Quadrant: The Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation

Our Mother Which Art in Earth: Address by and Extract from a Film Interview with Sir Laurens van der Post. — Interview conducted by Robert Hinshaw and Peter Ammann

When considering the relationship of Jungian thought to the natural world, to its conservation, and to the place of the human species in its great chain of being, no one occupies a more prominent place than Sir Laurens van der Post. Eminent conservationist, author, and explorer, van der Post has made it his life's work to bring together a deep love for the natural world with an equally deep love for the importance of the inner world and the work of individuation. One of C. G. Jung's close friends, van der Post has carried his profound understanding of Jung's work to audiences all over the world through such means as his successful BBC film The Story of C. G. Jung, and his many lectures and presentations. His novels of primeval Africa and its prescientific world have become for our technological culture “guidebooks” back to the true mystery of existence that Jung experienced and so greatly valued during his famous trip to Africa in 1925. …

The Cosmic Organism — Edward C. Whitmont

At the beginning of this century, in the words of Robert Oppenheimer, we “inherited…a notion of the physical world as…a world characterized by number, where everything interesting could be measured and quantified, a deterministic world, a world in which there was no use or room for individuality, in which the object of study was simply there and how you studied it did not affect the object.”

With the advent of subatomic physics, this heritage became obsolete. The new paradigm that emerged from quantum theory accounts for “individuality,” “wholeness,” and “the subtle relations of what is seen and how it is seen”. But this paradigm has yet to inform our commonsense ideas about realities. …

An Activist's Perspective: The Inner Nature of the Environmental Crisis — Richard J. Myers

The water, icy cold to the touch, tumbled down the mountain, flowing over its rock-strewn course, becoming a meandering stream in the valley below where my tent was pitched. Tracking the water from stream to waterfalls to melting snow on the mountain's shoulders, I began to sense the web of the mountain's ecology vibrating around me in the forms of rock, water, tree, and air. However, the Three Sisters Wilderness in the central Oregon Cascades was not the only environment activated for me during that trip. Stuck amidst cooking gear, sleeping bag, and trail maps in my backpack was a copy of a book I'd picked up at the university bookshop a few days earlier. As I read through the book while absorbing the spirit of the mountains over the weekend, my vaguely formed understanding of another journey was confirmed and activated. That copy of C. G. Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections is still on my bookshelf, a bit worn and musty, but the ideas remain as clear and as fresh as a springtime mountain morning. …

Soul and Earth: Traveling with Jung Toward an Archetypal Ecology (Part I) — Daniel C. Noel

In September of 1920, emerging from his much-discussed confrontation with the unconscious, Jung led his first seminar abroad. He traveled to the little Cornish village of Sennen Cove, a mile from Land's End, the final jutting promontory of southwestern England.

There, with twelve colleagues gathered to discuss a book of children's dreams, he continued his early “post-Freudian” efforts at presenting his increasingly distinctive theories to a wider world. In the next two decades he would make many such journeys. Often these were formal occasions, as in Scotland in 1914 and England in 1919. But just as often they were part of a more personal exploration: “psychological expeditions,” as his East African trip of 1925–26 was termed, which fed his vision of individual and cultural consciousness — including, I want to infer, his vision of the relation between psyche and outer nature, soul and earth. …

Education and Ecology: Psychological Reflections — Andrew Samuels

There are many ways in which depth psychologists can contribute to the debate about the future of our environment. For example, one might track the psychological aspects of humanity's relation to nature as it changes over time. Or, perhaps more appealing to Jungians, the ever-present tensions and harmonics between humans and their world can be revealed to have fallen into typical patterns. Whatever angle is taken, the crucial thing is to introduce a psychological voice into the discourse. …

Clinical Authority: Some Thoughts Out of Season — Paul K. Kugler

On what “grounds” do we establish our clinical authority? The question of what “grounds” our understanding of the processes of personality is one of the central questions in all of depth psychology. Evey clinician must implicitly adopt a first principle on which to build his or her understanding of human personality and its characteristic psychopathology. The specific issue I wish to address is how this first principle acquires its authority. …

Jung, Freud, Ferenczi, and Sullivan: Their Relationships and Ideas. A Conference Report — Marga Speicher

The C. G. Jung Foundation of New York hosted a unique conference this past January: one that explored the ideas of some of the pioneers of the psychoanalytic movement, but in terms of their contexts — the historical moments that led to critical decisions in the early days of psychoanalysis. This article reports on that conference. …

Book Reviews

C. G. Jung and the Humanities: Toward a Hermeneutics of Culture — Karin Barnaby and Pellegrino D'Acierno, Editors. Princeton University Press. 1990. Reviewed by Michael Vannoy Adams.

Analytical Psychology: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1925 by C. G. Jung — William McGuire, Editor. Bollingen Series XCIX. Princeton University Press. 1989. Reviewed by Thomas B. Kirsch.

Dreaming With an AIDS Patient — Robert Bosnak. Shambhala Press. 1989. reviewed by Robert H. Hopcke.

The Roots of War: A Jungian Perspective — Anthony Stevens. Paragon House. 1989. Reviewed by Donald E. Kalsched.

Dreams, A Portal to the Source — Edward C. Whitmont and Sylvia Brinton Perera. Routledge. 1989. Reviewed by Harriet Gordon Machtiger.

Reclaiming the Inner Child — Jeremiah Abrams, Editor. Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc. 1990. Reviewed by James Hollis.

Gods in Everyman: A New Psychology of Men's Lives and Loves — Jean Shinoda Bolen. Harper & Row. 1989. Reviewed by Jeffrey Burke Satinover.

Jung, Jungians, and Homosexualtiy — Robert H. Hopcke. Shambhala Press. 1989. Reviewed by George R. Bernato.

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