Myth Salon with Dr. Ipek Burnett: Re-Visioning the American Psyche

Zoom recorded on April 30, 2024
The Myth Salon with Dr. Ipek Burnett: Re-Visioning the American Psyche
Dr. Dana C. White - Producer, Host
Dr. Will Linn - Moderator
Panelists
Rebecca Armstrong
Dr. Glen Slater
Dr. Dennis Slattery
Dr. Edward Tick
Description
Using her Routledge publication, Re-Visioning the American Psyche, Dr. Ipek Burnett and this panel of educators examines the myths, images, and archetypal fantasies ingrained in the collective consciousness and unconscious in the United States. The program explores symptoms in political institutions, social conflicts, and cultural movements. Using various interpretative processes-from psychoanalytic to literary and to participatory- the book reflects on the meaning of democratic participation, the psychological cost of wars and violence, intergenerational trauma due to racism, the emotional dimensions of political polarization, deep-seated oppositional thinking in patriarchal structures, frailty of the American Dream, and more.
Poem: Identity
Who am I?
The question permeates existence.
In this vast culture of unlimited identity and possibility,
If I submit to the collective or steer my journey towards oneness,
The call to manifest my separate self is amplified.
When I dissolve myself into the interconnections
That are the character of the cosmos,
The cultural voices shout at me to come back,
To set aside thoughts of universals and awaken the particulars:
Products, personality, politics, points of view.
This culture values movement over stillness.
It worships control.
It crosses frontiers to build fences, boundaries, and divisions.
Dominant spirits colonize, submissive spirits yield.
My introverted nature gets silenced by boisterous narratives.
It is hard to find solitude.
This culture prioritizes traveling with destinations in mind
Rather than embarking upon journeys.
Following paths that can lead anywhere,
I am a fool - remaining lost and untethered, open and available.
I awaken each day to the call of the 10,000 things
Tempting me to buy, sell, and bargain myself.
Like water, I follow whatever path reveals the flow of change.
Who am I?
In this vast culture of unlimited identity and possibility,
I can become anyone or do anything.
Resisting conformity, my vulnerability fuels understanding
Of the forces that encourage me to separate myself,
To cultivate equal measures of compassion and curiosity.
My vulnerability teaches me the languages of change,
Infinite variations that from culture to culture express diversity
But are in fact the essential expressions of the one.
Who am I?
The question permeates existence.
In this vast culture of unlimited identity and possibility,
My trust is that it will take an eternity to understand,
And that like steering my journey across the seas towards Ithaka,
I will discover many Ithakas along the way home
And it will take me a lifetime to arrive.
Dana C. White
4.28.2024

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A. Remarkably profound and wise contribution for this moment in time. Many thanks 🙏