Merritt Juliano is a neurodiverse integrative women’s psychotherapist in CT, MA and NM where she works with women navigating major life transitions. Merritt specializes in anxiety, perinatal mental health, ecotherapy and climate-inclusive therapy.  Bridging the planetary crisis with psychology, Merritt served as a founding co-president of the Climate Psychology Alliance North America (CPA-NA) for several years, was appointed as a member of the 2021-2022 American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Climate Change, and served as the CPA-NA Connecticut regional coordinator. Merritt has presented workshops on the planetary health crisis and facilitated Climate Cafes for others to explore thoughts, feelings and experiences related to the polycrisis.

Like all of us, Mark’s first encounters with the world were entirely sensory. Ever since, despite his own and societal efforts to corral, constrain, coerce or conform this ever-changing flux of encountering into a consistent structure of concrete meaning, he has often been surprised by wonder. The world seems adept at gently stepping around such endeavours. Individually and collectively, at every level - like that scene in The Matrix - on the flickering screen of awareness: “knock-knock”. Every sunset is different. He's a therapist, social organiser, writer and dog walker. He lives on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada. He doesn’t usually write about himself in the third person and he really needs to update his website.

“Psychosphere" is a new term (coined by Mark Skelding) for an old, old imagination. Inspired by the way geoscience talks about the living planet’s ‘organs’ in terms of spheres (bio- litho- atmo- etc.), but without recognising an embedded and emergent intelligence, “psychosphere" speaks to how the inner processes of all living things (autopoesis) contribute to a larger, interacting, sphere of intelligence that is itself intrinsic to and surging within all participatory forms of life. (Contrast this with de Chardin’s “noosphere”, a far more anthropocentric and siloed concept of collective consciousness). 

Human psyche is a slice of this whole. And yet, for now, it is distorting the planetary homeostasis on which we and all life depend.