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Jung's Contribution to an Ecological Psychology

Jeremy D. Yunt Journal of Humanistic Psychology 2001 41: 96 DOI: 10.1177/0022167801412007 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jhp.sagepub.com/content/41/2/96

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Jeremy D. Yunt Jungs Contribution to an Ecological Psychology

JUNGS CONTRIBUTION TO AN ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY

JEREMY D. YUNT is a writer and independent scholar whose particular areas of interest are environmental philosophy/ethics, depth psychology, BuddhistChristian dialogue, and the thought of philosophertheologian Paul Tillich. He recently completed an interdisciplinary masters degree in ethics and depth psychology at the Pacific School of Religion (Graduate Theological Union), Berkeley, California, where he wrote a thesis on the significance of Tillichs thought for environmental ethics and deep ecology. During his graduate studies, he worked as a writer and editor for the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, also in Berkeley. Prior to entering graduate school, he worked for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit environmental law firm, and prior to that made contributions to a multi-award-winning book on Californias natural and cultural history, titled Life on the Edge (Heyday, 1994). Currently taking a hiatus from graduate school to pursue his own writing and flamenco guitar studies, he plans to eventually complete a doctorate in clinical psychology.

Summary
This article connects the psychological concepts and philosophical insights of Jung with some of the basic postulates of ecopsychology. The thesis of the article is that Jungs depth psychological approach is a relevant hermeneutic device for understanding and dealing with the psychic roots of the modern worlds ecological problems. Using the concepts of archetypes, the collective unconscious, repression, archaic consciousness, personal and collective shadows, and individuation, the article demonstrates how each has implications for the advancement of an ecopsychological approach to the psyche and our understanding of the world. Perhaps most important, the article exemplifies how Jungs psychological research allows us to envision
AUTHORS NOTE: My thanks to Richard Payne of the Institute of Buddhist Studies (Graduate Theological Union, or GTU), GTU doctoral student Kimberly Whitney, Tom Greening, and all the peer reviewers who offered their constructive criticisms of this article.
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 41 No. 2, Spring 2001 2001 Sage Publications, Inc. 96-121

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Jeremy D. Yunt the interpenetration of psyche, nature, and spirit, thus bridging the modern epistemological gap that has developed between them in the Western world.

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As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanized. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved in nature. . . . His contact with nature is gone, and with it has gone the profound emotional energy that this symbolic connection supplied. Jung (1964, p. 95) The facts of nature cannot in the long run be violated. Penetrating and seeping through everything like water, they will undermine any system that fails to take account of them, and sooner or later they will bring about its downfall. But an authority wise enough in its statesmanship to give sufficient free play to natureof which spirit is a partneed fear no premature decline. Jung (1966a , par. 227)

Even in light of the above quotations, Carl Jung never wrote anything explicitly about the science of ecology and in his lifetime probably never imagined there would one day be a field called ecopsychology. Yet, Jungs psychological insights and philosophical convictions often carried in them a strong foreboding of modernitys swiftly changing relationship to the natural world. For this reason, many of his psychological concepts and much of his writing on humanitys understanding of itself and its world have direct significance for analyzing and dealing with one of modernitys primary problems: balancing human needs and desires with the ecologically discernible needs of the natural world. Perhaps most important is Jungs conception of the fully developed, or individuated, human being, for, as we will see, the process of individuation depends to some degree on our ability to participate actively in the vitality, richness, and depth of the natural world. To set the tone for this article, it will be helpful to let one of Jungs terse and timely insights shed light on the most fundamental reason we are now making the connection between psychology and ecology. Going to the root of the problem, Jung (1976) stated, It is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is mans greatest danger to man (par. 1358). These few words are of great importance for the theories and methods of ecopsychology, for they

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point to the inextricable link between the state of health of the human psyche and its concrete social and environmental impacts on the world. According to Barbara Hannah (1976, pp. 149-152), Jungs friend and biographer, Jung believed that nature was one of four significant archetypal images to suffer repression in the civilized mind; the other three being animals, inferior man, and creative fantasy. When we face the basic origin of our ecological problems todaywe ourselveshow can we deny the significance of this repression? If we appreciated the value and powers of nature, would rampant loss of nonhuman species, worldwide climate change, decimation of ancient ecosystems, or captive breeding programs for the species we have endangered exist? Outside of natural ecological and evolutionary processes, probably not. With this in mind, we must agree with Jungs now seemingly truistic insight: Humans are the greatest threat to themselves and the natural world. Unfortunately, we often attempt to understand personal and collective issues such as ecological problems under the rather naive assumption that purely external, or extrapsychical, causes can be discovered for them. This neglect or repression of our introspective abilities can be seen as one of the main reasons for the birth of modern psychology, for, in our outward search for answers to our problems we are, perhaps temporarily, saved from acknowledging our own personal contributions to them. However, psychology, particularly humanistic psychology, shows us that we need to be called back to ourselves, back to our own culpability in personal, social, and now, ecological relationships (Mindell, 1996). This holds especially true for ecopsychology, as this outgrowth of humanistic psychology does not see ecological problems as being merely out there in the physical environment. Clearly, we cannot fail to recognize the many ecological problems our modern technological society is creating. However, from the perspective of ecopsychology, these problems are rooted most fundamentally in the distorted understandings, repressed contents, conscious denials, and unconscious projections that exist in both the personal and societal dimensions of the human psyche. For this reason, our ecological problems must be addressed in the context of two of lifes most prominent polarities: the personal and collective and the conscious and unconscious. One difficulty in achieving both of these is that as helpful as psychology can be, its theoretical purview and practical applications have, until recently, been severely limited by

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its inherited biases and strict adherence to mechanistic understandings of humanity and its world. Ecopsychology hopes to change these limitations. Let me begin by briefly introducing why use of the concepts of archetypes and the unconscious, both the personal and collective, are so important to Jung for relating the human psyche to the world in which it exists.

