Host Nancy Kahn presents part one of a two part series with Dr. Barbara Morrill, who provides a window into the intimate writings of Esther “ Etty” Hillesum. Etty Hillesum was a Dutch author of a diary (abridged copy first published as “An Interrupted Life”) and letters from Westerbork during the German occupation of Amsterdam in 1941. Dr. Morrill shares her personal journey to Amsterdam to walk in Etty’s footsteps and the outline of Etty’s short life. Part-one covers the evolution of Etty’s development as seen through her writings and letters as she learned to love, reflected on her struggles to meet her needs, focused on her own healing, and faced her imminent death during the Holocaust. Part two of this series airs on Sunday, November 17, 2019.
Listeners are invited to call in to the show at 7:30 pm (dial 1-800-958-9008) to participate in this conversation.
Barbara Morrill, PhD, is core faculty and former chair of the Integral Counseling Psychology Program at The California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. She is a Clinical Psychologist licensed in CA, and has been in private practice in Palo Alto for 28 years. Barbara has spent much of her life exploring women’s social, psychological, and spiritual development, with an emphasis on intergenerational trauma. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled: Quest for Wholeness; The Individuation Process of Seven African American Women. Barbara’s study of Etty Hillesum began in 2000, culminating with a presentation at the 2008 International Transpersonal Congress, New Delhi, India, entitled Being in the Face of Annihilation: Transformation Through Writing as Inquiry in the lives of two Dutch Women During the Holocaust: Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) and Jetteke Frijda (1925-present). Her continued study has been about the Evolution of Consciousness as well as a spiritual practitioner with The Diamond Approach with A.H. Almaas and Karen Johnson for 14 years. She presented on Unfolding Toward Being; Etty Hillesum and the Evolution of Consciousness in January, 2014 at the Second International Congress of the Etty Hillesum Research Center at Ghent University in Belgium. This was published in the on-line Journal, Integral Review in 2015. Barbara presented at the Third International Congress in September, 2018 in Middelburg, Holland: The Contours of These Times; Etty Hillesum as Chronicler of Love Transcending Hate in Her Times, for Our Time, For All Time. This article will be published in a book entitled: The Lasting Significance of Etty Hillesum’s Writings in November 2019 published by the Amsterdam University Press. Her Masters work was done at Boston College and Doctoral work at the former Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, now Sofia University.