Mind and Earth

In 1927/1931 Jung wrote “Mind and Earth,” where he suggested the earth has an unconscious effect on the mind. Earth seems to mold or influence mind in subtle ways, shaping our behavior and thoughts without us realizing it. Different places impact the mind in different ways, and Jung’s essay was written after his journey to North America, where he felt the land had had a strong effect on its European immigrants, even “indigenizing” them in an uncanny way. This was an intuition rather than a scientifically testable hypothesis. In the present essay, I try to “dream onward” Jung’s intuition and grasp what it might mean for us today. Despite what critics say, Jung was not advocating a regression to premodern animism, but he seemed to be pointing to a postmodern or post-rational awareness of psyche in the world. How do we imagine the relationship between psyche and earth? Jung psychologized the Neoplatonic idea of the anima mundi or world soul, which Hillman was to take up later in his writings. Jungians may have been reluctant to explore the relation between mind and earth, in part because of the disquieting controversy over Jung’s early anti-Semitism and the Nazi motto blut und boden, or blood and soil. Despite these associations, however, the ecological crisis, among other things, forces us to reopen the discussion about mind and earth.