Showing posts with label ecopsychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ecopsychology. Show all posts

Monday, April 6, 2020

Merritt on: Covid-19: Inflection Point in the Anthropocene Era and the Paradigm Shift

Covid-19: Inflection Point in the Anthropocene Era and the Paradigm Shift of Jung’s New Age

Article by Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D.

The Covid-19 pandemic has created a unique moment in the history of our species. Something so small it takes an electron microscope to see is disrupting millions of lives and threatening the world’s economy. Frontline workers risk their lives trying to save patients who may die alone without friends or family at their sides. A virus, a strand of nucleic acid that highjacks the functioning of a cell to reproduce its unique viral form, is bringing our species to a near standstill. Despite the wonders of science, technology, and economic systems we can still be humbled by nature, indeed, by a strand of nucleic acid. It is crucial how we respond to the situation. What can we learn from it and how do we go forward?

We start with an adequate framing of the issue. This is an issue of life and death, which means it is in the most fundamental archetypal realm and requires an archetypal perspective. The fear of death from the pandemic is bringing a sense of immediacy and urgency on a planet-wide scale. Death cannot be separated from life, death makes us aware of the preciousness of life, and death confronts us with questions about the meaning of existence and our place it the bigger scheme of things. Death can bring an end to systems and beliefs that no longer support life and a healthy existence, and that could be the most important outcome of the present crisis.

The virus is demonstrating to what degree we are interconnected and how much we need each other. The forced social isolation and six-foot distancing has cut us off from intimate contacts and group experiences making us aware by absence how important we are to each other.  The ghostly empty streets in otherwise bustling cities are eerie reminders that our systems are in shock at all levels. Like a nightmare that wakes us in the middle of the night, this shock is meant to shock us into a new awareness.

Read more...

Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D., is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ecopsychologist in private practice in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dr. Merritt is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and also holds the following degrees: M.A. Humanistic Psychology-Clinical, Sonoma State University, California, Ph.D. Insect Pathology, University of California-Berkeley, M.S. and B.S. Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Merritt is the author of Jung, Hermes, and Ecopsychology: The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe Volumes 1 - 4.


Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Four Volumes of Jungian Ecopsychology

The four volumes of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe offer a comprehensive presentation of Jungian ecopsychology.

Volume 1, Jung and Ecopsychology, examines the evolution of the Western dysfunctional relationship with the environment, explores the theoretical framework and concepts of Jungian ecopsychology, and describes how it could be applied to psychotherapy, our educational system, and our relationship with indigenous peoples.

Volume 2, The Cry of Merlin: Jung, the Prototypical Ecopsychologist, reveals how an individual’s biography can be treated in an ecopsychological manner and articulates how Jung’s life experiences make him the prototypical ecopsychologist.

Volume 3, Hermes, Ecopsychology, and Complexity Theory, provides an archetypal, mythological and symbolic foundation for Jungian ecopsychology.

Volume 4, Land, Weather, Seasons, Insects: An Archetypal View describes how a deep, soulful connection can be made with these elements through a Jungian ecopsychological approach. This involves the use of science, myths, symbols, dreams, Native American spirituality, imaginal psychology and the I Ching.

Together, these volumes provide a useful handbook for psychologists and environmentalists seeking to imagine and enact a healthier relationship with their psyches and the world of which they are a part.


Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives and a growing list of Cutting-Edge alternative titles. www.fisherkingpress.com

Sunday, February 28, 2016

The Soul of Glacier Country



Fisher King Press author Dennis Merritt will be giving an illustrated talk on “The Soul of Glacier Country” at the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (SAC) annual conference in Portland, Oregon on Friday, April 1, 2016. SAC is a branch of the American Anthropological Association. The section Dennis will be speaking in is “Landscapes of Transformation—Encountering the Sacred.” The presentation offers a visual illustration of the glacial history part of his book Land, Weather, Seasons, Insects: An Archetypal View, which is volume 4 of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe—Jung, Hermes, and Ecopsychology.

A basic premise of ecopsychology and deep ecology is that a person connected to the land will have a natural desire to protect it. Dreams of landscapes, plants, animals, and natural phenomena like storms can be used to establish a sense of place, especially if these natural elements appear with a numinous or sacred quality in a dream. Dennis Merritt will present his dream of a typical Midwestern landscape that appeared in a sacred light and describe how he used that dream to connect with the soul of glacier country via weekly round-trip bus rides through a notable glacial feature called drumlins. Ten different time frames can be experienced on that journey.

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian psychological perspectives and a growing list of cutting-edge alternative titles.   

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Merritt on Guns and the American Psyche

Article by Dennis L. Merritt

The issues of gun violence and gun control will not be resolved unless addressed at the most basic level--the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Even the gore of Sandy Hook barely moved the needle towards significant changes in gun control, implying a need for a more archetypal approach to the problem. (1)

The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution to be the mythic foundation of America as a nation of laws. Archetypically the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are in the realm of the Bible: they are like the Ten Commandments for Americans. They strike the collective American psyche as the Word of God in a nation without a religious foundation, an important aspect of our uniqueness during the Age of the Enlightenment when they were written. (2)

The Second Amendment right “to keep and bear arms” is loaded with archetypal imagery in the guns themselves. There is a fierce and frightening beauty in these technological marvels of relative simplicity in design. With soul-frightening noise the bearer can project great and deadly force with these phallicy objects. The Lakota Sioux say such objects have great wakan, great power; archetypal power in a sacred sense. A gun in one's hand engages an ultimate archetype—death. Guns can impart a deadly sense of power to those feeling fearful and disempowered, but a power that moves one towards black-and white, good-and-evil distinctions because of the life-and-death potential guns wield. The power to kill and maim can quickly sweep the bearer into the domain of the god of war, Ares/Mars, the god behind the intoxication of gang warfare. An individual or a group can take justice into their own hands, subverting a society of laws.

