From the Director
“As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.”
Chief Justice Sonia Sotomayor
If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
African Proverb
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead
Recently we as a community and nation have endured multiple traumatizing events: natural disasters, systemic racism, exchanges of political verbal attacks, and economic peril, all couched around the pandemic. For many these events serve as threats to our stabilizing structures of Psychology, Family, Workplace, as well as Spirituality. As a collective cadre of events, life and simple mere existence can be experienced as overwhelming. We often hear from our clients, friends, family, and coworkers that the future looks more uncertain than ever before. We know however as clinicians and students of psychology and the human condition that out of the shadows comes transformation.
As Executive Director of The Center for Professional Counseling I have been acutely aware of the impact these events have played upon our lives and our client’s lives. Somehow responding to each individual event no longer seems adequate. Jung spoke of The Goddess of Necessity in that: Consciousness must always return to its source in the unconscious in order to expand the scope of its “empathy”. Perhaps that’s what our profession needs to address more specifically at this time; embrace both the etiological explanations of manipulation as well as the caring and treatment of its ill effects. Testing not only professional commitments but our humanity in concert.
Our dedication to psychological theory can inform our path to achieving humanitarian efforts such as improving family relationships, more satisfying career choices, coping with losses and disasters (both natural and human) and maturing from these experiences as necessities. Joseph Cambray, recently wrote; Only through deeply felt awareness of the profound interconnectedness of our world, can a hopeful path through these difficult times be discovered.
The Center’s Community is in the process of reimagining and finding a way through. We invite you to join us with full participatory consciousness and contribution.
Jack Mayhall, PhD
Executive Director
