Dennis Merritt, PhD — Dreams, the I Ching, and the Tao

ZOOM lecture online: Saturday, June 21, 2025, 7:30 pm – 9:45 pm EDT

This event will be recorded. If your schedule does not allow you to attend the lecture, you can still reserve a ticket and a recording will be emailed out to you to watch at your convenience within 30 days of the lecture. Access to the recording cannot be extended past 30 days for any reason. No refunds will be given if you are unable to watch the recording within 30 days.

Cost: members: $15; non-members: $35; students $15
CEUs: $25 (APC, LPC, LMSW, LCSW, AMFT, LMFT)

Register here: https://jungatlanta.com/event-calendar/#!event/2025/6/21/dennis-merritt-phd-8212-dreams-the-i-ching-and-the-tao

Description:
The I Ching, a Chinese book of wisdom, goes back over 5000 years to Chinese shamanism and the beginnings of the Chinese language. The I Ching has a numerical base, the binary code as used in computers and genetic code, and Jung recognized numbers as the purest forms of the archetypes. Chinese sages put words and metaphoric descriptions to the numbers to make the I Ching into what Jung called a compendium of archetypal constructs. Via synchronicity, one can address important personal issues to the book and get the guidance of Chinese sages for answers. The I Ching can be used for personal guidance about vexing life issues and in the therapeutic process. This lecture will explore the link between dreams and answers from the I Ching, making a case that dreams and answers from the I Ching arise from the same source: the Tao.

Dennis Merritt, PhD, LCSW, grew up on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin, where he established a deep connection with the animals and the land, a connection he sees reflected in the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching. He obtained a master’s degree from Sonoma State in Humanistic psychology and a PhD from Berkeley in insect pathology (microbial control of insect pests) before training at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich. His Zurich thesis was titled “Synchronicity Experiments with the I Ching and their Relevance to the Theory of Evolution”. He has been using the I Ching for 50 years and employs it in his analytic practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the author of four volumes of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe: Jung, Hermes, and Ecopsychology, with volume three presenting Hermes as the god of synchronicity, dreams, and complexity theory. Hermes is the link between the 10,000 things and the Tao as that which points to the source of the 10,000 things, including dreams. [JungianEcopsychology.com](http://jungianecopsychology.com/) has articles on dreams and the I Ching, Jung and the environment, “Hunger Games”, and “Guns and the American Psyche”.