Monday, May 13, 2013

An Exploration of Jung, Hermes, and Ecopsychology

Western man has no need of more superiority over nature, whether outside or inside. He has both in almost devilish perfection. What he lacks is conscious recognition of his inferiority to nature around him and within him. He must learn that he may not do exactly as he wills. If he does not learn this, his own nature will destroy him. He does not know that his own soul is rebelling against him in a suicidal way.   — C.G. Jung

The four volumes of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe offer a comprehensive presentation of Jungian ecopsychology. Volume 1, Jung and Ecopsychology, examines the evolution of the Western dysfunctional relationship with the environment, explores the theoretical framework and concepts of Jungian ecopsychology, and describes how it could be applied to psychotherapy, our educational system, and our relationship with indigenous peoples. Volume 2, The Cry of Merlin: Jung, the Prototypical Ecopsychologist, reveals how an individual’s biography can be treated in an ecopsychological manner and articulates how Jung’s life experiences make him the prototypical ecopsychologist. Volume 3, Hermes, Ecopsychology, and Complexity Theory, provides an archetypal, mythological and symbolic foundation for Jungian ecopsychology. Volume 4, Land, Weather, Seasons, Insects: An Archetypal View describes how a deep, soulful connection can be made with these elements through a Jungian ecopsychological approach. This involves the use of science, myths, symbols, dreams, Native American spirituality, imaginal psychology and the I Ching. Together, these volumes provide what I hope will be a useful handbook for psychologists and environmentalists seeking to imagine and enact a healthier relationship with their psyches and the world of which they are a part.
Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

News Release: Land, Weather, Seasons, Insects


News Release - April 17, 2013 - Just Published:

Land, Weather, Seasons, Insects: An Archetypal View  — The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe Volume IV
by Dennis L. Merritt

Land, Weather, Seasons, Insects explores the environment, with the Midwest as an example, using traditional Jungian and Hillmanian approaches to deepen our connection with the land, the seasons, and insects.

The Dalai Lama said how we relate to insects is very important for what it reveals much about a culture’s relationship with the psyche and nature.

"I had several Big Dreams in my last year of training at the Jung Institute in Zurich, including a single image dream of a typical Wisconsin pasture or meadow scene. This was the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen because it shown with an inner light, what Jung called a numinous or sacred dream. Since returning to Wisconsin I have let the mystery and power of that dream inspire me to learn and experience as much as possible about the land and the seasons of the upper Midwest, a process of turning a landscape into a soulscape."

"The means of doing this are presented in Land, Weather, Seasons, Insects: An Archetypal View, volume IV of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe—Jung, Hermes, and Ecopsychology. This involves the use of science, myths, symbols, dreams, Native American spirituality, imaginal psychology and the I Ching. It is an approach that can be used to develop a deep connection with any landscape, meeting one of the goals of ecopsychology. Carl Sagan believed that unless we can re-establish a sense of the sacred about the earth, the forces leading to its destruction will be too powerful to avert."
—Dennis L. Merritt

Front Cover: A Monarch butterfly on Buddleia in Olbrich Gardens, Madison, Wisconsin. This “King of the Butterflies” is probably the best known of the North American butterflies and is the chosen image for the Entomological Society of America. The caterpillar feeds on the lowly milkweed, genius Asclepias, named after the Greek god of healing. The plant and the insect are toxic to most organisms. The insect is known for its uniquely long and complicated migrations. Photo by Chuck Heikkinen.

DENNIS L. MERRITT, Ph.D., is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ecopsychologist in private practice in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A Diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute of Analytical Psychology, Zurich, Switzerland, he also holds the following degrees: M.A. Humanistic Psychology-Clinical, Sonoma State University, California, Ph.D. Insect Pathology, University of California-Berkeley, M.S. and B.S. in Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has participated in Lakota Sioux ceremonies for over twenty-five years which have strongly influenced his worldview.
Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Do We Need More Psychology?

Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D.

In the famous 1957 BBC interview, C.G. Jung proclaimed, “We need more psychology, the human psyche must be studied! Humans are the source of all coming evil.”

Psychology is positioned to usher in a holistic approach to the study of the human psyche, our relationship to the environment, and a truly interdisciplinary educational system. As Jung pointed out, all we know and experience comes out of the psyche and all our systems, including science, have an archetypal base. The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe: Jung and Ecopsychology series explores paradigms that can be appreciated and utilized within the academic community, paradigms that offer several perspectives on the mind/body connection, humans and nature, science and the arts.

Jung, the first psychiatrist to speak of biophilia, believed that a person not connected to the land was neurotic. Carl Sagan and other prominent scientists united with church leaders to proclaim that unless we develop a sense of the sacred in the land, all will be lost. James Hillman in his books The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World and We’ve had 100 Years of Psychotherapy and The World is Getting Worse challenges psychologists to ask themselves if they are part of the problem or part of the solution vis-à-vis our relationship with the environment.

Does our philosophical base and our psychological theories and practices encompass a regard for the most basic reality - the accelerating rate of destruction of the very fabric of life’s existence? Dennis Merritt's Jung and Ecopsychology series explores how Jungian theory and practice can provide a 21st century model for understanding the human psyche in relation to nature and how it can help establish a truly interdisciplinary educational system that cultivates and develops our connection to the land and creates a sustainable lifestyle.

A significant contribution to evolving paradigms being explored by the new as well 
as by the traditional areas of psychology.
Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Hermes, Ecopsychology, Complexity Theory

Nov. 1, 2012 - Just Published:
Hermes, Ecopsychology, Complexity Theory: 
The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe Volume III
by Dennis L. Merritt

“Who ever does not shy away from dangers of the most profound depths and the newest pathways, which Hermes is always prepared to open, may follow and reach, whether as scholar, commentator, or philosopher, a greater find and a more certain possession.”  —Karl Kerenyi

An exegesis of the myth of Hermes stealing Apollo’s cattle and the story of Hephaestus trapping Aphrodite and Ares in the act are used in The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe Volume III to set a mythic foundation for Jungian ecopsychology. Hermes, Ecopsychology, and Complexity Theory illustrates Hermes as the archetypal link to our bodies, sexuality, the phallus, the feminine, and the earth. Hermes’ wand is presented as a symbol for ecopsychology. The appendices of this volume develop the argument for the application of complexity theory to key Jungian concepts, displacing classical Jungian constructs problematic to the scientific and academic community. Hermes is described as the god of ecopsychology and complexity theory.

The front cover image is from a photo taken by the author of detail on an Attic Greek calyx krater by Euxitheos (potter) and Euphronios (painter) ca. 515 BCE. The gap between the horn-like extensions atop Hermes’ staff highlight his domain—the exchange and interactive field between things, as between people, consciousness and the unconscious, body and mind, and humans and nature.

