From Insect Pathologist to Jungian Analyst—From 1968 to Donald Trump: Lessons Learned from Berkeley in the Late 60s—with Dennis Merritt

After being 1-A for the Viet Nam War draft, I arrived in Berkeley in the fall of 1967 to begin working on a PhD in insect pathology and microbial control of insect pests. I soon realized I was in the perfect place to experience a revolutionary period on the planet. Jung was “in the air,” and within nine months of reading him I applied to train at the Jung Institute in Zürich in 1974. I had been transformed by my Berkeley experience, and the lessons learned guide me to this day. Big Dreams

established the foundation and inspirational base for integrating Jungian psychology, science, Native American spirituality, and Winnicott in my four volumes of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe— Jung, Hermes, and Ecopsychology. Since 2007 I have been focusing on our dysfunctional relationship with the environment and climate change, emphasizing Jung’s concept of a necessary paradigm-shift that in 1940 he labeled a “new age” and “age of Aquarius.” My recent blog posts on George Floyd and the pandemic compliment earlier articles I’ve written on “Guns and the American Psyche” and Hunger Games from a Jungian political and environmental perspective. I posit Trump as an archetypal Trickster figure with his evil genius ability to expose and amplify many aspects of the American shadow. <JungianEcopsychology.com>

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