By Bill Plotkin
New World Library, 2008, $17.95

Bill Plotkin is a psychotherapist, research psychologist, professor of psychology, author, and founder and president of the Animas Valley Institute. Through his work as an ecotherapist, depth psychologist, and wilderness guide, he has created practices and initiatory rites that allow people of Western culture to hear the call of their souls and to craft meaningful lives in alignment with nature.
    Plotkin sees the “Great Work” of our time as the creation of healthier societies, a task that involves doing what seems “impossible” to most people. The problems now manifesting as global climate change may well be the result of centuries of assaults on the natural world by increasingly egocentric, pathological cultures. Plotkin makes a case for his description of our country as “the most culturally degraded in the world” and asserts that the separation from soul and from nature fostered by American culture is destructive of both. He suggests that what we need is not better technology but a global culture change.
    Plotkin has devoted years to developing the means to achieve what might be called an “impossible dream,” and he has created a manual that offers guidance on the path to that dream. The path is challenging, but full of hope that we can “dream the things that never were” and ask “Why not?”