Hermes, Ecopsychology, and Complexity Theory
The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe Volume III
ISBN 978-1-926715-44-5
6 x 9
228 pages
Index, Bibliography
Publication Date November 1, 2012

DENNIS L. MERRITT, Ph.D., is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ecopsychologist in private practice in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A Diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute of Analytical Psychology, Zurich, Switzerland, he also holds the following degrees: M.A. Humanistic Psychology-Clinical, Sonoma State University, California, Ph.D. Insect Pathology, University of California-Berkeley, M.S. and B.S. in Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has participated in Lakota Sioux ceremonies for over twenty-five years which have strongly influenced his worldview.
Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 

Thursday, July 26, 2012

The Holy Grail and Near Death Experiences

by Dennis Merritt

"[India] left tracks which lead from one infinity into another infinity,” Jung wrote. (MDR, p. 284) During a hospitalization near the end of his trip, he had many remarkable dreams that underscored his personal myth: to rescue the Grail for Western culture. (n 84) He said a dream he had when just out of the hospital made one of the “most powerful dream impressions” in his life. (Bair 2003, p. 429) The dream location was on what seemed to be an island off the Southern coast of England. His sightseeing companions were not impressed that there was to be a secret celebration of the Grail that night in a medieval castle of the Grail. The lower wall of the castle had a tiny, iron, hooded gnome moving among metal leaves and vines containing tiny iron houses. (n 85) For the celebration to occur that evening, the responsibility fell upon Jung to fetch the Grail at night from a second smaller, desolate island. To do so Jung had to swim across a cold, wide channel. (MDR, p. 280-282) (n 86)

He said the most important aspect of the dream was “the visibility of the Grail or the Grail’s castle”—it was to be seen as real. (Bair 2003, p. 429) It was powerful and alive—not a passive tourist attraction as it was to some people in the dream. Ten years previous Jung had discovered that the myth of the Grail was still a living thing in many places in England, “recognized again by poets and prophetically revived” in different forms under changed names. Jung took the dream to mean he should not be preoccupied with India but with what was being lost in the West, symbolized by the quest for the Grail and the philosopher’s stone of the alchemists. (MDR, p. 282) (see Appendices D and E) “The Grail is a symbol of enlightenment” in the West he wrote (Bair 2003, p. 430)–the unum vas, una medicina and unus lapis of the alchemists (MDR, p. 282) while the Buddha represents the enlightened mind in the East. Buddhists strive to attain the degree of fulfillment and perfection of the Buddha.

The ultimate meaning of the Grail lay in its connection with the individuation process of becoming whole where one gives oneself over to the impersonal, that which is beyond and more encompassing than the personal. It is about becoming a Chinese sage: “the ear listening to the Inner King.” Individuation is ultimately a mystery—beyond human comprehension—“‘a lonely search’ perhaps akin to the ‘process of dying.’” Jung added, “Only few could bear such a search,” symbolized by his swimming alone in the cold water to a desolate island containing the Grail. (Bair 2003, p. 429)

Bair noted that Jung “thought he may have had such dreams...because his overall question was how and why the evil he encountered in India was ‘not a moral dimension,’ but rather...‘a divine power.’” (Bair 2003, p. 429 quoted from the Protocols) The India trip “provoked the initial reflections upon religion that served as the basis for all his writings on the subject from then on.” (p. 497) Answers to the questions which emerged came years later when Jung used his understanding of alchemy to analyze Christianity and the dark side of God. He developed the position on morals that one should intensely engage the Self in the hope of generating an individual response to a moral conflict, perhaps even doing what is considered to be “wrong” by conventional moral and ethical standards. “India was not my task,” Jung wrote, “but only a part of the way—admittedly a significant one—which should carry me closer to my goal.” (MDR, p. 282)

The powerful impressions and imagery from India loomed large in a near death experience six years later. Following a massive heart attack, he experienced a series of visions while under oxygen and camphor in February of 1944 at age 68. Jung was at “the outermost border,” somewhere between “a dream and an ecstasy”—probably between delirium and a coma. The visions, together with his trip to India in 1937-38, which ended in briefer periods of delirium while hospitalized, were the most enormous experiences of his life. (Bair 2003, p. 497)

The 1944 visions altered his life and eventually led him to revamp his concept of the archetypes. One vision was of Jung floating about one thousand miles above Sri Lanka with the earth below “bathed in a gloriously blue light” and shimmering in intense colors: “The most glorious thing I had ever seen,” Jung proclaimed. (MDR, p. 289, 290) In another vision, a Hindu sat in lotus posture waiting for Jung in the entrance to a huge rock in outer space. Deeper in the rock was the entrance to an antechamber framed by a wreath of flaming lamps similar to a temple entrance he had visited in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The lamps represented “a purifying essence through which he had to walk.” (Bair 2003, p. 497) As he approached the step to enter the rock, he underwent an extremely painful process of having his entire earthy existence stripped away:
There was no longer anything I wanted or desired. I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence. (MDR, p. 291)
As soon as he entered the illuminated temple in the rock, he was certain he would meet his people who could answer his burning questions about the historical context of his life and the direction in which it had been flowing. As he thought about this he saw his doctor, in his primal form as healer, floating up from Europe. He was delegated by the earth to protest Jung’s departure and insisted Jung return immediately. At that moment the vision ceased. (p. 291, 292)

Jung was profoundly disappointed that he didn’t get to enter the temple and join the “greater company” he belonged with. It took him three weeks to decide to live again. (n 87) Reality seemed like a prison, an artificially created three-dimensional world “in which each person sat by himself in a little box” suspended by a thread. (MDR, p. 292) He was depressed, weak and wretched during the day, but woke at midnight for an hour into an utterly transformed, ecstatic, blissful state. “I felt as though I were floating in space,” he said, “as though I were safe in the womb of the universe—in a tremendous void, but filled with the highest possible feeling of happiness” (p. 293)—Jung in the pregnant void. Everything around him in the hospital seemed enchanted, a magical, sacred atmosphere with “a pneuma of inexpressible sanctity in the room, whose manifestation was the mysterium coniunctionis.” (p. 295) He experienced the divine union in the form of visions of the Cabbalistic marriage in the afterlife of the male and female principles: he was the marriage. Then he was the festive Marriage of the Lamb in Jerusalem with ineffable states of joy and angels and light, which led to a vision of Zeus and Hera consummating their marriage in an outdoor amphitheater. The midnight visions gradually mingled and paled as Jung approached life again. They were gone after three weeks. (p. 294, 295)

The sacred marriage and sexual union of divine figures are prime examples of the union of opposites as a symbol of the Self. It illustrates the symbolic dimension of sexuality depicted in Shiva and Shakti in loving embrace, one of the Hindu images for liberation or nirvana. Such symbols of the Self add the important dimension to ecopsychology of the sacredness of sexuality and the body, our most direct link to nature and a sense of the Spirit in nature.

