To Hong Kong, the Beloved

Marta Tibaldi

To Hong Kong, the Beloved

This post is dedicated to Hong Kong, a city that I have loved and visited for the last six years. It is also the post with which I would like to conclude the blog "C.G. Jung's between Italy and China", a space made in 2014 on the occasion of my becoming Liaison Person of the Hong Kong Institute of Analytical Psychology (HKIAP) by the International Association for Analytical Psychology Psychology (IAAP).

In the years I spent in Hong Kong, I have been working on the clinical-theoretical training of future Jungian analysts of the city, working among other things on the cultural, intercultural and transcultural aspects of China and Italy. I also dealt with the different ways of treating mental suffering and physical illness, gender identity and analytical identity, as well as developing clinical-theoretical tools such as six-hour modules for the practice of active imagination and the technique of Active Deep Writing, preparatory to the same method. The book Transcultural Identities. Jungians in Hong Kong (Artemide, Roma 2016), written with some colleagues in Hong Kong, is a testimony of this work.

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In Italy is 3 p.m., in Hong Kong is already evening. When connecting with colleagues in Hong Kong, I hear a loud and unusual background noise. I associate it with one of the many street demonstrations now taking place there. The effect on me is a kind of short circuit in time and space between Italy and China, the time zones, my room and the Hong Kong street: today the analytical reflection also needs to take responsibility for this reality and the intense and contradictory psychic suffering that the Hong Kong people are experiencing; today, analytical tools also have to serve the internal and external effects that destructiveness and violence are constellating in the Hong Kong colleagues.

As far as I am concerned, I am aware that I will no longer see Hong Kong as I have known it in the past years: a beautiful and unique city, a living example of transcultural integration. I am aware, like the Hong Kong people, that "the age of innocence" of the city is over and from now on we will all be engaged in a work of defining and building a new individual and social identity.

Those who have loved and love this city are experiencing, on the one hand, a sense of loss for what the city was and, on the other, hope and commitment towards a future that is yet to be built.

To Hong Kong, the Beloved.

Copyright 2019