ARCHETYPES, THE UNCONSCIOUS, AND MODERN EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS Philosopher Richard Tarnas (1991) has pointed out that in Jungs middle-period writings, he was still under the impact of CartesianKantian assumptions concerning the psyche and its separation from the world. Tarnas (1991) said,
In his later work, however, and particularly in relation to his study of synchronicities, Jung began to move toward a conception of archetypes as autonomous patterns of meaning that appear to structure and inhere in both psyche and matter, thereby in effect dissolving the modern subject-object dichotomy. (p. 425)

Resonating Tarnass point, depth psychologist Lionel Corbett (1996) fleshed out the vital implications in Jungs psychological approach for understanding the spiritual dimension of our ecological problems:
The important point is that to assert the unity of psyche and nature is to repair a split which has bedevilled our culture. Unlike pretechnological societies which viewed the earth as sacred, in our culture an apparent gap has emerged between the spiritual and the material realms. By contrast, Jungs model of the psyche, because of its stress on the numinosum, allows a sacramental understanding of the psyche as coextensive with nature, in which the divine is felt to be immanent by virtue of experiences of the Self. When we experience the numinosum in the wilderness, we are not projecting onto nature something that is actually inside ourselves; we are experiencing the reality of the continuity of the Self across the barrier of the skin. The structure of the self, which includes both our psychology and physiology, is determined by the same archetypal or spiritual dynamics as those which obtain in nature at large. (p. 106)

The nature of this permeable, ecological conception of the self will be discussed later, but for now it is important to point out that

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for many people today, the world is seen as an inert, passive substance that conforms to our reason and expectations but that has no concomitant impact on our mind; in this unidirectional causality, we act on nature, but nature does not act on us. As Tarnas (1991) and Corbett (1996) both elucidate, our modern understanding of the world makes it difficult for many to grasp the relationship between what happens in our psyche and what occurs out there in the material world of nature. In fact, our understanding of the world is still largely grounded in Kantian (limits of subjectivity), Cartesian (mind-nature dualism), and Newtonian (mechanistic) assumptions about the psyche and its relationship to events and objects in the world. The relationship between what the mind conceives and the consequences these conceptions have on shaping the world often go unseen, or, in our age of manufacturing perceptions with the aid of psychological insights, these psyche-nature relationships are misconstrued for reasons of convenience or profit. The corporate worlds appropriation of mass psychology to manufacture the publics perception of its needs and desires to sell a product or to greenwash its threatened ecological image through manipulative and misrepresentative advertising are but two examples of this type of conscious distortion. Chevrons People Care media campaign is one glaring example. Here, a corporate entity that must necessarily damage the environment in its oil exploration and extraction activities tries to paint itself as environmentally friendly out of both fear (for loss of profits) and guilt (for its clearly recognizable ecological transgressions). For instance, in one of its past commercials, Chevron showed an oil pipeline left at the bottom of the ocean as their way of creating habitat for the oceans creatures. In addition to many others, two questions immediately come to mind: (a) Why is this habitat creation even necessary if there was no previous disturbance at the bottom of the ocean requiring this conservation measure in the first place, and (b) if their claims are scientifically correct, then why are we not liberally dropping much of our large industrial waste products, such as oil barrels, scrap metal, and other materials to the bottom of the ocean? The answers to these questions, I believe, are fairly obvious. In the final analysis, ads such as these simply feed the publics desire to feel as if someone in the corporate world is actually making reparations for all the damage we know it does in manufacturing our consumer products. Regardless of the intentions, such ads create an effective mythology for the company that wants to be seen

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as ecofriendly but that knows it will never be. It is a compensatory device par excellence. In addition to their clear dishonesty, such compensations point to a repression of the unconsciouss innate urge to express the SelfJungs term for the supraordinate archetypal reality seeking to bring all opposing tendencies within the personal self into an indissoluble unity and balanced wholeness. For this reason, Jung felt a primary task of psychology was to bring the modern mind back into contact with the archetypal realities that had been repressed or ignored in its overextension of scientific-technical reason. Through this therapeutic process, he felt the self could be reconnected with its world in a relationship of healing and union, in contrast with the predominant Western-style relationship of alienation and domination. Thus, Jung believed that any deliberate work on cultivating a relationship between ones unconscious through which the archetypes make their presence feltand the workings of nature had significant potential for mediating meaning and healing in the psyche. Jungs conceptualizations of the unconscious-nature relationship countered modernitys tendency to see life processes in terms of scientific rationalisms strict one-way causality. For instance, Jung (1966b) stated,
Because the unconscious is not just a reactive mirror-reflection, but an independent, productive activity, its realm of experience is a selfcontained world, having its own reality, of which we can only say that it affects us as we affect itprecisely what we say about our experience of the outer world [italics added]. (par. 292)

Besides here establishing his clear opposition to Freuds understanding of the unconscious as simply a repository for our repressed infantile and sexual psychic contents, Jung supports the ecopsychological truism that the outer worldthat is, nature acts as a prime psychological determinant in a way not completely dissimilar from that of the unconscious. These words also explain why attention and receptivity to the unconscious are so important to Jungs theories of psychological development and healing. The realm of the unconscious is seen as a vast sea of wisdom from which the modern mind has become estranged and with which it needs, once again, to regain contact. Jung (1966a) summarized the significance of this reconnection by stating that

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through the assimilation of unconscious contents, the momentary life of consciousness can once more be brought into harmony with the law of nature from which it all too easily departs, and the [individual] can be led back to the natural law of his own being. (par. 351)

He qualified this point by warning that the modern person

needs to return, not to Nature in the manner of Rousseau, but to his own nature. His task is to find the natural man again. Instead of this, there is nothing he likes better than systems and methods by which he can repress the natural man who is everywhere at cross purposes with him. (Jung, 1969a, par. 868)