The visions and experiences had seemed utterly real to Jung: “the most tremendous things I had ever experienced,” he said. (n 88) By contrast, everything during the day irritated him; everything “was too material, too crude and clumsy, terribly limited both spatially and spiritually.” Reality felt like an empty imprisonment, “yet it had a kind of hypnotic power.” Jung wrote, “I have never since entirely freed myself of the impression that this life is a segment of existence which is enacted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe especially set up for it.” (MDR, p. 295)

Jung’s visions “had a quality of absolute objectivity,” (MDR, p. 295) an objectivity he later related to a dream-vision he had soon after Emma died in 1955. She appeared to him in her prime wearing her best dress:
Her expression was neither joyful nor sad, but, rather, objectively wise and understanding, without the slightest emotional reaction, as though she were beyond the mist of affects…It contained the beginning of our relationship, the events of fifty-three years of marriage, and the end of her life also. (p. 296) (n 89)
The dream was an example of the objectivity necessary for a completed individuation: “Only through objective cognition is the real coniunctio possible.” (MDR, p. 297) Emotional ties contain projections that coerce and constrain both parties. Objective cognition is seeing and accepting the absolute reality of a situation, what Jung called the “mountaintop perspective” related to Winnicott’s concept of the use of the object. (Winnicott 1969) Plato said philosophy is being able to die before one’s physical death, meaning that facing death, bringing death to life, gives one the objectivity of a philosopher of life. I associate such objective cognition with a perspective that can be obtained by activities like meditation, vision quests, and the moments of deep insight in life and in therapy.

Jung had completed Psychology and Alchemy just over a year before the near death visions; he had also written the first chapters of his opus magnum, Mysterium Coniunctionis. “All I have written is correct,” he said; he felt the illness was necessary for him to know the full reality of the mysterium coniunctionis. (Hannah 1991, p. 279)

He suffered another heart attack 2-1/2 years later, in November of 1946, probably as dangerous as the first: he was “suspended over the abyss” for several weeks. (Hannah 1991, p. 293, 294) Jung believed it occurred because he was involved in an intense period of creative activity at that time, wrestling “with the mysterious problem of hieros gamos (the mysterium coniunctionis).” He felt it took the two heart attacks to understand the hieros gamos well enough to even write about it. (p. 294, 295) Eleven years later and four years before his death at age 86 Jung admitted that he had not “solved the riddle of the coniunctio mystery” and was “darkly aware of things lurking in the background of the problem—things too big for horizons.” (Jung 1976a, p. 393) He, as much as anyone, could appreciate the depth of the meaning of the union of warring opposites; he had been aware of the dark side of God since childhood, had a powerful confrontation with the unconscious, had suffered in Europe through two world wars, and was essentially married to two women!

Fundamental changes occurred in Jung’s relationships with the women in his life following his first heart attack in 1944. Emma had rented a room in the hospital and didn’t leave the building for over two months. Bair comments:
Jung’s illness struck the death knell for [his] long relationship [with Toni Wolff], which had been imperiled since Toni refused to participate in alchemical research (n 90)…By the time Jung went home, he was as dependent upon Emma as a small child upon his mother. (Bair 2003, p. 501)
Nighttime visions during hospitalizations and dreams of all phases of his long marriage confronted Jung with a sense of wholeness:
From that time on, he revered [Emma] for all that she had brought to his life, and he sanctified their marriage as “an indescribable whole.” (Bair 2003, p. 501)
A gracious and generous accommodation had sprung up naturally between Toni and Emma sometime in the late l940s, and it lasted for the remainder of Toni’s life. (p. 558)
You have just read an excerpt from Dennls L. Merritt's The Cry of Merlin: Jung, the Prototypical Ecopsychologist (Volume 2 of The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe)

Notes:
Bair, D. 2003. Jung: A Biography. Little, Brown and Co.: Boston and New York.
Hannah, B. 1991. Jung: His Life and Work: A Biographical Memoir. Shambala: Boston.
MDR = Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Aniela Jaffe, ed. Richard and Claire Winston, trans. Random House: New York.


Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 

Saturday, June 23, 2012

The Cry of Merlin


June 27, 2012

Advance Press/News Release:
Just Published by Fisher King Press

The Cry of Merlin: 
Jung, the Prototypical Ecopsychologist
The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe Volume II
by Dennis L. Merritt

Carl Jung can be seen as the prototypical ecopsychologist. Volume II of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe explores how Jung’s life and times created the context for the ecological nature of Jungian ideas.  It is an ecopsychological exercise to delineate the many dimensions of Jung’s life that contributed to creation of his system—his basic character, nationality, family of origin, difficulties in childhood, youthful environment, period in Western culture, and his pioneering position in the development of modern psychology. Jung said every psychology is a subjective confession, making it important to discover the lacuna in Jung’s character and in his psychological system, particularly in relation to Christianity. Archetypically redressing the lacuna leads to the creation of a truly holistic, integrated ecological psychology that can help us live sustainably on this beautiful planet.

Front Cover: Jung’s relief carving on the side of his Bollingen Tower, a place he associated with Merlin. The inscription reads, “May the light arise, which I have borne in my body.” The woman reaching out to milk the mare is Jung’s anima as “a millennia-old ancestress.” The image is an anticipation of the Age of Aquarius, which is under the constellation of Pegasus. The feminine element is said to receive a special role in this new eon. Jung imagined the inspiring springs that gush forth from the hoof prints of Pegasus, the “fount horse,” to be associated with the Water Bearer, the symbol of Aquarius.

Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D., is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ecopsychologist in private practice in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dr. Merritt is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and also holds the following degrees: M.A. Humanistic Psychology-Clinical, Sonoma State University, California, Ph.D. Insect Pathology, University of California-Berkeley, M.S. and B.S. Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over twenty-five years of participation in Lakota Sioux ceremonies has strongly influenced his worldview.

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Merritt on "The Hunger Games," Politics, and the Environment

by Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D., Jungian Analyst, Ecopsychologist
                                       
The movie The Hunger Games at one level depicts the adolescent's world on steroids and at another level relates to powerful forces stirring in America. As a nation we are struggling to find a new identity as the myths that have sustained us are showing their age and ineptness while the controlling powers are expressing themselves more strongly. In Games those controlling forces directed by President Snow, played by Donald Sutherland, are challenged by a powerful feminine energy in the form of sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen, played by Jennifer Lawrence.

The Story from an Archetypal Perspective

In the film the rule of the archetype of the Old King as embodied by the President is nearing its end. The King represents the dominant features of a culture depicted in its values, attitudes, behaviors and systems. (1) Old systems in Snow's realm are showing signs of strain in a decadent society that has lost its soul. The ruling power uses intimidation, deceit and diversions to maintain its position. The Capitol is the powerhouse and center of President's domain, a place of ultra modernity in its buildings, machines, and electronic marvels. It is inhabited by a ruling elite of shallow people living in luxury who are caricatures of humans with their bizarre clothing, makeup and behaviors. This society without a heart is epitomized by an annual event—The Hunger Games—captivating the entire culture. The games cruel nature is symptomatic of the absence of the Queen archetype—there is no feminine companion/counterpart to the President. The Queen symbolizes the Eros or archetypal feminine in a culture, the feeling values and how people relate to each other. In the film a primary feminine figure is the woman who reaps the tributes from the districts: a shallow, empty, painted woman enamored with the allure of the games.

