Dark Feet and Dark Wings: Penetrating the Depths of the Earth

The author, although an analyst, is an initiate into the topic of environmental destruction. Following Wendell Berry, she enters the dark and begins a journey of dream-like reflection, weaving images from her own dream and drawing on the work of Vaughan, Bernstein, Soloveitchik and Sacks. She asks, ‘not if but where does climate change enter the room?‘. The second half of the paper focuses on the manifestations of environmental destruction in dreams and sandplay from three patients and one dream group participant. The paper argues that the analyst must see and intuit before our patients can access the objective layer of environmental destruction in dreams and symbolic material. In this way, the climate becomes the wounded patient, and the analyst as wounded healer must first access his/her own relationship to the wounds inside. Finally, using an ancient Jewish mythological story of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the author argues that Jungian analysts must work to find balance between the inner world of depth psychology and the outer world with its challenges and problems that include environmental destruction.