According to historian and ecopsychologist Theodore Roszak (1992), Jungs idea of the collective unconscious may prove to be the most important concept in depth psychology for the development of an ecological psychology (pp. 301-302). For contact with this prerational and symbolic dimension of the psyche, it is suggested, helps lead to an experience of ones ecological self, a central ecopsychological concept in which psyche and world are consciously joined through a transformation in psychological perception of both ones self and ones place in the world. That is to say, when we recognize the common symbolic realities arising from the collective unconscious, we begin to see that the boundaries we establish between the I and the Otherthe borders of our personal identityare quite arbitrary. The collective unconscious becomes even more telling of our interrelatedness with others and the natural world when viewed in light of experiences and events unexplainable in either purely psychic or purely physical terms, such as intuitive dreams and synchronistic phenomena. It was through such workings of the collective unconscious that Jung (1970) made the bold pronouncement regarding our interrelatedness: In some way or other we are part of a single all-embracing psyche (par. 175). Depth psychologist Stephen Aizenstat (1995) has widened this potential union of psyche and world from being seen in terms of Jungs collective unconscious to being seen instead in terms of a world unconscious (pp. 95-96). The world unconscious is considered the dimension of psyche that goes beyond the human collective unconscious to embrace the relatedness of the inner subjective natures of all life. Because we assume that only the human species

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has a fully actualized psychic life, this may be a difficult postulate for many to accept. However, we must consider that just as animals and nature manifest in the human psyche as symbolic powers, there exists the distinct possibility that human images appear in the psychic life of other organisms in similar ways. Of course, this would not prove the ontological existence of a world unconscious Jung warned of trying to prove the existence of, and thus reifying, the collective unconscious and other psychological conceptsbut the possibility of a world unconscious does point to the evolutionary and psychological continuity in life as a gestalt. Jungs insistence on placing due value on the unconscious is rooted, among others, in two primary facts: First, almost half of our lives are spent in this nocturnal dimension of the psyche (as opposed to consciousness, the diurnal dimension), thus making our attention to the unconsciouss expressions and images just as crucial to self-understanding as that of consciousness; and second, the unconscious is the home of the instinctsthe conservative, cautious expressions of the psyche that modern consciousness has neglected far too long and, according to Jung, to its own detriment. Although the instincts serve as our innate protection against dangers both internal (personal) and external (sociocultural or ecological), modern consciousness continues to move further from the past and higher and higher into the realm of pure rationality and consciousness, never realizing that the
breakdown of a tradition, necessary as this may be at times, is always a loss and a danger; and it is a danger to the soul because the life of instinctthe most conservative element in manalways expresses itself in traditional usages. Age-old convictions and customs are deeply rooted in the instincts. If they get lost, the conscious mind becomes severed from the instincts and loses its roots, while the instincts, unable to express themselves, fall back into the unconscious and reinforce its energy, causing this in turn to overflow into the existing contents of consciousness. It is then that the rootless condition of consciousness becomes a real danger. This secret vis a tergo results in a hybris of the conscious mind which manifests itself in the form of exaggerated self-esteem or an inferiority complex. (Jung, 1966a, par. 216)

This relation between repression of unconscious contents and imbalanced psychic healthwhich can lead to imbalanced ecological healthwill be covered in detail later. For now, it is necessary to

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further discover why the modern world is making connections between psychology and ecology.

THE MERGING OF PSYCHOLOGY AND ECOLOGY According to Jung (1969a),

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 the nature around 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. (par. 870)

Ever since widespread awareness of the ecological instabilities and environmental devastations wrought by human activity, the modern environmental movement has tried countless legal reforms, passionate admonitions, and relentless moralizing. In all this, it has still largely failed in getting to the roots of our environmental dilemmas. Unable or unwilling to see the human psyche and all its modern epistemological assumptions as the basis of our ecological troubles, sensitive people bemoaned the steadily declining state of the earths life system. What was lacking, however, was an adequate psychological critique of our highly scientific-materialist worldview and technologically based lifestyles. Thus, conventional environmental attempts to change the world through political and social movements caused us to turn to dubious substitutes for facing the real needchanging ourselves (Shepard, 1995, p. 32). However, in recent years, the scientific-materialist worldview has come under closer scrutiny by both the general public and scholars in a wide range of disciplines, including psychology. From within these disciplines issue many critical and constructive responses to the deleterious consequences our modern technological worldview is inflicting on the personal, social, and ecological dimensions of life. For instance, in psychology, there are connections being drawn between neurotic disorders and the synthetic and desacralized environment that the materialist worldview is fast creating. Among other things, these ecopsychological findings are helping us discover more about the basic human need for natural, nurturing living environs.

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Speaking metaphorically, we could say that ecopsychology is taking root in the tainted soil of our increasingly mechanized and technologically mediated society. Like the botanist who studies a plants root structure for signs of disease, the ecopsychologist is probing the depths of the human psyche to better understand how such a supposedly rational creature could allow the beauty and integrity of its own world to become despoiled to the point of threatening its own life support systemthe biosphere, or mythologically speaking, Gaia. And if there is validity to the Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock, 1979), which postulates that one gigantic system composed of all the organisms, atmosphere, seas, and the earths surface interact to control the temperature and chemical composition in the biosphere in a way that makes Earth continually hospitable to life, then humans are surely the greatest foe of this ancient Earth goddessa point often stressed by ecofeminists today. Because it is responding to a new and critical situation, ecopsychology, much like the field of conservation biology, can be seen as a crisis discipline. But why exactly is this new field called ecopsychology? Roszak gives this definition:
Like all forms of psychology, ecopsychology concerns itself with the foundations of human nature and behavior. Unlike other mainstream schools of psychology that limit themselves to the intrapsychic mechanisms or to a narrow social range that may not look beyond the family, ecopsychology proceeds from the assumption that at its deepest level the psyche remains sympathetically bonded to the Earth. (Roszak, 1992, p. 5)