Outside the Capitol lie twelve poor, starving, downtrodden districts still being punished for a rebellion over 74 years ago. Twelve is an archetypal number associated with wholeness (twelve months, twelve apostles). Here we have a kingdom of the haves and the have nots, reflecting the 1% and 99% in American society. Every year a male and a female between the ages of 12 and 18 are selected at random as tribute (sacrifice) to represent their district in The Hunger Games. The randomness highlights the cruel uncertainty of fate, subjecting everyone to its fears. The games are an annual reminder of the punishment for rebelling against the powers that be, a punishment meted out in the form of human lives for the entertainment of the populace and a means of maintaining a fear in both city and country of the ruling power.

The tributes get trained in the arts of combat and survival before being thrown into a dog-eat-dog world—the ultimate survival show—teenage gladiators in a Thunderdome sport. To survive they must generate interest in sponsors, selling themselves to their captors' conscious and unconscious desires. Game activities are manipulated for audience appeal and the rules changed accordingly, including a manufactured love scene. READ MORE


Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles. 

Thursday, March 1, 2012

A Dangerous Method and Ecopsychology


   A Dangerous Method Seen From A Jungian Ecopsychological Perspective, Even
           by Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D., Jungian Analyst, Ecopsychologist

The film A Dangerous Method is remarkable in its presentation of the early days of the psychoanalytic movement that was to revolutionize our understanding of the human psyche. Superb acting dramatizes the relationship between two giants of the psychoanalytic world, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and the struggle between them that led to a painful split still reverberating through their two schools of thought over 100 years later. Sabina Spielrein, a former Jewish patient with whom Jung was to have an intimate relationship, functions in the archetypal feminine role of Eve in painfully forcing the raising of male consciousness through the discovery of countertransference. She became the seed of Jung's concept of the archetype of the soul, the anima or inner feminine in a man. Other significant elements in the film include the powerful role of sex in life and in the therapeutic environment, the the midlife crisis, the association experiment, and the issue the “Jewish” and the “Christian” cultural unconscious. As a Jungian analyst and ecopsychologist, I see in Sabina Spielrein as portrayed in A Dangerous Method as the catalyst that eventually led Jung to believe that a strong emergence of archetypal feminine energy in Western culture is the most important element in a needed paradigm shift. He called the shift a “New Age” and the “Age of Aquarius,” a shift with important ecological implications.

Why the Method was Dangerous
The beginning of psychoanalysis was particularly dangerous because it blew the lid off a culture trapped in a repressive Victorian worldview. Following Freud's initial exploration of the unconscious using cocaine and hypnosis, he developed a revolutionary approach called “the talking cure” which encouraged patients to tell their thoughts and fantasies to an analyst. What is repressed ultimately turns against us in a negative form, and what Freud discovered was the results of centuries of repression in our Judeo-Christian culture of powerful instinctual drives, especially sexuality. The material was so shocking Freud called it “the seething caldron of the Id,” full of animalistic drives, barbaric behavior, and childish immaturity, as he saw it.

While Freud was analyzing privately and primarily with sexually repressed and abused Viennese women, Jung, 19 years Freud's junior, began working in the world-renowned Burgholzli clinic in Zurich in 1900, the year Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams based on approximately 13 years of developing his methods and concepts. Eugene Bleuler, the chief at Burgholzli, insisted doctors live on the grounds of the cantonal mental institution, as depicted in Method, eat with the patients, and speak in their dialect. (Ellenberger 1970, p. 666, 667) Because of Jung's background, described in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he was particularly good at relating to schizophrenics and published an important paper on the topic. This, together with his development of the association experiment, convinced Jung their was an unconscious and led to his meeting with Freud.

The Association Experiment
The conduct of the association experiment is depicted in the movie where Jung tests his wife as Sabina Spielrein helps gather the data. When I trained in Zurich we had to participate in, then administer and write up an association experiment, be graded on a paper, and pass an oral exam on the subject (I graduated in 1983). Memory was a topic of psychological interest in the late 1800s, and Jung and others conducted research on what interfered with the conscious intent to free associate to 100 words read to the client with the simple instruction to respond as quickly as possible to each word. The word list was designed to have what was thought to be psychologically loaded words like father, mother, death, etc. with more neutral words like long, ship, etc. The researcher uses a stop watch to time the responses. Most responses are immediate but Jung discovered over 100 indicators that something impedes free associations, one of the strongest indicators being prolonged response time (as depicted in the movie), with other indicators being rhyming responses, foreign words, etc., proving that unknown factors can affect conscious intent, what Jung called the unconscious. (Collected Works, volume 2) Analyzing the results and questioning the client about difficulties in answering revealed the source of the problem, what Jung called complexes (“hangup). Further development of Jung's work became the lie detector test.

The Discovery of Countertransference
To delve into the muck of the Western cultural unconscious was particularly dangerous during the trial-and-error days of the early psychoanalytic movement in the relationship between a male analyst and a female client. This became a central theme in the movie. Sabin Spielrein had a strong transference (patient-to-the analyst eros/feeling of a strong connection) onto Jung, at Jung's encouragement. Having worked with women longer than Jung, Freud had more experience with this phenomenon, and his genius and self-reflection enabled him to identify strong erotic feelings he often had towards his female clients. His initial idea was that the analyst could be completely objective, which was one of the reasons the analyst sat behind the client so everything the client said was thought to be their fantasies and feelings against an objective background supposably offered by the analyst. Jung's entanglement with Spielrein helped Freud more easily reflect on his own analyst's experiences and develop the concept of countertransference—the projections of the analyst's unconscious material onto the client. In other words, the analyst could not be completely objective, making it necessary for the analyst to become aware of what was being stirred up in himself or herself as the patient presented their innermost thoughts, fantasies and emotions. Jung became the first analyst to require students training to become analysts to undergo a training analysis: experiencing their own unconscious and what its like to be in analysis, and being supervised to learn not only how to apply theoretical concepts but also to explore their unconscious connections to the patient. A minor error in the movie from a psychoanalytic standpoint is Jung using the term countertransference fairly early when he was trying to understand what was happing between himself and Spielrein.

The Midlife Crisis
Jung experienced with Spielrein what he would come to describe as the early stages of a midlife crisis. In 1906 after Spielrein had left the hospital and Jung began to get emotionally involved with her he was 31 years old. He became more erotically and sensually involved with her in 1908 and 1909. Jung had worked hard to get through medical school, graduated in 1900 at age 25, and used his boundless energy and drive to read all the psychiatric literature to date. He was married in 1903 to the second wealthiest Swiss heiress and had the responsibilities of fatherhood with the birth of his first child in 1904 and a second child in 1906. His poor background haunted him, he was painfully aware of growing up with parents in a difficult marriage, and his hysterical mother had been severely depressed, especially in Jung's early childhood. This was a mother who frightened him with her fervent belief in ghosts and spirits. As the daughter of a Swiss Reformed (strict late 19th century Protestant) minister she and her sibs had to sit behind her father as he wrote his sermons and swat away the demons. Jung's father was also a Swiss Reformed minister in a poor rural area, and both parents were from long lines of ministers. Jung would eventually describe a minister's children complex created by preaching a standard of perfection and parishioners watching the family closely, delighting in every pitfall.

