The Healing Power of Community

"“Powerful, necessary, rejuvenating, and optimistic, this book delves into the ancient past as well as the emerging psychosocial field to explore ‘mutual aid’ as a proven archetypal social form oriented against oppressive hierarchy. Using the previously untold story of a successful mind-body response to the AIDS crisis, the authors joyfully demonstrate that mutual aid communities can be a decolonizing, empowering, psychodynamic, and artistic pathway to better lives.” Susan Rowland (PhD) teaches at Pacifica Graduate Institute and is author with Joel Weishaus of Jungian Arts-based Research and the Nuclear Enchantment of New Mexico (2021) “The Healing Power of Community concretizes the authors’ collective wisdom emerging from their shared dedication to empowerment and meaning-making through community suffering and solidarity. The spirit of their work during the AIDS crisis is enriched with theory, history, arts-based research, and practical guidance from psychodrama, mutual aid practices, liberation psychology, and Jungian analysis. An essential resource for anti-oppressive practitioners working with groups and communities."" Scott Giacomucci, DSW, LCSW, BCD, CGP, FAAETS, TEP, Director, Phoenix Center for Experiential Trauma Therapy; Author of Social Work, Sociometry, & Psychodrama (2021) and Trauma-Informed Principles in Group Therapy, Psychodrama, & Organizations (2023). “The Healing Power of Community is not just an inspirational or informative resource, but a triumphant and urgent call for each of us to join together around our mutual concerns and to actively participate in the creation of a new consciousness!” Nora Swan-Foster, Jungian Analyst, art therapist, former North American Editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology, and author of Jungian Art Therapy and Art Therapy and Childbearing Issues. “The connection of humanity contains our social suffering and facilitates transitions of collective darkness into the group healing process. This book not only demonstrates different ways of mutual aid for group healing but also bridges possible methods of applying psychodrama and depth psychology for improving social justice.” Siyat Ulon, MD, TEP Director of American Board of Examiners of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy. “The invincible courage to sustain a loving community in the time of AIDS is extraordinary. For me, it is deeply personal since I was working among healing physicians at San Francisco General Hospital in the 1980s. As these pandemics continue, it remains personal and this community's story of unshakable compassion is more important to share widely than ever.” Molly Osborne is an M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Medicine, OHSU, former OHSU Associate Dean of Student Affairs, Integrated Ethics Program Officer Portland VA Hospital “The authors offer a remarkable integration of experience, psychology, and politics from the dark years of the AIDS crisis. It is rare to read records of groups from that time, and the authors offer powerful ways to bring their meanings forward into our present.” Paul Attinello, PhD, Jungian analyst, HIV/AIDS scholar “The notion of humankind is marked by this book: Human Kind. It is the activity of human kind(ness) that must be realized now; if we are to survive. This book will offer a warm and kind, a caring and loving, a realistic and an optimistic path – a welcomed document long overdue and right on time.” Edward Schreiber, TEP, Director, Zerka Foundation, Amherst, MA"