Since 1980, depth psychologist Bill Plotkin has been guiding women and men into the wilderness—the redrock canyons and snow-crested mountains of the American West—but also into the wilds of the soul. He calls this work soulcraft.There’s a great longing in all people to uncover the secrets and mysteries of our individual lives, to find the unique gift we were born to bring to our communities, and to experience our full membership in the more-than-human world. This journey to soul is...

Addressing the pervasive longing for meaning and fulfillment in this time of crisis, Nature and the Human Soul introduces a visionary ecopsychology of human development that reveals how fully and creatively we can mature when soul and wild nature guide us. Depth psychologist and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin presents a model for a human life span rooted in the cycles and qualities of the natural world, a blueprint for individual development that ultimately yields a strategy for cu...

Soul initiation is an essential spiritual adventure that most of the world has forgotten—or not yet discovered. Here, visionary ecopsychologist Bill Plotkin maps this journey, one that has not been previously illuminated in the contemporary Western world and yet is vital for the future of our species and our planet. Based on the experiences of thousands of people, this book provides phase-by-phase guidance for the descent to soul—the dissolution of current identity; the encounter with the ...

Plotkin encourages us to seek out a soul encounter in order to find our ecological niche and our place in the larger world. He encourages us to do the necessary work to become true “adults,” which has nothing to do with our chronological age. We must do this work in order to give our gifts back to the web of life and become embedded in life-enhancing activities.

Our human psyches possess astonishing resources that wait within us, but we might not even know they exist until we discover how to access them and cultivate their powers, their untapped potentials and depths. Wild Mind identifies these resources—which Bill Plotkin calls the four facets of the Self, or the four dimensions of our innate human wholeness—and also the four sets of fragmented or wounded subpersonalities that form during childhood. Rather than proposing ways to eliminat...