Jung would become the first psychologist to talk about the stages of life, using the analogy of the sun moving across the sky during the course of a day. In the first half of life, the focus is on getting a job, starting a family, succeeding in the world, etc. After the sun reaches the zenith at midday, its orientation shifts to the opposite direction as it moved towards its demise at the end of the day. In the second half of life the focus subtly shifts as getting one more promotion or continuing in the same old way becomes less and less fulfilling. Nagging questions arise about the purpose and meaning of life, where one is not being fulfilled, and what had been set aside to become established and successful. Questions about death and matters of the spirit grow in importance.

Otto Gross and the Felix Culpa
It was when the relationship with Spielrein reached the more personal, intimate phase that Jung poured out his soul and his feelings for her. Otto Gross was in the position of Mephistopheles in Milton's Paradise Lost and hell in William Blake's worldview (Ryley 1998, p. 141-144, 147, 148 and Merritt 2012b, appendix B) by representing the seductive, enlivening energy confined within repressed sexuality. The melting of the doctor-patient boundary between Jung and Gross with its strong unconscious affect was another powerful example of countertransference. (Bair 2003, p. 141-144, 156) The felix culpa (the “fortunate accident,” the blessed sin leading to redemption) that followed, with Gross's encouragement, was Jung's affair with Spielrein that opened Jung up to his soul, painful and difficult as the process was. The erotic interaction was probably not as depicted in Method but as described in Spielrein's diary and letters discovered subsequent to the book the film was base on. The “poetry” between them (Spielrein's word for their intimacies) was romantic swooning as they looked into each others eyes and holding, touching and kissing. (Lothane 1999, p. 1201) Freud and Jung as the first generation of analysts had not been analyzed, aside from the rather informal work they did with each other's dreams. They found it difficult to discuss such personal and intimate matters with their colleagues and followers, as Freud did when he refused to provide Jung with associations to his dream because he feared it would threaten his authority. Discussing deep, personal issues with a woman, albeit a former patient, that Jung has fallen in love with was an avenue for him to explore his darker unconscious side with a sympathetic and supportive listener and admirer.

Discovery of the Anima
Jung's relationship with Spielrein became the experiential base for what years later he would come to all the “anima,” the inner woman in a man. The German's have a saying: “every man has a woman within.” The “animus” is the inner male equivalent in the female psyche. A woman represents for a man what is closest to him as a member of the human species yet in so many basic ways is his opposite. As such she compliments the male's psyche and intimacy with her gives the male a sense of wholeness and completion. Because she is so much “the other,” a female represents for a male the deeper layers of the unconscious, something we are intimately a part of and always relating to, but ultimately a mystery and a source of fascination. So profound is the symbolic importance of the opposite sex that Jung called the anima and animus the archetype of the soul.

Significant influences on the formation of a particular man's anima come from the experience of his mother, sisters, and significant other women in a man's childhood. There is a strong unconscious and mysterious attraction when a man meets a woman that resonates with his sense of his inner woman. Emma Jung provided the stable, secure, provider and motherly side that Jung needed and she dutifully assumed her role as a wealthy Swiss housewife and child bearer. Spielrein was a different story. She represented a wildness, freedom and exotic feminine and soul experience because of her Russian Jewishness, her active and excellent mind, and her boldness in dealing with academics. (Bair 2003, p. 91) Freedom was of utmost importance for her—and for Jung's psyche. Jung's mother was a hysteric, another unconscious connection for Jung to Spielrein.

The Incestuous Early Days of Psychoanalysis
Jung's sexual involvement with Spielrein put him into an extremely difficult and embarrassing situation within the incestuous early days of the small psychoanalytic community. He was discussing his dreams and difficulties of his cases with Freud, including Spielrein, while Emma was also doing some analysis with Freud. Freud's sister-in-law, Minna, who was living with Freud's family, confided in Jung upon Jung's first visit with Freud that she was having an affair with Freud. (Bair 2003, p. 119, 120, 164, 689 note 51) Spielrein went on to analyze with Freud after leaving Jung.

Spielrein became the real heroine in the story and represents the beginning of the return of the repressed feminine into the Western psyche. Raging beatings on her buttocks as a child by her moody, tyrannical father distorted her sexuality (Bair 2003, p. 87), but she developed her intellect and forged her way through the male dominated world of academia and the all-male world of the first generation of analysts. She carried the banner of the archetypal feminine and Eros in her insistence that Jung acknowledge and honor the love he felt for her and her importance in the life of his soul. To Jung's credit, he ate humble pie and confessed to Freud his level of involvement with her rather than blaming it all on Eve as the crazy, seductive, lying woman. (Lothane 1999, p. 1200) Spielrein was important in helping Jung formulate some of his ideas (Bair 2003, p. 283-285) and her concepts of death and ego extinction during sexual intimacy led Freud to develop his formulation of the death instinct. (Lothane 1999, p. 1202) She became a psychoanalyst and taught others in Russia.

The Split Between Jung and Freud
There were several key factors that led to the split between Freud and Jung and Spielrein was not a significant one. (Lothane 1999, p. 1201) Jung had developed important concepts and published research before he met Freud, and as mentioned, was working in one of the leading clinics in the world. Practicing in a state hospital, he experienced a much broader range of patients than Freud. He realized there were many factors that could lead to severe mental problems—abusive parents, alcoholism in the family, extreme poverty, etc. Working with schizophrenics exposed him to the mythic dimension of human experience as every clinic before the age of heavy psychotropics had its God, Jesus, the Devil and the Virgin Mary. Jung knew after his first meeting with Freud that Freud was a truly remarkable man who was making enormous contributions to the understanding of the psyche, but he was trapped in his attempt to be totally objective and treat the psyche scientifically. Freud got very emotional and irrational when talking about his theory of sexuality, and Jung saw that as his religion in this very anti-religious man. Jung came to believe that Freud was a bitter, cynical person because he tried to reduce the psyche to a biological, materialistic level and failed to see the spiritual and symbolic dimensions of sexuality—he was his own worst enemy. (Jung 1961, p. 149-152; Merritt 2012b, chapter 4) He would come to criticize the Freudians for being trapped in Freud's Oedipal complex, running every psyche through that Procrustean bed. (In Greek myth, Procrustes was a innkeeper who had one iron bed. If the guest was too tall, he cut him to size to fit the bed; if too short, he stretched them out) (Jung 1961, p. 167) Spielrein admitted Freud's concepts worked with her, and it works for those whose Oedipal conflicts dominate. Jung emphasized that there is a whole host of Greek and other myths, and we can get trapped in any of them. Also, he said every theoretical system is the subjective confession of its creator.

