About the Author

[Read an on-line interview with Bill Plotkin]

Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and one of the leaders in the field of contemporary, nature-based personal development and initiation programs. He holds a doctorate in psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and was previously on the teaching and research faculty at the State University of New York where he studied dreams and non-ordinary states achieved through meditation, biofeedback, and hypnosis.

Bill is the founding director of Animas Valley Institute in southwest Colorado, a nonprofit organization of over twenty guides that has been leading nature-based soul-initiation programs since 1980. Each year, AVI’s staff guide hundreds of people—professionals, artists, therapists, parents, teachers, and high-school and college students—on journeys into the inner/outer wilderness. Bill also conducts five-day soulcraft seminars at retreat centers throughout the United States as well as a training and apprenticeship program for soulcraft guides.

Bill has written many articles and book chapters on psychotherapy, consciousness, and wilderness rites. He is currently completing a book on soulcentric human development wherein he proposes tasks and archetypes for the eight stages of life when we allow soul and nature to guide us in our growth.