Customer Reviews

Terrapsychology: Reengaging The Soul Of Place

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Terrapsychology is an emerging field that looks at the relationship between psyche and place. It is a natural outgrowth of tranpersonal psychology, ecology, systems theory and to some extent quantum theory.

This field basically looks at the relationship between the psyche and a place. This is not something we are used to thinking about, but did you ever notice how you feel differently or more yourself in certain environments? How being in nature can have an effect on you? How their can be correspondences between internal events and the outside world? This book examines these questions and more from the perspective of depth psychology and deep ecology.

The idea that there is relatioship between psyche and land is not a new one. Jung talked about this and the phenomenon was often explained in terms of our projection of our psyche on to the land. In contrast, indigenous shamanistic cultures tend to believe a place is somehow alive. The theory put forth in this book falls somewhere in the middle, honoring the fact that we are somehow deeply connected to the land and have complex interrelationships and interdependencies with various places that can be interpreted symbolically.

This is NOT new age hype and Dr. Chalquist is a serious scholar who explores this territory from an objective and scholarly viewpoint. If you are completely unfamiliar with this field you can do a web search online for more information. However, you will be fascinated and captivated by this extremely provocative book whether you are psychologist, interested in psychology or just a layperson who find this area interest. It is certainly a must read for anyone interested in native cultures, shaminism and the future welfare of our planet.

Dr. Chalquist is an erudite scholar with a broad and deep knowledge of world history and prehistory, anthropology, indigenous cultures, shamanism and other ancient religions, the Goddess, Jungian and depth psychology, health, neurology, quantum physics, ecology and myth (I'm certain I forgot some field he is an expert in...) as well as a lyrical and passionate writer on the topic of "terrapschology". That is, how the Earth and our human psyche are interrelated, and how we humans need Nature and the Earth in its undeveloped form and all its beings to thrive psychically and physically. I love his work, love his writing, love this book. It is urgent that we humans take the ideas of terrapsychology to heart.
By Lesley Thomas, author of Flight of the Goose

For too long we have forgotten that the human relationship to nature and to place is at the core of our psychology! Craig Chalquist's excellent book reminds us that our planet isn't just "dead" matter but a living being in whom we dwell. He helps us understand Terra's psychology -- and our own psyches as well. Everyone who is interested in the growing fields of ecopsychology and ecotherapy will love this book.

Linda Buzzell-Saltzman, M.A, M.F.T.
Founder
International Association for Ecotherapy
[...]

At heart, this book aims to restore place (Aussies would say "country") as fundamental to our sense of ourselves and our wellbeing, which also means that to look after ourselves we must first look after the land on which we live. The author builds his argument by recounting the views of indigenous peoples (although surprisingly, he neglects to mention Australian aborigines, the world's oldest living land-based cultures) and mashing them up with lashings of dead white men, alchemists, ecologists, Jung, and everyone's favourite post-Jungian image-man, James Hillman.

For academics and others inside the imaginal and archetypal studies tents, its a compelling case, finely wrought. But does it "stick to its image" (as Hillman quoting Lopez-Pedrazza demands)?

Sadly, despite the author's attempts to hedge against it, this book's academic language and weighty descriptions of prescriptive methodologies meant this reader lost the connection between the text as presented and the ideas that inspired it. It's puzzling that the author even prescribes a methodology, given he quotes Jung's warning from Psychology and Alchemy that the unconscious [sic] "reflects the face we turn towards it". One suspects the result may well be a terrapsychological view of place, rather than glimpsing the place's view of itself. I'm reminded of Hillman talking about the need to cross the bridge from day world to night world to understand the dream on its own terms (Dream and the Underworld. 1979) and wonder why, given its Hillmanian lineage, terrapsychology doesn't take a similar line for understanding place. I'll concede he may have done this, but if so, it was obscured by the dry joy-less language in need of humour and a drink (and perhaps some of Joseph Campbell's beloved transparency). Didn't the alchemists recommend keeping the work moist?

To be fair, Chalquist's failure here is the failure of most attempting to write academically about myth and image etc: the material and medium live in different worlds. Despite eshewing reductivity, reduction occurs. Desperate to not be called new agey, they end up just agey. Only poets, artists and the occasional alchemist seem to be able to straddle this trecherous divide.

As white westerners, we don't trust our images, much less stick to them, and country (sorry, place) is perhaps the greatest but least understood of them. So, in spite of its failings, do read this book, but read for the madness, not the method; there is [some] gold buried therein.

Gurdjieff himself is almost passe - a relic of the sixties and before - though doubtless he still has his acolytes, and those who take his teachings seriously enough to want to practice them, as well as his vociferous critics who cannot tolerate the possibility of the breadth of being that his life hints may be possible for a human. Magician or charlatan? There is no need to engage in that dispute whilst reading this book; one can simply be swept up by it instead. It is one of those books that doesn't just tell a story but creates an entire world. In this case it is the pre-industrial Central Asia of the late nineteenth century into which Gurdjieff was auspiciously 'thrown into' by birth; a unique historical confluence region of almost every major civilization that has ever existed, and not coincidently too the original birth-source of all the Indo-European races. Even today this area retains its hint of unfathomable antiquity and the most ancient of ancestral memories; it seems perfectly fitting that if there are hidden secret spiritual teachings to be had they should be located somewhere there in that great expanse between the Caucasus and the Pamirs. And no one would seem more perfectly born to inherit such a lineage than Gurdjieff; just European enough to retain the critical detachment necessary to pass on those Oriental pearls rather than be totally absorbed by them. There is always a mysterious sense of predestination that is present in this autobiography. Without doubt the most 'remarkable' character is the author himself, but we are left with a clear sense of believability that a life like his could have unfolded as it did. In the entire book, and particularly the infamous final chapter, he confronts us at the very least with the notion that true mastery of life extends far beyond the merely spiritual.