Overview

The morning sun is borne in the shadow of midnight. In this chaotic, ultra-important election year, Jungian analyst Bud Harris has stepped beyond his role as psychotherapist to speak in this book to our national heart and soul. Culling through his many years of political observation, he muses on the sources of our American discontent, proclaims that we must stop treating each other as enemies, and challenges each citizen to personally invest in a hopeful future. We owe this to our children and grandchildren, and, yes, to our founding fathers, he says. He considers the 2016 election to be a wake-up call for America. Perhaps more than any other, it has brought forth our national angst, forcing us to deal with shadows in our social psyche. Harris's experience as a trained Jungian analyst helps shine a light on those shadows, reports on how they have negatively affected many citizens' lives, including his own, and challenges us to face up to the transformative power that chaos can, in fact, provide. This is a book that lays the ground work with reference to historic political moments when leaders led us through uncertainty to wholesome strength. The American Revolution, the Depression, the civil rights movement ... all reflect national moments of chaos and shadow. Yet, through our democratic process - laid out in the Constitution - we have worked together as a nation, not only to thrive, but to lead the world. Our current era seems as uncertain and fearful as those historic episodes. However, once again, we Americans can muddle through the thrown darts and hurled animosities of today's political climate to step forward with clear vision and resolve. But we must face and examine our historical shadows and learn from them. The transformative power that can come from today's chaos is within reach. Read this book if you want to examine and understand the chaotic political period we are experiencing as a nation, explore the effect our political choices today will have on our future, and learn how personal and political ideals are tightly bound in American society. Dr. Bud Harris is one of the most prolific Jungian authors of our time. He's authored and co-authored 15 books, and has been in the field of Jungian psychology for 30 years. At 82 years old, he has a long-standing practice in Asheville, North Carolina, which is still thriving. He felt compelled to write The Midnight Hour because our historic moment in time so aptly reflects and calls forward a Jungian perspective, and he wants this opportunity to lead toward a great future for America.

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Some Gold Nuggets Here A slim volumn with a lot to say by the much respected Jungian analyst, Bud Harris, PhD. Here's one of my favorite nuggets: 'We don't need to speak truth to power. We need to speak it to ourselves.' This while on the search for our 'inner deplorables, ' the rage and shame within. This book is a reckoning for those who are unwilling to sleepwalk while our democracy and the soul of America is threatened by 'greedy predators.' I found the last 3rd of the book especially helpful. It contains a passionate call to action, as well as instructions on how to carry on. I judge the worth of a book by how much I underline. Lots of underlining in this book. For any democracy, the self responsibility and informed engagement of its individual citizens is the key factor in it remaining a government that serves its citizens. Clearly we have lost much of our informed engagement. In this book, Dr. Harris passionately shows some of the fundamental ways in which we have participated in the loss of our liberties and identifies ways in which we can reclaim our democracy through becoming involved in the democratic process as self-responsible citizens. As Benjamin Franklin is so famously said, '...it's a republic if you can keep it'. This book is a call to action, and it shows how we can restore our country from its current downward spiral and transform it once again and keep it the republic it was intended to be. How does one deal with the election of 2016? It's one thing to bemoan the state of American politics, the divisiveness, the susceptibility to lies and propaganda, the clear flaws, more or less, as seen in each candidate depending on one's political outlook. It is quite another to look inward, to try to see one's own contribution to and participation in the state of the nation and how we got this way. In this book Bud Harris, Ph.D. does just that. He examines his own ideals and then his and our personal contributions to how the internal vision of America and its promise has been compromised over the past few decades, how we have let those ideals be subsumed by our quests for wealth, security and 'looking good' in our society. The book is a call to pay better attention to our moral compasses, to think about the direction of our country and our personal commitments to those things that have always made America great. It is a call to adhere, with equal regard to all our fellow Americans, to our national mission statement, the Preamble to our Constitution: 'We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.' A Call and a Challenge to Wake up This is a MUST read book!!!! With great passion, Bud shares with us his rage and shame for what has happened and is still happening in today's world. Bud Harris calls us to wake up to become conscious. He reminds us it is past time for a new vision for our country. We have lived too long in our comfort zones, which he refers to as 'Bubbles'. We are in these bubbles because of fear, denial, privilege, and of just plain being unconscious. All through the book he gives examples and encourages us to come out of our bubbles to use our rage and shame to move forward with passion and creative action. Now is the time and Bud's words provide the inspiration for creative change.

BookLife Review: In this message-driven memoir, Harris (Students Under Siege: The Real Reasons Behind America's Ongoing Mass Shootings and How to Stop Them), a Jungian psychoanalyst, asserts that an American addiction to positive thinking has resulted in not being able to acknowledge a fear of personal or financial misfortune, leading to a decline of empathy for those who experience such misfortune. His own devastating losses in the 2008 financial crash put him on the receiving end of this empathy gap and shocked him into political awareness. He encourages readers to view this time of sociopolitical change as an opportunity to employ creative citizenship, develop empathy and understanding, and move beyond division in order to reclaim the essence of American democracy. Blending the psychoanalytical and the political, Harris segues between transformational experiences in his personal life and relevant observations regarding the American body politic, scolding politicians regardless of party. He employs the recurring motif of shadow, an element of Jungian psychoanalytic theory, to explore the concept of a crisis of empathy within a fractured and factionalized America. Harris also includes literary and social science perspectives that bolster his case for the need to recreate a nexus of citizenship and shared humanity. Some readers might benefit from a few introductory paragraphs on the basics of Jungian analysis, but the text is mostly accessible to a general readership. Harris's considerations are timely, relevant, and incisive. He's unafraid to describe himself as full of rage and pain and heartbreak while maintaining compassion for others, and he clearly renders some potentially complex concepts, such as the individual responsibility to create a better collective society. This memoir provides a graceful yet challenging vehicle for the positing of some pointed observations and difficult questions regarding the meaning and responsibilities of American citizenship and membership in the human race. Takeaway: Readers craving meaningful civic engagement within a well-functioning American democracy will value this insightful and challenging call for empathy. Great for fans of Sahar Ghumkhor's The Political Psychology of the Veil: The Impossible Body, James Hollis.

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