Even prior to this definition, Jungs friend and colleague, the Swiss psychiatrist C. A. Meier (1985), succinctly stated ecopsychologys main postulate: Excessive interference with outer nature creates of necessity disorder of the inner nature, for the two are intimately connected (p. 2). This basic point has been framed in other ways by groups concerned with the psychology of power relations, including, for instance, ecofeminists. From the ecofeminist perspective, the domination of nature is intimately tied to male domination of women through repression of the males feminine side (anima). Even before Meiers (1985) ecopsychological statement, Jung (1959a) himself lamented the modern minds lack of connection to the deeper, instinctual levels of the unconscious brought on by our excessive interference with outer nature:

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The more civilized, the more unconscious and complicated a man is, the less he is able to follow his instincts. His complicated living conditions and the influence of his environment are so strong that they drown out the quiet voice of nature. Opinions, beliefs, theories, and collective tendencies appear in its stead and back up all the aberrations of the conscious mind. (par. 40)

Such an insight led Jung (1966a) to the early perception that wholly intrapsychic understandings of personality development and health lacked a basis for acknowledging the essential grounding of humans in the social and natural world:
Try as we may to concentrate on the most personal of personal problems, our therapy nevertheless stands or falls with the question: What sort of world does our patient come from and to what sort of world has he to adapt himself? The world is a supra-personal fact to which an essentially personalistic psychology can never do justice. (par. 212)

Today, ecopsychology takes this fundamental fact and makes its recommendation: Broaden the application of psychological principles and practices to account for the influence of the phenomenal world (nature) on the psyche and vice versa, thereby expanding psychological understandings and therapeutic treatments beyond the purely intrapsychic and interpersonal realms. Recognizing this need for expansion of the field almost two decades ago, neo-Jungian James Hillman (1981) challenged the psychological world to bring asbestos and food additives, acid rain and tampons, insecticides and pharmaceuticals, car exhausts and [artificial] sweeteners, televisions and ions into the purview of therapeutic analysis (p. 111). Such a suggestion may seem humorous at first, but the seriousness of calling these into the fold of therapy is quite unhumorous, insofar as we assert the continuity of mind (psyche), body, and earth; as all of the items Hillman specifies exert a profound impact on one or all of these three primary dimensions of life. From our perspective today, it may seem startling to many people that modern psychology could have ignored or downplayed the profound formative influences the natural world has on us. However, until somewhat recently, psychology saw human interactions as taking place in a vacuum, with nature acting only as a lifeless backdrop to our unfolding relationships. These wholly intrapsychic and interpersonal understandings failed to take into account not only our daily interactions with nature but also the diverse famil-

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ial, religious, and cultural influences that help to shape our predispositions toward the natural world. Modern psychology tried to shut out the fact that our lives are formed and affected by the cycles and powers of nature, as much as we may try to pretend they are not. In short, psychology ignored the fact that humans are animals intelligent, clever, highly emotional, and creativebut, nonetheless, beings living in, and dependent on, natural processes.

ARCHAIC AND MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS IN RELATION TO NATURE AND SOCIETY Jung was clear in his conviction that all humans, even the most civilized, are still influenced by archaic, or primitive, impulses. One characteristic of this prerational part of the psyche is an unconscious identity with nature, or participation mystique. Jung regularly borrowed this phrase of Lucien Lvy-Bruhl to describe preindustrial, or primitive, peoples unconscious psychic projections onto the natural world. These projections forged an identity between the inner (psyche) and outer (nature) worlds, thereby diminishing the actual and valuational dichotomy between the human and nonhuman realms. One example of this phenomenon is the various animal spirits experienced and named by cultures living close to the land. It might be a temptation to idealize this unconscious identity with the natural world as a paragon of ecological consciousness. However, the plurality of past cultures and their varied ways of relating to the natural world should keep us from seeking some once-existent form of ecological consciousness with which we can overcome our modern tendencies of domination and destruction. We should bear in mind that many so-called primitive cultures, which today in popular culture are often portrayed as entirely environmentally benign, engaged in their own destructive practices in nature. Their practices may not have been on the same scale as that made possible by our modern technologies, but they were nonetheless characterized by an unnecessary infliction of harm and imbalance onto the natural world and its nonhuman creatures. Evolution toward our highly differentiated modern consciousness seemingly has moved us away from an unconscious identity with the world, but it was Jungs belief that such identity remains latent in even the modern consciousness. Jung tried to show that

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our gaining knowledge of, and contact with, this realm of the psyche holds the potential for a significant increase in the evolution of human consciousness. In fact, he saw many problems issuing from the modern minds neglect or repression of this archaic level of consciousness. Therefore, he made a strong correlation between our dissociative split from this aspect of the unconscious and loss of psychic health. Jung (1970) clarified the inherent danger in this dissociation in the context of the evolution of consciousness:
[Dissociation] was a liberation of consciousness from the burden of irrationality and instinctive impulsiveness at the expense of the totality of the individual. Man became split into a conscious and an unconscious personality. The conscious personality could be domesticated, because it was separated from the natural and primitive man. Thus we became highly disciplined, organized, and rational on one side, but the other side remained a suppressed primitive, cut off from education and civilization. This explains our many relapses into the most appalling barbarity, and it also explains the really terrible fact that, the higher we climb the mountain of scientific and technical achievement, the more dangerous and diabolical becomes the misuse of our inventions. Think of the great triumph of the human mind, the power to fly: we have accomplished the age-old dream of humanity! And think of the bombing raids of modern warfare! Is it not a rather convincing demonstration of the fact that, when our mind went up to conquer the skies, our other man, that suppressed barbarous individual, went down to hell? (pars. 1008-1009)

With these words, we better understand Jungs strong feelings about the dangers of repressing this inferior, prerational dimension of the psyche. He continues this line of thought by stating of the modern collective personthe conformistthat
in so far as he is normally adapted to his environment, it is true that the greatest infamy on the part of his group will not disturb him, so long as the majority of his fellows steadfastly believe in the exalted morality of their social organization. (Jung, 1971, p. 101)

