Five takeaways for what it means to be human at this time

“We psychoanalysts have a specific contribution to make: we should be able to contribute something to overcoming apathy and self-deception in ourselves and others." - Hanna Segal

Nov 08, 2024

The first time I picked up a book about psychoanalysis, it was Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. It was at my aunt’s cottage in Los Altos, California. The year was 1984. My aunt had given me the keys to her cottage, while she spent much of her time over the hill in La Honda with her boyfriend. I was fifteen, and much of the text was unintelligible to me. At the same time, something in me woke up. What I gleaned, even back then, was the proposition of the unconscious mind—and that much of our everyday experiences were in fact, expressions of this submerged realm. My life was to change entirely.

Moving on from Freud, I quickly found other books on my aunt’s shelves. Melanie Klein, Karen Horney, Wilhelm Reich, Jung, Donald Winnicott, Victor Frankl, Julia Kristeva, Irvin Yalom, Juliet Mitchell, James Hillman, Wilfred Bion and so many others. Many of them related their psychoanalytic clinical insights to our world, particularly Hanna Segal, whose essay “Silence in the Only Crime” called out the entire profession. I was utterly transfixed. I knew this was my path.

In addition to the books on human psychoanalytic psychology, she had books on Buddhist philosophy, contemplative practice, mysticism, art history, and a particularly captivating collection of volumes on the history of human consciousness. I remember reading Ram Dass’s Be Here Now (a Buddhist cartoon book!) in her little cottage full of art and plants, and finding it all entirely sensible. I attempted to read books like Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Trungpa Rimpoche. I spent much of my time in high school absorbed in these texts, even if much of the material was going over my head. By the time I was sixteen, I had gotten myself into low-cost therapy (5 dollars a session), and by age twenty I was living at a Buddhist meditation center in Vermont, sleeping in the zendo and doing work exchange for Shambhala Meditation training.

I knew even back then, that we simply had to reckon with the powers of the human unconscious.

I also recognized many of the people who had pioneered this innovative field of human sciences, long before neuroscience became the fashion, had lived through the horrors of genocide, war, famine, prejudice, and violence.

Somehow they had still come out on the other side, with cautionary wisdom and a strangely affirmative call to action. This work touched something deep in me, and by age twenty-one, I committed myself to applying this esoteric field—navigating the terrain of human unconsciousness—toward the real, urgent and bewildering existential crises on our planet.

What have I learned over all this time?

This commitment has taken me around the world, to learn and study, and eventually, to begin teaching, researching and presenting this work to leaders, teams, businesses, government, policymakers, students, and practitioners across many sectors.

The very first class I ever taught was a Master’s seminar I designed on “Human Nature” at Brooklyn College in 2002, while I was only in the second year of a graduate program myself. I stitched together my favorite psychoanalytic texts, along with readings about our planetary crises, the psychology of care, poetry and literature, asking this question: What does it mean to be human at this time? I remain preoccupied with this question, thirty years later, as it deepens and evolves over time. If I were to capture five take-aways from all this time, it may look something like this:

That we are being asked, over and over, to reimagine what it is to be a human being, to rise to the occasion, to sit with our invitation to evolve and grow.
That humans tend to resist learning and growth, because as the brilliant group psychoanalyst Bion told us, learning is a form of loss. When we learn, we are never the same. We are letting go of who we were, before knowledge changes us.
That humans need conditions—call it a container, call it what you want—that enable and support enough safety to face into the abyss of human darkness, and access what is light and enduring.
That relationships are what enable change. And that we are always in relationship—with our “web of life” as one of my favorite humans Manda Scott reminds us—and our task is to turn towards relationality.
That platitudes and memes asking us to be humble, evolve as leaders, be more vulnerable, be authentic, be curious, have purpose, take action, and so on—are empty and ineffectual without the relational homes that can support, nurture and enable our growth. And this includes, most importantly, the relationship with ourselves.

Tikkun Olam

This all leads to the core essence of what the Jewish teaching of Tikkun Olam means to me. It is the work of repair, of mending. It is about accessing the brokenness inside of us, honoring and tending this brokenness, so we can interrupt the cycle of perpetuating our own wounds onto our web of life.

When we do not mend and repair ourselves, we are harming the very fabric of life that we so love: the tidepools, the microbes in the soil, the crows outside your bedroom window, the minnows in the creeks that run through our communities, the animals we take into our homes and call family, and the plants and animals that so many of us consume for our own life force. We do this because we are still living in shadows of unconsciousness. And that which remains hidden, we lost agency and choice over.

A slide from the talk at Rose Schnitzner Manor, to people in their 80s, 90s and 100s.

I want to be clear, that Tikkun Olam is not for the faint of heart. It is about facing our darkness, knowing there is something on the other side.

It is, at the end of the day, about reaching for the light.

Pharrell reckons with darkness, vulnerably and openly.

Several months ago, I was watching the PBS program, Finding Your Roots with my mother. My mom is 88, has dementia, and after a stroke, I moved her into a Jewish nursing home.

It has been the most challenging experience of my life, because I have had to confront the limits of my care and capacity to make change: in her decline, the facility, the whole system of elder care.

Watching this show has become a balm during this time for us, as it enables her to process the ways in which our ancestry has shaped us, and the stories that form a social and collective unconscious. Watching this come to light for the guests gives her and I endless inspiration, and is deeply compelling.

One night, we happened on an episode with Pharrell Williams. With the gentle guidance of Henry Louis Gates, Williams confronted his family history of slavery, with the key moment: seeing the image of the man who owned members of his family. The man who wrote the song “Happy”, that became an anthem of sheer joy around the world, found himself overcome with feelings of anger and rage. Before our eyes, the cognitive dissonance roiled through his system. Needing space and time, that one episode was recorded over many weeks while he processed his responses.

I was scheduled to give a talk at her facility about Tikkun Olam in a few days. So after the show with Pharrell, over dinner I asked my mom what she thought Tikkun Olam meant. I got out my phone to record. She said,

“Tikkun Olam is about realizing how inhumane we have treated people. It is important to remember what happened to people for no reason of their own. They just happened to be there, when some groups of people felt they’re superior to others.”
She continued,
“It’s about reflecting on all the people who’ve been mistreated. [Injustice] isn’t just a fable about something that happened. This really did happen, close to home. It is still happening. What is Tikkun Olam?
What we just saw with Pharrell Williams: People talking about it.”

Come back to yourself

During this collective moment of apprehension and concern, rage and love, exhaustion and defeat, let us pause and come back to ourselves.

Touch your heart and remind yourself how your feelings are signals of your relationship with our web of life. That there are no right or wrong feelings. And that communion with others is simply the only way.

The path is uncertain and downright frightening (for me, at least)—and yet I am reminded of the wise words on my aunt’s shelf, that I came upon in my teens.

Unless we truly come to terms with human unconsciousness, with the forces of shadow, and engage with it—we shall continue to spin the cycles. Buried wounds go underground, until they erupt.

Living in the light starts with ourselves.

May you burn a candle for yourself and all that you hold dear and love.

And know that talking about our experiences is the oldest form of human healing.

with care,

Renée

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