#36: Transpersonal Ecopsychology and A New Earth with Bethany Butzer

Bethany Butzer is a Lecturer for the Alef Trust MSc programme in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology and the Assistant Director of the Alef Trust PhD programme in Applied Transpersonal Psychology. She has an MA in clinical psychology and PhD in social psychology, spent two years as a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School, and was a Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of New York, in Prague, where she lives.  Her research includes yoga and mindfulness for youth, transpersonal psychology, synchronicity, parapsychology, and the subject of today’s talk, ecopsychology. Our conversation gravitates around Bethany’s paradigm-challenging paper, Humans as Midwives for the Earth’s Dark Night of the Soul, a Transpersonal Ecopsychology Perspective. The premise that global crises and destruction could be part of the Earth’s evolution toward harmony is provocative, and leads us to cover topics from animism, cosmic and planetary consciousness, the underlying symbolic and imaginal world, ecstatic re-enchantment with nature, the masculine-feminine re-balance, and much more. Resources and References: Bethany’s website: ⁠https://www.bethanybutzer.com⁠ Bethany’s Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/bethanybutzer/⁠