In the modern Western world, such conformist tendencies are paradoxically commingled with a strong sense of individualism. However, with an understanding of individuality that is not in some sense also relational, shallowness, superficiality, and debilitating loss of meaning and moral concern are almost sure to follow. The resulting existential vacuum (Frankl, 1970)a general sense

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of meaninglessness or spiritual emptinessexemplifies the fact that our relationships with others and the world are being stultified by an overvaluation of social detachment and scientific calculation. A driving force behind this growing existential dilemma is the controlling reason characteristic of our scientific materialist worldview. Although technical reasoning is clearly useful, it is a form of reason that needs to be balanced by its opposite pole, participatory reason (Tillich, 1963, 1988). In the latter form of reason, conscious participation in relations with others and the world predominates over detachment and calculationprimary characteristics of technical reasoning. By stressing the inextricable and potentially empathetic link between psyche and nature, ecopsychology makes development of this participatory reason a primary goal. The efficiency of technical reason, which predominantly focuses on humans and nature as means toward some predetermined end, can hinder the possibility of social or ecological concerns and even lead to aggressiveness. At a personal level, Jung refers to this one-sidedness as the fragments (or complexes) of ones psyche overtaking the personality. In the case of our ecological problems, one way this manifests is in our personal and collective dissociation from the painful knowledge we have of the damage we inflict on ourselves, others, and the earth. In fact, our hypertechnical culture could not exist without such dissociation being built into its very economic, political, social, and educational structures. As stated earlier, in contrast with our highly differentiated modern consciousness is what Jung called archaic consciousness. In this state of consciousness, or relative unconsciousness, as it were, everything in existenceincluding the natural worldhas a psychic endowment. Conversely, to establish dominance over nature, our differentiated consciousness seeks to eliminate any connection between the assumed objective and subjective realms by consciously withdrawing (rationalizing), or unconsciously repressing, its projections. With projections seemingly mastered, we begin to reach a state of inflation or, in theological terms, hubris. Jung (1966a) claimed that
with the integration of projections . . . the personality becomes so vastly enlarged that the normal ego-personality is almost extinguished. In other words, if the individual identifies himself with the contents awaiting integration, a positive or negative inflation results. Positive inflation comes very near to a more or less conscious megalomania. (par. 472)

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With our ever-increasing scientific knowledge and ability to harness and transform the natural world, it is not difficult to see that Western, technological consciousness has reached a state of inflation: In this we can already see the modern man who has got to the stage of building his world on a single function and is not a little proud of his achievement, said Jung (1966a, par. 491). His clear reference here to the thinking function, that crowning hallmark of civilized consciousness, shows how the regnant materialism of our day has tried to eliminate any spirit from our experience of the world. Spirit, a complex and often misunderstood term, is used here as the philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich (1963, Vol. 3, Pt. 4) used itas the dimension of finite human life that, in being driven into transcendence of itself, experiences the undisrupted unity and source of its power, meaning, and creativity. Referring to the transcendent power uniting opposites, Tillich saw the creative spirit in humanity as bringing together power and meaning, while Jung, broadly speaking, saw spirit as the unifier of consciousness and the unconscious (Dourley, 1981, p. 79). Modern consciousness has diminished this creative and transformative human power by psychologizing away the archetypal projections previously used to saturate the world with a living, and therefore meaningful, vitality. From Jungs perspective, as consciousness reaches higher levels of differentiation and asserts its rational self-sufficiency and self-certainty, the unconscious falls farther behind and is forced to compensate for its neglect. In an effort to strike a psychic balance, the unconscious must then make an extra effort to express its repressed contents. It does this through dreams, psychic disturbances, and/or projections, which, due to their unconscious origins, are usually not recognized or understood. From the perspective of a depth-oriented ecopsychology, the individual and collective psychic projections manifested in the world as ecological problems can only be rectified through a conscious attempt to assimilate and, therefore, depotentiate the effects of these projections. However, as we all know from our own interpersonal relations, it is much easier to unload (project) our unwanted baggage (shadows) onto those around us than to carry the weight ourselves. We find it difficult, and understandably so, to claim responsibility for our own internal darkness and insecurities. Thus, in line with Jungs theory of projection, it is my contention that if the psychological roots of our ecological problems are not

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addressed in the context of these unconscious projections, we can never hope for a more humane relationship with the natural world.

SCIENCE, SHADOWS, AND THE WILD UNCONSCIOUS Reminding us that human development is based on a process of balancing the various functions of the human psyche, Jung (1969b) emphasized that
one should never forget that science is simply a matter of intellect, and that the intellect is only one among several fundamental psychic functions and therefore does not suffice to give a complete picture of the world. For this another functionfeelingis needed too. Feeling often arrives at convictions that are different from those of the intellect, and we cannot always prove that the convictions of feeling are necessarily inferior. (par. 600)

For all the clear benefits spawned by modern science, we can still see the importance of Jungs words in relation to the disastrous ecological effects arising out of modern sciences applied technologies. On an intellectual level, we have quickly developed and mastered the theories and methods of science. However, each of these intellectual and technical advancements has been achieved largely in isolation from the other main psychic functions that Jung felt were necessary for their prudent application: intuition, sensation, and feeling. In fact, when we consider the physical, psychoemotional (not an anthropomorphism in the case of animals, as some might assert), and chemical damage we knowingly inflict on nature and ourselves, it seems that no matter how much our lives are filled externally with technological novelty, we often remain deep down inside just as primitive as the so-called primitives. Jungs point, therefore, was to show that a truly healthy evolution of consciousness can come only when our psyches are directed by all of our available functions, not just one. Through thousands of analytic sessions with his patients, he became convinced that when one consciously understands, accepts, and integrates all aspects of ones selfincluding projections, denials, and shadows an evolution of consciousness and new vision of reality can take place that is grounded in a radical honesty. From the viewpoint of ecopsychology, such an insight is of the utmost importance, for only