When Jung was writing Symbols of Transformation, published in 1912, he got stuck on the section where he would provide a non-sexual concept of the libido. He described it as general psychic energy that can take any form, not just sexual. He insisted that Freud missed the symbolic dimension of sexuality, with sexual union being a common image for the union of opposites and the sense of wholeness. (Collected Works 8, p. 3-66) He knew this formulation would spell the end of his relationship with Freud, because Freud considered himself to be the founder and final authority on psychoanalysis. (Bair 2003, p. 241) Freud believed whatever he thought was true (p. 722 note 50), and he was merciless with those who disagreed with him. (p. 227) Jung also believed there was more to be hoped for out of the psychoanalytic process than being a “normal neurotic” who accepts the dismal reality of existence. (Jung 1961, p. 166) Out of the dark depths of the unconscious can arise the beautiful products of the creative process—inspiring works of art and religious symbols. Freud interpreted these thing as the products of sublimated sexuality. Jung was desperate to find a father figure, and they mutually agreed that Freud served that function. This made it even more difficult for Jung to disagree with Freud and ultimately split from him.

Synchronicity and the Occult versus Science
Another huge difference arose during their first meeting, an encounter that lasted for 13 hours: “a world happened then,” Jung remarked. (Bair 2003, p. 117) Jung was thoroughly steeped in spirituality and occult phenomena, having done his doctoral thesis in medical school on the occult phenomena presumably arising during seances conducted by his cousin. Freud, more a product of the Enlightenment, was rightfully concerned about developing a more objective study of the psyche and establishing it on a more reputable base. Only with the rise of transpersonal psychology in the 1970's have significant numbers of psychologists turned to the study of shamans, mystics and yogis as legitimate explorations of the farther valid and rich dimensions of the human experience.

“Jewish” versus “Christian” Psychoanalysis
An issue Freud mentioned in the film was the difference between his constructs of the psyche and their appropriateness for Jews (more worldly, materialistic and pessimistic) in contrast to Jung's Aryan, Christian concepts (like sin, redemption, salvation, and an other-worldly spirituality). (Hillman 1990, 2003) From the beginning Freud accused Jung of being anti-Semitic and that charge has bedeviled Jung ever since (see Bair 2003 index “anti-Semitism” on p. 858). The matter is complicated by the many aspects of Jung's thought that paralleled Nazi beliefs and his behavior during the early years of Nazi Germany. Issue included the difference between the Jewish and Christian cultural (“racial”) unconscious and the relevance of the Freudian psychoanalytic approach to a Christian psyche; Jung's criticism of Freud, a Jew, and his followers for their narrow focus on the Oedipal complex and a materialist, reductive, biological approach to the psyche; Jung's emphasis on the importance of a connection to the land and an awareness of one's cultural roots and history; the significance of symbols in the cultural evolution of the human race; Jung's idea that the imposition of the more culturally developed and refined Christian religion upon the barbaric Teutonic tribes cut them off from the “two million-year-old man within”--a man connected to the earth, seasons, and the symbolic world; and Jung's understanding from personal experience and from his study of alchemy that it is necessary to go through a dangerous period of darkness and chaos for new, healing and integrative energies and symbols to emerge. The positive ecological aspects of all these issues except the first are discussed in Merritt 2011a. Jung's conduct during the late 1920's and early 1930's led to legitimate concerns about possible Nazi sympathies (see Sherry 2011 and the critique of Sherry in Stein 2011) but this must be viewed within the larger framework of his thoughts—individual freedom, individuation, freedom from oppression from the right, the left and the collective, and acceptance of all cultural and religious perspectives as long as they are not forced upon others or destroy human and other forms of life. It must also be noted that both men engaged in most heinous form of character assassination after the break. (Shamdasani 2005, p. 52, 72; Bair 2003, p. 235, 238, p. 725 note 102)

Jung's Dark Night of the Soul
The film ends in July 16, 1913 with Spielrein talking to Jung, at Emma's request, because of Emma's concern for the disturbed state of Jung's psyche. In actuality Jung never saw Spielrein after she left Zurich in 1910 and married in 1912. (Bair 2003, p. 191, 192, 194, 712 note 21) Toni Wolff was hospitalized under Jung's care in 1910 and he developed an intense relationship with her in 1913 after she had been his patient. The relationship reached an erotic peak in mid-1914. This was the second of three times in their married life that Emma's threatened a divorce, each time resulting in Jung getting ill or having an accident. (p. 191) Jung went into a chaotic and frightening descent into his unconscious beginning after the last contact with Freud and the psychoanalytic conference in Munich in September of 1913. In October he had the first of three visions over a period of several months, the theme being a flood over all of Europe carrying blood and debris to the base of the Swiss alps. (Jung 1961, p. 175, 176) For 3-1/2 years Jung engaged in a shamanistic journey through the depths of his personal and the collective Western psyche, realizing he was in the domain of psychotics and the mentally ill. He exercised a superhuman strength in engaging the powers of the unconscious (p. 173), and it was Tony Wolff who had an uncanny knack for being able to relate to the strange material emerging from Jung's unconscious and could remain unflappable in accompanying Jung through his dark and strange night of the soul. (Bair 2003, p. 249, 266, 321, 322; Hannah 1976, p. 119, 120) It is believed that Emma may have tolerated her presence, even in their own household, because she realized the desperate state Jung was in and knowing she could not be the one to be with him on that journey. (Bair 2003, p. 388) He resigned from his teaching position at the university, lost most of his friends and colleagues, and barely held on to his sanity. During that period he developed the techniques that were to become standard practice in Jungian psychoanalysis. He actively engaged the unconscious through art work, playing in the sand [this developed into sandplay therapy (Jung 1961, p. 173-175 and http://www.dennismerrittjungiananalyst.com/Sandplay_Therapy.htm)], dialoguing with inner figures (Jung 1961, p. 181-189), and totally abandoning Freud's concepts and practices. Jung took a “don't know” approach to his patient's dreams, exploring with them the contents of their dreams. He discovered the anima and ultimately his greatest discovery, the Self. (p. 196, 197) He described the Self as the center and centering element in the psyche, experienced as the image of God within, and at the cultural level as God, Jesus, Yahweh, Buddha, Wakantanka (Lakota Sioux), etc. The elaborate paintings and coded writings Jung did during that period, that tapered off considerably after the initial 3 years, were finally published in 2009 in the form of The Red Book.

