In his senior year of college, Minh Tran, a “first and a half” generation Vietnamese immigrant who moved to the U.S. as a child, started volunteering community organizations doing lay counseling work. When Tran began to pay attention, he realized he was ready to make the leap from working with community-based organizations to formally pursuing a counseling degree with a depth psychological orientation.

9142464076?profile=originalFrom a psychological perspective, there's always some part of the therapist that's also being worked through in psychotherapy with one’s client, Tran points out. As a first and a half generation Vietnamese working with a lot of the limited-English-speaking Vietnamese immigrant clients, Tran is highly cognizant of significant trauma stemming from the Vietnam war, and how greatly repressed it can be among the community, including people like his own parents who identify as refugees.

Tran is in touch enough with his own cultural origins that he also realizes he carries a lot of the same trauma within himself. In the book, Lament of the Dead, which archetypal psychologist James Hillman wrote with Sonu Shamdasani, he posits this idea of “healing backwards,” wherein we are the “investment” of the ancestors, and when we heal, it also heals them—healing backwards….

Read the full summary article or listen to the audio interview with Minh Tran, M.A. (approx 27 mins) here

ABOUT THE HOSTS/PRESENTERS
BONNIE BRIGHT, Ph.D.,(Founder of Depth Psychology Alliance), is a Transpersonal Soul-Centered Coach certified via Alef Trust/Middlesex University, and a certified Archetypal Pattern Analyst®, and has trained extensively in Holotropic Breathwork™ and the Enneagram. She has trained with African elder, Malidoma Some'; with Transpersonal Pioneer Stan Grof; and with Jungian analyst, Jerome Bernstein, among others.Her dissertation focused on a symbolic look at Colony Collapse Disorder and what the mass vanishing of honeybees means to us both personally and as a collective. Bonnie’s path to soul began with a spontaneous mystical experience in 2006, and she continues her quest for awakening each day with a sense of joy, freedom, and gratitude at the magic afoot in the world.

JAMES R. NEWELL, Ph.D., MTS, (Director of Depth Psychology Alliance) earned his Ph.D. in History and Critical Theories of Religion from Vanderbilt University (2007), and holds a master's degree in pastoral counseling and theology from the Vanderbilt University Divinity School (2001). James is also the director of the Depth Psychology Academy, offering college-level courses in Jungian and depth psychology. James has spent much of his working life as a professional musician, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist with interests in jazz, blues, folk, world, and devotional music. Since his youth, James has worked with a variety of blues greats including John Lee Hooker, James Cotton, Jr. Wells, Hubert Sumlin, Big Joe Turner, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and others.