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in honesty can we consciously recognize and become accountable for the rampant and unnecessary pains we inflict on nonhuman life forms. It is important to note, however, that such a process need not lead to inescapable guilt. In fact, guilt is a quite natural state through which one must pass on the way toward a more compassionate consciousness; it is a necessary response issuing from our innate psychological and moral constitution. However, under the conditions of self-acceptance and self-actualization, this guilt can be transformed into a true concern for ones psychological growth and ethical maturity. Part of achieving this psychological maturity is in seeing that our instincts, archetypally induced affects, and deep-seated archaic imagesthose elements we repress with an overemphasized rationality but that continue to make their presence feltpoint to the fact that the human is a somewhat wild creature. Jungs insistence on our need to reconnect to this unconscious wildness lends psychological credence to Thoreaus famous maxim: In wildness is the preservation of the world. For Jung (1969b), the loss of contact with this wildness is of significance: In the course of the millennia, we have succeeded not only in conquering the wild nature all around us, but in subduing our own wildness (par. 87). In fact, widespread alienation from this inner wildness, in addition to the concomitant alienation from our bodies, is a fundamental cause of the fear many civilized people have of nature or outer wildness. I believe we need no more examples of the type of world such an alienated relationship creates to substantiate our need for contact with this wildness; our increasingly homogenized, synthetic, and fast-growing theme parklike suburbs and strip malls are striking enough. The now deeply enculturated and firmly enforced Western dichotomy between the wild and tame helps lay the foundation for a number of alienating and mechanistic worldviews that keep one from having access to the latent healing forces of the unconscious. And because it is out of the unconscious that symbols arise to bring about wholeness and meaning, modern consciousness is increasingly left without symbolic power in the natural world to either threaten or inspire a sense of awe. From this loss of symbolic meaning, modernitys relationship with nature has become one characterized by dangerous projection. The chaos and imbalance within our own alienated psyches are thrown at the world like a rock at an enemy; and as we increasingly treat the world as our enemy, so it

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becomes our enemy. Like the repression of our shadows, which simply come back as inferior, archaic impulses to haunt our psychic health, so, too, our strictly rational, conscious projections are thrown into the world and come back in the form of ecological imbalances. In a reproving strike at the unbalanced and unchecked powers of human rationality and its dangerous technological projections, Jung (1970) stated that
everything possible has been done for the outside world: science has been refined to an almost unimaginable extent, technical achievement has reached an almost uncanny degree of perfection. But what of man, who is expected to administer all these blessings in a reasonable way? He has simply been taken for granted. (par. 442)

Far from advocating the misanthropism that some critics level at those concerned about developing right relations with nature, Jung and ecopsychologists recognize this need for continual self and societal criticism and make no excuses for challenging us to engage in it. For, as Jung (1966a) wisely reminded those of us acutely aware of our own internal darkness,
Recognition of the shadow is reason enough for humility, for genuine fear of the abysmal depths in man. This caution is most expedient, since the man without a shadow thinks himself harmless precisely because he is ignorant of his shadow. The man who recognizes his shadow knows very well that he is not harmless, for it brings the archaic psyche, the whole world of the archetypes, into direct contact with the conscious mind and saturates it with archaic influences. (par. 452)

Recognition and assimilation of ones personal shadows were of supreme importance for Jungs theory of personality development. However, Jung took this concept even further by warning of the collective shadow. Speaking of this collective darkness in relation to our modern notion of progress, Jung (1959b) stated that the
tempo of the development of consciousness through science and technology was too rapid and left the unconscious, which could no longer keep up with it, far behind, thereby forcing it into a defensive position which expresses itself in a universal will to destruction. (par. 617)

Unfortunately, what one finds in the predominant Western worldview what I have referred to generally as scientific materialismis a

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neglect of this dark shadow side of humanity. With its myth of the possibility for endless, linear progress, this worldview rejects, or largely downplays, the shadow side of humanity and instead promulgates an (unwarranted and utopian) optimism about our abilities to better the world and ourselves. Certainly, we should work toward personal and societal improvement, but in some worldviews, a rigid conformism to established norms is often required to achieve such advancement. The result can be an overly civilized and desensitized approach to life. In the scientific worldview, we see this exemplified by modern societys fascination with, acceptance of, and quick dependence on, novel technological devices. In the dualistic religious worldview, it is seen in desperate attempts of people to purify themselves of anything considered sinful or eviloften meaning nature and any wild, unconscious force that cannot be consciously acknowledged or integrated because of social taboos or fear imposed through religious dogma. For us today, we certainly cannot expect, nor desire, a return to archaic consciousness to resolve our dangerous and improvident relationship with nature, self, and others. However, with Jung, we can believe that access to healing symbols will arise when we begin to acknowledge and relate with the personal and collective shadows arising from the unconscious. This work will then lend balance to our developmental process and reunite the tensions and warring opposites that block our path to both personal psychological health and collective ecological health. In Jungs terminology, this process of self-discovery will lead us toward individuation. The following section will examine this process of individuation as it relates to ecopsychology.

