Healing Landscapes

Abstract

This review opens with a story of the reviewer’s uncanny, synchronistic meeting with Clare Cooper Marcus, a pioneer in the psychological and social implications of architectural design. Marcus’ recently published memoir, Iona Dreaming: The Healing Power of Place, is an initiatory story of a woman in her sixties, following retirement from a successful career, who is facing a life-threatening illness that leads her on a six-month solitary retreat to the island of Iona, a ruggedly beautiful island with a rich Celtic history in the Scottish Hebrides. Marcus’ journey of self-discovery and healing, guided by her work with a Jungian analyst, helps her link past with present and reconnect to more soulful and healing relationships with nature, landscape, and body. Memories of a childhood in war-ravaged London and a subsequent evacuation to the English countryside illustrate how some of the seeds planted in the author’s childhood have blossomed into a rich and powerful life’s work.