Jung's contribution to an ecological psychology

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 Jung's depth psychological approach is a relevant hermeneutic device for understanding and dealing with the psychic roots of the modern world's 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 Jung's psychological research allows us to envision the interpenetration of psyche, nature, and spirit, thus bridging the modern epistemological gap that has developed between them in the Western world. 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. 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 nature-of which spirit is a part-need fear no premature decline.