Alchemy and Jungian Ecopsychology
Jung said he spent the rest of his life figuring out what happened to him during those 3-plus years and putting the experience into psychological terms. (Jung 1961, p. 199) After dabbling in the Cabbalah and Gnosticism, he eventually found the historical and cultural equivalent to his personal journey in his 10 year study of alchemy before realizing they were speaking symbolically. (p. 205) Some of the alchemists knew they were not literally trying to turn lead into gold but it was a process of spiritual transformation of the base elements of human nature into the highest spiritual values. Only by going through the darkness in one's life and one's culture--the lead (the “pits”), the rejected elements-- can one become enlightened. Jung said the alchemists were unconsciously projecting the post-Christian unconscious into their vessels and retorts, seeking to redeem and transform the rejected elements of Christianity—the feminine, the body, sexuality, animals and nature. They believed Christ had saved the microcosm, the inner man, but they were working with God as co-creators to save the macrocosm, the world of nature, by re-ensouling nature and discovering the spirit in matter.

Alchemy became Jung's main symbolic system and lens through which he described his “confrontation with the unconscious” and his approach to psychoanalysis. I see alchemy as the base for a Jungian contribution to the new field of ecopsychology, a brand of psychology that studies how our values, attitudes, and perceptions of the environment condition our relationship to it. It also explores ways of connecting people more deeply to the environment and, like deep ecology, advocates a deep analysis of the problems in our relationship with nature. Jungian psychology provides the deepest analysis of Western culture through its exploration of the aspects of our Judeo-Christian myth that led to our dysfunctional relationship to the feminine, our bodies and sexuality, and to animals and the rest of nature. This is described in Jung's Collected Works, volume 11, “Answer to Job,” p. 355-470 and summarized in Merritt 2012a, p. 54-70. Jung associated the Christian era with the age of Pisces and strongly believed a necessary paradigm shift was imminent in the West because of the consequences of our repression of the feminine, the increasing rate of our destruction of the environment, the emptiness of the consumer culture now permeating the world, the rapes of the existing indigenous cultures, overpopulation, the atom bomb, and the massive destructive forces like Fascism, Communism and huge business entities (Jung died in 1961). He coined the terms “New Age” and “Age of Aquarius” to describe this paradigm shift, and many see 1968 (my first full year in graduate school in Berkeley) as the beginning of that age, indeed a revolutionary year in America and other parts of the world. 
 
Sabina Spielrein, Forerunner of the Age of Aquarius
As a Zurich trained Jungian analyst and ecologist (I have a Ph.D. in entomology from Berkeley), I have developed the ecological dimensions of Jung's concepts in my 4 volumes of The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe—Jung, Hermes, and Ecopsychology (that's a picture of my home farm in Wisconsin on the cover of volume 1). Jung believed the most significant element in the dawning of this new age would be the elevation of archetypal feminine energies in Western culture and in the world. I see Sabina Spielrein as the person who, in the early years of the psychoanalytic movement, strongly nudged the Western patriarchal collective psyche in the direction of incorporating the archetypal feminine, and one of those movers who initiated the shift toward the Age of Aquarius. Her concept of the death of the ego and transformation in intimate sexual relationship is straight out of the old goddess cults, where death and rebirth had seasonal associations and erotic dimensions as practiced by the sacred prostitutes. (see Redgrove 1987, Qualls-Corbett 1988, Hillel 1997, and Merritt 2012c, Appendix G: The Sacred Prostitute and the Erotic Feminine and Appendix H: The Black Goddess)

Dennis Merritt, Ph.D., LCSW, is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ecopsychologist in private practice in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dr. Merritt is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and also holds the following degrees: M.A. Humanistic Psychology-Clinical, Sonoma State University, California, Ph.D. Insect Pathology, University of California-Berkeley, M.S. Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, B.S. Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over twenty years of participation in Lakota Sioux ceremonies have strongly influenced his worldview.

Jung and Ecopsychology presents the main premises of Jungian ecopsychology,offers some of Jung’s best ecopsychological quotes, and provides a brief overview of the evolution of our dysfunctional Western relationship with the environment. —ISBN 9781926715421 

Dennis Merritt will be doing a reading from Jung and Ecopsychology: The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe Volume I on March 19 at Boswell Books on 2559 N. Downer Ave. in Milwaukee, just down from the Downer Theater where I led discussions of A Dangerous Method after 7 showings of the film.

References
Bair, D. 2003. Jung: A Biography. Little, Brown and Co.: Boston and New York.
Ellenberger, H. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious—The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. Basic Books: New York.
Hannah, B. 1991. Jung: His Life and Work: A Biographical Memoir. Shambala: Boston.
Hillel, R. 1997. The Redemption of the Feminine Erotic Soul. Nicolas-Hays: York Beach, Maine.
Hillman 2003. A Note for Stanton Marlan. Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice 5 (2): 101-103.
          1990. How Jewish is Archetypal Psychology? (Just a Little Note). Spring 
          Journal: Putnam, CT. p. 121-130.
Jung, C. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. 2nd [CW] H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler and W. McGuire, eds. R.F.C. Hull, trans. Princeton University Press: Princeton , NJ.
CW 2. 1973. Experimental Researches.
CW 11. 1969. Psychology and Religion: West and East.
1961. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Aniela Jaffe, ed. Richard and Claire Winston, trans. Random House: New York.
2009. The Red Book. Sonu Shamdasani, ed. W.W. Norton & Company: NY.
Lothane, Z. 1999. Tender Love and Transference: Unpublished Letters of C. G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 80: 1189-1204.
Merritt, D. L. 2012a. The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe. Volume 1. Jung and Ecopsychology. Fisher King Press: Carmel, CA.
­--2012b (April 2012 publication date). Volume 2. The Cry of Merlin—Jung as the  Prototypical Ecopsychologist.
--2012c (June 2012 publication date) Volume 3. Hermes and the Cows--Hermes, Jungian Ecopsychology, and Complexity Theory.
Qualls-Corbett, N. 1988. The Sacred Prostitute—Eternal Aspect of the Feminine. Inner City Books: Toronto.
Redgrove, P. 1987. The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real. Grove Press: New York.
Ryley, N. 1998. The Forsaken Garden: Four Conversations of the Deep Meaning of Environmental Illness. Quest Books: Wheaton, IL.
Shamdasani, S. 2005. Jung Stripped Bare by his Biographers, Even. Karnac: London and New York.
Stein, M. 2011. Book Review of Carl Gustav Jung: Avant Garde Conservative by Jay Sherry. Spring 86: 281-299.

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 
Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 
and a growing list of alternative titles.