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It is time for us to tell a different story about our relation to other animals—a story that positions us and them as part of a vast network of interconnected beings. As climate change alters and destroys the natural habitat of many species of animals on this planet, forcing new migrations and unprecedented encounters between human and non-human animals, the need for us to exist as respectful co-habitants is increasingly urgent, if they—and we—are to survive. We can no longer afford the myth of human supremacy that has enabled us to use the planet and its other inhabitants as resources for our appetites. That story—the story of our dominion—has enabled humans to treat others without regard to ethics, understanding, compassion, or dignity. That story has fostered a damaging binary between “man” and “nature”, the effects of which have traumatized the psyches and diminished the lives of other animals and, thereby, impoverished the human soul.
Recent advances in “animal science” have confirmed a psychological depth and neurological complexity in non-human animals that starkly challenge assumptions of human superiority and uniqueness. As Jonathan Erickson writes in “Revisioning the Animal Psyche” (2022):
There is an uncomfortable emerging consensus, not just among animal lovers and pet owners, but also among neuroscientists, that animals are feeling, experiencing beings. The Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness , put forth by a consortium of brain scientists, recognizes that non-human animals have consciousness, albeit perhaps a consciousness qualitatively different from our own.
While there is deep resistance to the implications of this research, the evolution of ecopsychology and trans-species psychology signals a growing awareness among western scientists and healers of the dire need for a new paradigm. If
we can begin to loosen our reductive association of animals with “instinct”, practitioners of analytical psychology are also theoretically well-equipped to nurtu