ONE-SIDED MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE URGE TOWARD WHOLENESS (INDIVIDUATION) Jung (1966a) stated,
The unconscious is the spirit of chthonic nature and contains the archetypal images of the Sapientia Dei (Wisdom of God). But the intellect of modern civilized man has strayed too far in the world of consciousness, so that it received a violent shock when it suddenly beheld the face of its mother, the earth. (par. 480)

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By now, it should be clear that Jung believed certain dangers inhere in any theory or endeavor too narrow in its concern or application. Modern ecological problems wrought by a one-sided emphasis on rationality uphold Jungs concern about this issue, as he states in the previous quotation. Therefore, it was Jungs (1961) belief that modern humanitys rationality is won at the expense of [its] vitality (p. 245) and that we suffer from a dangerous atrophy of instinct. The temptation for some, however, is to subscribe to the rather simplistic notion that if we simply acknowledge our archaic, instinctual nature and our ecological dependency, we will somehow transform our abusive and controlling relationship to the natural world. Although this romantic perspective is indeed a vital motivator for many, it fails to acknowledge and appreciate the fact that human consciousness is in many ways a propitious characteristic of our species and, therefore, of nature herself. Without attaching any value judgment to the uniqueness of human consciousness, it is important to find a way of holding these elementsa highly differentiated consciousness and an archaic, instinctual onein a unified balance.Jung (1963) called this process the complexio opposi- torum, the union or reconciliation of opposites, and saw its potential actualization as a chance for a significant evolution in human consciousness. Speaking of the natural urge toward wholeness in the evolution of consciousness, Jung (1966a) said that
one is hardly conscious of the extent to which nature acts not only as a driving force but as a helperin other words, how much instinct insists that the higher level of consciousness be attained. This urge to a higher and more comprehensive consciousness fosters civilization and culture, but must fall short of the goal unless man voluntarily places himself in its service. (par. 471)

When Jung calls this drive toward wholeness an ethical duty, he highlights ecopsychologys own belief that individuation is approached only to the degree that one extends the concept of psychological wholeness to embrace the health and wholeness of ones natural and social environment. In Jungian terms, through the ongoing process of individuation, the ego is relativized and placed in the service of the Self, widening the personal selfs scope of concern so that ones concerns and well-being are seen as dependent on, and reflected in, the quality of ones relationship with the world at large. Although this process can sink into a form of ecological

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anthropocentrism and/or speciesismwed better curb our consumption of fossil fuels, or the carbon we release into the air will make the atmosphere unbreathablethe hope is that a widened sense of self will cause ones concerns to reach beyond ones personal self and species to embrace that of life itself. As stated earlier, this act manifests the ecological self, through which one sees destruction of the natural world as destruction of ones own personal identity and spirit. Reverence for all life (Schweitzer) is the furthest extension of embodying such selfhood, and this carries radical implications for our reconceptualization of what it means to be whole. Jung (1966a) clarified this when he defined the self as
both ego and non-ego, subjective and objective, individual and collective. It is the uniting symbol which epitomizes the total union of opposites. . . . Hence, properly understood, the self is not a doctrine or theory but an image born of natures own workings, a natural symbol far removed from all conscious intention. (par. 474)

From the last words of his statement, it might seem as though one had no control over actualizing ones self, let alone expanding to this deeper, ecological self. However, Jung (1966b) balanced this by highlighting the deeply collective, that is, ethical, implications inherent in the process of individuation:
The more we become conscious of ourselves through self-knowledge, and act accordingly, the more the layer of the personal unconscious that is superimposed on the collective unconscious will be diminished. In this way there arises a consciousness which is no longer imprisoned in the petty, oversensitive, personal world of the ego, but participates freely in the wider world of objective interests. This widened consciousness is no longer that touchy, egotistical bundle of personal wishes, fears, hopes, and ambitions which always has to be compensated or corrected by unconscious counter-tendencies; instead, it is a function of relation to the world of objects, bringing the individual into absolute, binding, and indissoluble communion with the world at large. The complications arising at this stage are no longer egoistic wish-conflicts, but difficulties that concern others as much as oneself. At this stage it is fundamentally a question of collective problems, which have activated the collective unconscious because they require collective rather than personal compensation. (par. 275)

What Jung makes clear is that as we turn more of our attention toward more of our self, we at the same time extend our concerns beyond the merely personal and begin to embrace the concerns of

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the world as a whole. Transpersonal psychology, another outgrowth of humanistic psychology, describes this act in terms of ego transcendence, through which one gains contact with the numinous dimension of life.

CONCLUSION Although written in 1928, prior to mass consciousness of the global ecological problems we now face, Jungs previous quotation brings forth an inescapable truth of our modern world: the need to overcome our separateness and alienation from the material world in which we exist. In religious terms, this is to open ourselves to the worlds own revealing (revelation) of its latent unity; to discover the at-one-ment of the world that transcends, yet inheres in, our own individual interests and concerns. Clearly, this necessitates a reevaluation of our priorities and an expansion of our worldviews, including an appreciation of the various religious traditions that have given expression to the divine depth of the world. It also requires rediscovering and cultivating the inner reaches of our psyche and the outer realms of nature, while avoiding falling into dualistic hairsplitting that causes philosophical noncommitment due to the unknown ontological veracity of a psyche-nature relationship. As Jung would propose in such cases of philosophical or scientific uncertainty, we must place the psychological facts before the supposed physical facts. In other words, we can incessantly discuss the nature, or possible nonexistence, of the psyches relationship to the world while the world crumbles down before our very eyes. For Jung, it was a simple truism that the psyche serves as both a subjective instrument for perceiving the world and as an expressive part of the worlds own depth, or soul. The ability to comprehend and give full expression to both of these essential and meaningful aspects of the human condition is a fundamental goal of life. Tarnas (1991) elucidated this process by following the theoretical lines of both Jung and Kant, of whom Jung was quite found:
In this view, the essential reality of nature is not separate, selfcontained, and complete in itself, so that the human mind can examine objectively and register it from without. Rather, natures unfolding truth emerges only with the active participation of the human mind. Natures reality is not merely phenomenal, nor is it

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independent and objective; rather, it is something that comes into being through the very act of cognition. Nature becomes intelligible to itself through the human mind. And it is only when the human mind actively brings forth from within itself the full powers of a disciplined imagination and saturates its empirical observation with archetypal insight that the deeper reality of the world emerges. A developed inner life is therefore indispensable for cognition. . . . The human imagination is itself part of the worlds intrinsic truth; without it the world is in some sense incomplete. (p. 434)

