From Routledge: In his recent book Jung and Sex, Edward Santana explores the role that therapists can play in illuminating and deepening human complexities as well as addressing the long history of LGBTQ oppression within the mental health field.
“To lead a psyche-led life, an attunement to the soul, requires living as one’s authentic self in a greater engagement with complexities, not less. Jung, among others, pointed the way for deepening the value of inner life and its many mysteries. Reductionism, however, is oppression—and oppression does not serve the soul. As therapists, our work is to move beyond reductionism, to host the polymorphic spirit and its illuminating complexities. Given the history of the mental health field and its sanctioned discrimination of the LGBTQ community, this is especially critical. Consciously or not, its historical effects remain. Mental health professionals have much work to do to systemically address the long legacies of its founders’ treatment of oppressed communities, and Jung and Sex offers another step in that important direction.”
