ABSTRACT
In James Hillman, psychotherapy is not simply a matter between people, but also between people and the environments in which they find themselves. It is within the rapidly developing 'green' discourses of environmental concern known by such various names as ecopsychology, green psychology, spiritual ecology, environmental aesthetics, and so on to which post-Jungian reflection is aptly positioned to contribute, that people find a tendency to promote an unhelpful split between the natural and the built environments. To experience nature as sublimely magnificent is in echo of the ecopsychologists' grievance with the egoistic city-structure simply to experience the projection of one magnificent mind. In psychodynamic terms, this is the moment when the ego is confronted with the enormity of the unconscious contents before it. Architectural forms that are described as uncanny, sublime or numinous are describing different capacities to evoke different unconscious experiences. Unfortunately, the very best architects cannot design a building that is numinous rather than sublime.
