Craig Chalquist, PhD is a core faculty member in the School of Holistic Studies at John F. Kennedy University. He has worked as a family therapist, conflict resolution facilitator, lecturer, and group facilitator. He earned his PhD at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where he studied depth psychology with an ecological approach. A thesis adviser, dissertation coordinator, and research director, he has taught depth psychology, ecopsychology, family therapy, couples therapy, brief therapy, theories of therapy, theories of personality, social science research, history of psychology, Jung, William James, dream analysis, transpersonal psych, and mythology at five Bay Area schools. While working as a therapist he spent six years providing group counseling for men and women referred for mandatory therapy for committing violent crimes. He is a certified Master Gardener through the University of California Cooperative Extension as well as the owner of World Soul Books.
For his doctoral work he explored the history of California one mission city and county at a time while inspecting its geography, ecology, infrastructure, culture, lore, and imaginal life to synthesize a "psychoanalysis of place" to trace connections between the trauma and health of the land and the symptoms and syndromes of its inhabitants. He concluded that 1. the story of one's life and well-being cannot be deeply understood without taking environmental forces into account, and 2. valuing this deep connection to place required a "planetary psychology," or terrapsychology, capable of grasping this mutuality of self and world, psyche and surround as a means to a "deep homecoming" beyond a surface sustainability.
His book Terrapsychology: Reengaging the Soul of Place came out in 2007, Deep California in 2008, and he is co-editor with Linda Buzzell-Saltzman, MFT of Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, Sierra Club's 2009 sequel to Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. 2009 also saw publication of Storied Lives: Discovering and Deepening Your Personal Myth and The Tears of Llorona: A Californian Odyssey of Place, Myth, and Homecoming. He has written for AlterNet, HopeDance Magazine, The Journal of Critical Psychology, Spring, Dream Network Journal, Psychological Perspectives, and four anthologies, and has been interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, the Conejo Valley Daily News, and, more recently, the Contra Costa Times. He lives and works in the Bay Area and is a member of the Foundation for Mythological Studies and the International Association for Jungian Studies, on the board of the International Association for Ecotherapy, and on the editorial board for the new journal Ecopsychology.
- Recent publications. Recent presentations.