Reviews and Press
JUNGIAN ANALYST POSITS “EVOLUTION OF
CONSCIOUSNESS” IN NEW BOOK, “Living in the
Borderland”: Says Transrational Experiences Are Evidence
of New Consciousness
For Immediate Release: December 1, 2005
publicity@borderlanders.com
Jerome S. Bernstein, a Jungian analyst, has written a new book
(Living in the Borderland / Routledge Press / $34.95 / November,
2005) which claims that just as we are evolving on a biological
level, we are as well evolving psychologically. Chief among the
many signs of this shift, being seen in therapist’s offices with
increasing regularity, is what Bernstein has termed “Borderland
consciousness.” People who are “borderlanders” regularly
experience transrational realities – experiences that do not fit into
a standard cause and effect logical structure, including, most
significantly, a profound sensitively to nature, animals and the
environment.
Read the entire press release
BOOK REVIEW BY SUZANNE WAGNER, Ph.D.
Published in Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture
Spring 2006 Issue
Suzanne Wagner, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst in private practice in
Sausalito, CA and a training analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of San
Francisco. She co-created the feature documentary, Matter of Heart, 1985
and is Director of The Remembering Jung Series: 28 hours of interviews
with people who were close to Jung, forthcoming in DVD format.
This is a groundbreaking book for psychotherapists interested in
the extension of Jung’s original findings on the dynamics of the
ego and the collective unconscious. More broadly, it breaks
ground for all people who are reflecting upon the destructive
nature of the neurotic, one-sided Western ego. Jerome Bernstein
is a man with a unique background of experience, reflection and
action. With more than thirty years of experience as a Jungian
analyst, he has worked directly with Navajo and Hopi medicine
men exploring their healing traditions. He also has worked with
the Navajo tribal council in their attempts to sustain healing rituals
now in danger of being lost.
Read the entire book review
"You have made a considerable
advance in our self-understanding
of our present historical situation,
and given us a new angle of insight."
— Thomas Berry, Author of
The Dream of the Earth
"This is a ground-breaking book ...
for all people who are reflecting
upon the destructive nature of the
neurotic, one-sided Western ego.
Jerome Bernstein is a man with a
unique background of experience,
reflection and action ...
Bernstein has given us a great gift
in the form of this book, to read, to
discuss and to contemplate together
..."
— Suzanne Wagner, Ph.D., a
Jungian analyst in private
practice in Sausalito, CA and a
training analyst at the C.G. Jung
Institute of San Francisco.
"Jerome Bernstein has an
exceptional grasp of the
complexities and enigmas presented
by Environmental Illness and Living
in the Borderland presents a unique
treatment model . He holds profound
respect and empathy for the
spiritual life and soul of his clients
who have experienced disabling
trauma. The book has been written
with intelligence, compassion and
astute observation."
— Erica M. Elliott, M.D., is a
Family Practitioner and
Environmental Medicine
specialist and nationally
recognized lecturer on
Environmental Illness, in
practice in Santa Fe, New
Mexico.
"Living in the Borderland clearly
states the Navajo medicine
practitioners’ perspective of healing
which has been around for
thousand years. Not very many
people clearly cross the line into
understanding Native medicine, but
Mr. Jerome Bernstein has done very
well. Most of the Navajo medicine
men/women don’t agree with the
way the non-Indians write about
native medicine, but Mr. Bernstein
clearly interpreted the Navajo
medicine."
— Johnson Dennison - Navajo
Medicine Man, Round Rock,
Arizona
"Living in the Borderland is an
excellent guide for understanding
how our culture must transcend
narrow psychological categories in
order to become truly whole again."
– from Shift, the magazine of the
Institute of Noetic Sciences
"...[Y]ou have taken your earlier
ideas and woven them into a
complexity that deeply includes
compassion, magic, and the earth."
— Nancy Doughterty, A.C.S.W.,
Jungian Analyst
BOOK REVIEW BY KATHRYN G. WHITE, Ph.D.
Reprinted with permission from Psychoanalytic
Psychologist, Journal of the Division of Psychoanalysis,
American Psychological Association, Fall 2006, pp. 64-65
and 69 with all rights reserved.
Broadly speaking, contemporary Jungian writers fall into three
categories: “classic” writers who amplify symbolic themes with
little to no reference to psychoanalytic theories, “integrators” who
link contemporary Jungian ideas to classic and contemporary
psychoanalytic theories, and those somewhere in the middle.
Jerome Bernstein’s Living in the Borderland appropriately fits
right in this middle territory. He has written a book that will be
interesting to many Jungians, that will feel speculative or “flaky” to
use Bernstein’s word to many psychoanalytic rationalists, and will
stir up some provocative ideas for others. Living in the
Borderland is not a book to introduce contemporary Jungian
thought to psychoanalytic readers, but is readable by non-
Jungians. Although Bernstein does link his thoughts to
psychoanalytic writers such as Joyce McDougall, Robert Stolorow
and Harold Searles, his role is neither translator nor apologist.
Rather, he uses psychoanalytic thinking as he uses the writings
of linguists, historians of medicine and religion, scientific
theorists, brain researchers, and Navaho teachers. Within this
breadth, Bernstein is careful to introduce his many references. In
particular, his description of the Jungian psyche and collective
unconscious is short, sweet and clear..
Read the entire book review
From Renos Papadopoulos, Ph.D.
Professor: Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies,
University of Essex.
Consultant Clinical Psychologist: The Tavistock Clinic.
This original and fascinating book advances innovative thinking and refreshing clinical insights of concern
not only to academics and professionals but to the general public. Jerome Bernstein proposes and
supports his idea of the emergence of a new kind consciousness – Borderland consciousness -- and
argues that it calls for rethinking what we traditionally have called “pathology” and re-framing many of our
approaches to treatment. Rooted in Jungian thought, this book also impressively applies Jungian
concepts to the understanding of environmental illness and trauma.
The author offers new explanations for the meaning of mankind’s split from nature and proposes a new
collaborative clinical model involving western medicine, analytical psychology and Navajo medicine as a
modality for integrating nature as a clinical tool in the treatment and healing of trauma. His clinical
descriptions are as understandable to the layman as they are insightful for the professional. He
succeeds in developing a coherent argument that reflects intellectual astuteness, clinical sensitivity and
compassion.
This remarkable book will be appreciated by specialists as well as the general reader because it helps us
grasp phenomena that are too often erroneously labeled pathological when they in fact represent newly
emergent psychic reality of vital importance in our lives in our world of today.
