally and internationally to teaching and offering lectures and workshops, bringing to both training groups and the public topics close to my heart: ethics and power in the treatment relationship, the nature of therapeutic boundaries and boundary violations, sociopathy in analysis, the feminine archetype in dream, myth and culture, the phenomenon of synchronicity and trauma in the collective, the interplay of psyche and technology, the role of shame in socio-political movements, the ethics of the dying analyst and the self-care of the analyst.

As I look to my years ahead with the Journal, I feel within myself, and know that I’m not alone, that tension between both nostalgia and familiarity for what has been and the imperative for what must be. Change must be. And change is indeed underway with the Journal, as it works to optimize its use of its website with video presentations that are instructive in nature (e.g., factors to consider, when submitting an article) and inviting in nature (e.g., short lectures and interviews with authors whose articles have captured the Fordham prize). These approaches are relevant to the Journal’s both changing with and meeting the times even as it embraces its uniqueness of clinical and psychoanalytic focus.

And with that phrase, I believe the Journal is called upon to bring the spirit of the depths into relationship with the spirit of the times. It has been doing this quite beautifully: its environmental, COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter issues come to mind. But even as the Journal casts its nets into the current world, I would hope it continues to cast its nets into our history of analytical psychology, because, to capture a trite phrase that is nonetheless apt here: we won't know where we're going if we don't know where we've been. With each passing generation, our origins risk fading into the mists of history. And while the Journal may not be meant to be a historical journal per se, I believe it is meant to be a journal that continues to reflect on our history, a history that will inform future analysts as to the nature of the unconscious.

I sincerely look forward to my work with my esteemed colleagues, Ann Addison and Arthur Niesser, and all the members on the editorial committee. And I am deeply grateful to my predecessor, Nora Swan-Foster, for her astute guidance into the intelligent workings of the Journal.

Papers

Bates, C. (2024). “There’s Something About Uvalde: American Patriarchy and the Slaughter of Innocents” in The Journal of Analytical Psychology, 69, 2, pp. 227-245

Bates, C. & Cwik, G. (2022). “Compassionate Witnessing: Rising Lunar Consciousness in Two Acts” in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought. Vol. XX, Issue X.

Bates, C. (2018). “Repatriating a Mind at Sea” in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought. Vol. 61, Issue 1.

Bates, C. (2002). ‘As Above, So Below: The Pilgrimage as Archetypal Expression of the Analytic Journey’. Thesis for certification in Analytical Psychology.

Bates, C. (1989). ‘The Influence of Ego Development an Ethics Training on Counseling Psychology Graduate Students’ Willingness to Address Unethical Conduct’. Doctoral Dissertation.

Bates, C. (1986). ‘Subjective Distress and Coping Effectiveness in Vietnam Veterans’. Master’s Thesis.