Myth Salon: Borderland Consciousness- Climate Change and the Western Psyche with Jerome Bernstein

On Thursday, May 17, the Myth Salon is immensely privileged to host Jerome Bernstein, who is coming to Orange County from Santa Fe, as a special guest speaker for the 43rd Annual Jungian Conference the weekend following his coming to the Myth Salon. He will be sharing with us the essence of a presentation entitled: Borderland Consciousness: Climate Change and the Western Psyche. The Myth Salon is especially indebted to Dr. Christophe LeMouël, Executive Director of the Jung Institute, for facilitating the introduction to Jerome Bernstein. This is a very rare opportunity to be up close with one of the leading thinkers today, who has been characterized as a “powerhouse of wisdom and knowledge.” 

Bernstein tells us, “the Global Warming Crisis results from the Western psyche’s dissociation from nature and the spirit dimension of life. Expelled from the Garden of Eden, Western humanity left behind a form of consciousness that among Native peoples is still deeply evident.” This consciousness is now manifesting on a collective level according to what Jerome Bernstein calls Borderland Consciousness, an evolutionary compensation for Western man’s overspecialized Dominion ego. 

In a review of Jerome Bernstein’s Living in the Borderland: The Evolution of Consciousness (link below), psychotherapist Van Waddy writes, “Bernstein sees the very structure of our western psyche evolving in a way that is allowing our overspecialized ego to connect once again with its natural psychic roots in nature. He sees this happening in what he calls the Borderland personality – an individual with a heightened sensitivity to and apprehension of nonrational, archetypal reality in such a way he or she has a feeling connection with nature and the natural world as a living, breathing organism and can listen to that nonhuman, archetypal, spiritual reality in an I-Thou relationship.”  

Here are four links related to Jerome Bernstein:

Orange County Jungian Conference: http://www.junginoc.org/2018-05-19.htm

Atlanta Review: http://www.jungatlanta.com/articles/fall10-jerome-bernstein.pdf

Speaking of Jung: https://speakingofjung.com/podcast/2018/1/5/episode-30-jerome-bernstein

APA Bernstein book review: http://www.apadivisions.org/division-39/publications/reviews/borderland.aspx