Currently writing a brief history of ecopsychology, James is the author of several journal essays, a collection of poetry, and the soon to be released The Hilltending Notebooks. He holds a Ph.D. in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, where he also completed his certification in Ecopsychology. His doctoral research provides new insights to the ecological psyche, identifying, naming, and analyzing the archetypal patterning of two primary and distinct approaches to the human-habitat relationship, which he identified as the terracentric and geocosmological.
Dr. Liter has been facilitating nature-based archetypal experiences and integration around the world for many years. Returning stateside after more than two decades living in Europe, James, together with his wife and three border collies, now calls home a small lavender farmstead in Michigan, where his research & implementation of regenerative practices for psyche & Earth continues.
Through diverse forms of expression, my work advocates for a proactive healing and tending to the human-Earth relationship. I refer to the framework I have developed for this overarching purpose as Hilltending.
Hilltending has grown out of my personal lived experience and is coupled with my Jungian and Archetypal studies and doctoral research at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Rooted in a depth psychological framework, Hilltending is a multifaceted approach to human-earth relations that allows us to “apprentice” to the ecological psyche and live authentically human lives within a thriving wholeness with the wider earth community. To apprentice ourselves to the ecological psyche is to engage our relationship to the nature world as a collective ecological Self. We can confront ecogrief and celebrate the larger story of being a part of the entire earth community. In other words, Hilltending strives to facilitate not only a response to the grief at our destructive separation from psyche, earth, and cosmos, but also to celebrate and proactively tend to the story of our relationship to the ecological psyche in and of the natural world.
I have worked with others around the world – from the Kerry National Forest in Ireland to the wooded hills of Germany to the high desert of California to the wetlands and meadows of West Michigan. I have guided and experienced many deep and healing Hilltending experiences in nature–including my own.