Depth Psychology and Climate Change

Dr Dale Mathers is a Member of the Association of Jungian Analysts, London, UK.

"This is a timely and visionary book, where depth psychology meets deep ecology. The authors explore, explain and expound solutions to the challenge facing our planet. Contributors are analysts who are also artists, poets, philosophers, professors, sailors, scientists, theologians, historians and activists. They illuminate the climate predicament using shamanism, spirituality, synchronicity, science, intuition and imagination. Everything is connected. The outer climate crisis reflects the inner crisis of the human spirit. Sickness of the earth is reflected in the sickness of the soul. Personal health and planetary health are two dimensions of one single reality. If our civilisation seeks success through consumerism and materialism rather than fulfilment through community coherence and social solidarity then human spirit is bound to be neglected. If mainstream society views the natural world as an economic resource then the oceans become the plastic sink, the forests become commercial commodity and animals are concentrated in factory farms. Climate crisis is a crisis of greed. As Eric Fromm said, we need to move from ‘having’ to ‘being’. What is the end goal of life? Either we never ask this question or we never have time to find an answer. Faced with climate catastrophe we may be compelled to slowdown and ask this. This book is a most helpful tool to encourage us to ask such pertinent questions and seek our own answers. As we read we may listen to the small, still, inner voice, which may be a message from our soul and which may also be the message from the universe." — Satish Kumar"Depth Psychology and Climate Change presents us with a choir of diverse voices, thoughtfully assembled to offer heartfelt and insightful perspectives on our psychological responses to climate change. Highlighting the many ways in which depth psychology can inform – and potentially transform – an uncertain future, the contributors above all illuminate the depth and complexity of our relationship with this beautiful, animate earth." — Sharon Blackie, MA, PhD

• List of figures Acknowledgements About the Authors 'There Will Come a Time' Foreword Introduction Part 1: Things as they are 1. An open letter to Greta Thunberg 2. Finding the eye of the storm 3. An anthropology of climate change deniers 4. Taking the Green Agenda out of the Margins: psychological strategies Part 2: Images and imagination 5. Cultural crisis: an image for our time 6. The Golem: an image for our time 7. Imagining Earth Part 3: Symbols of transformation 8. Engaging The Green Man, breaking our spell of enchantment 9. At war with the natural world: nature as Other 10. Our Connection with Animals and the Universe: Psychology, Symbols, Spirituality and the New Physics Part 4: Myths and futures 11. Time, Intuition and Imagination 12. 21st-century unconscious: Altered states, oracles and intelligences 13. Persephone’s Suicide 14. 'The Singing, Ringing tree' Index