Tarnas (1991) rightly stressed the importance of developing a sense of inner psychic wholeness through the utilization of ones imaginal, creative, and intellectual capabilities. Describing one particular instance of his own cognitive kinship with nature, Jung (1959b) resonated Tarnass sentiments:
I believe that, after thousands and millions of years, someone had to realize that this wonderful world of mountains and oceans, suns and moons, galaxies and nebulae, plants and animals, exists. From a low hill in the Athi plains of East Africa I once watched the vast herds of wild animals grazing in soundless stillness, as they had done from time immemorial, touched only by the breath of a primeval world. I felt then as if I were the first man, the first creature, to know that all this is. The entire world round me was still in its primeval state; it did not know that it was. And then, in that one moment in which I came to know, the world sprang into being; without that moment it would never have been. All Nature seeks this goal and finds it fulfilled in man, but only in the most highly developed and most fully conscious man. Every advance, even the smallest, along this path of conscious realization adds that much to the world. (par. 177)

Jung does not mean here that the world would not exist without human consciousness of it but, rather, that natures full capacity for experiencing and expressing itself arises most acutely through human consciousness. We can, of course, choose to interpret this arrogantly as humanitys superiority over other life forms. Alternatively, we can see this as the gift of consciousness, inspiring responsibility and gratitude in us for our ability to appreciate and benefit from all the wonderfully diverse life forms made intelligible and emotionally affective to us. Throughout his life, Jung criticized the one-sided scientificmaterialist approach to life. He also continually warned of the physical, psychological, and spiritual dangers arising from such

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one-sided worldviews. Most important, however, he helped clarify that for us to approach any psychological, spiritual, and, I would now argue, ecological healing, we must transcend the desire for a romantic return to archaic consciousnesswhich is impossible anywayas well as the pernicious anthropocentrism that places human rationality and all its increasingly nonvital desires over and above the vital needs of nature. In this way, Jung charted a path for human development consonant with the insights and principles of ecopsychology. In the end, we can only concur with his crucial and timely observation that
everything now depends on man: immense power of destruction is given into his hand, and the question is whether he can resist the will to use it, and can temper his will with the spirit of love and wisdom. He can no longer wriggle out of it on the plea of his littleness and nothingness, for the dark God has slipped the atom bomb and chemical weapons into his hands and given him the power to empty out the apocalyptic vials of wrath on his fellow creatures. Since he has been granted an almost godlike power, he can no longer remain blind and unconscious. (Jung, 1969a, pars. 745, 747)

I believe what Jungs thought shows, perhaps only implicitly, is the possibility of developing a nondualistic worldview that sublimates the inextricable interconnectedness of our psyches, bodies, and nature; that is, a worldview characterized by ecocentricity, rather than egocentricity. Helping people recognize, develop, and live out of this worldview is, in fact, the therapeutic goal of ecopsychology. In the end, it requires nothing less than placing ones self gracefully and gratefully within the cosmos.
Can we not understand that all the outward tinkerings and improvements do not touch mans inner nature, and that everything ultimately depends upon whether the man who wields the science and the technics is capable of responsibility or not? Christianity has shown us the way, but, as the facts bear witness, it has not penetrated deeply enough below the surface. (Jung, 1959b, par. 455)

REFERENCES
Aizenstat, S. (1995). Jungian psychology and the world unconscious. In T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes, & A. D. Kanner (Eds.), Ecopsychology: Restoring

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the earth, healing the mind (pp. 92-100). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Corbett, L. (1996). The religious function of the psyche. London: Routledge. Dourley, J. P. (1981). The psyche as sacrament: A comparative study of C. G. Jung and Paul Tillich. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books. Frankl, V. (1970). The will to meaning: Foundations and applications of logotherapy. New York: Penguin. Hannah, B. (1976). Jung: His life and work. New York: G. P. Putnam. Hillman, J. (1981). The thought of the heart and the soul of the world. Dallas, TX: Spring. Jung, C. G. (1959a). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self. In RFC Hull (Trans.) Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 9, Pt. 2). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1959b). The archetypes and the collective unconscious. In RFC Hull (Trans.), Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 9, Pt. 1). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1961). Memories, dreams, reflections. New York: Random House. Jung, C. G. (1963). Psychology and Religion: West and East. In RFC Hull (Trans.), Collected Works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 11). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and his symbols. New York: Random House. Jung, C. G. (1966a). The practice of psychotherapy. In RFC Hull (Trans.), Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 16). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1966b). Two essays on analytical psychology. In RFC Hull (Trans.), Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 7). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1969a). Psychology and religion: West and East. In RFC Hull (Trans.), Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 11). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1969b). The structure and dynamics of the psyche. In RFC Hull (Trans.), Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1970). Civilization in transition, collected works. In RFC Hull (trans), Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 10). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1971). The portable Jung (J. Campbell, Ed.). New York: Penguin. Jung, C. G. (1976). The symbolic life. In RFC Hull (Trans.), Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 18). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lovelock, J. E. (1979). Gaia: A new look at life on Earth. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Meier, C. A. (1985). Wilderness and the search for the soul of modern man. In A testament to the wilderness: Ten essays on an address by C. A. Meier. Zurich: Daimon Verlag; Santa Monica, CA: Lapis; and the individual authors.

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Mindell, A. (1996). Discovering the world in the individual: The world channel in psychotherapy. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 36(3), 67-84. Roszak, T. (1992). The voice of the earth. New York: Simon & Schuster. Shepard, P. (1995). Nature and madness. In T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes, & A. D. Kanner (Eds.), Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind (pp. 21-40). San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books. Tarnas, R. (1991). The passion of the Western mind. New York: Ballantine. Tillich, P. (1963). Systematic theology (Vol. 3). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tillich, P. (1988). The spiritual situation in our technical society. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
Reprint requests: Jeremy D. Yunt, 1218 Castillo St. #2, Santa Barbara, CA 93101; e-mail: jeremyyunt@earthlink.net.

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