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INTRODUCTION
Ecopsychology is developing rapidly as a field
of study, and it has no single definition yet. The
term is used in different ways by several different
practitioners and researchers. My aim here is to
summarize what I see as the main themes or
contributions of Ecopsychology. By the way, when I
say these are insights, I do not mean to imply that
they are unique or original to Ecopsychology. Our
ancestors who lived close to the Earth as well as
indigenous people around the world today have a
bead on these understandings.
Among the origins of this field are the
following:
- Theodore Roszak was one of the first to
develop this term and write about it for a
general audience. His books,
THE
VOICE OF THE EARTH and
ECOPSYCHOLOGY,
have been important and influential. Check out
his online newsletter,
ECOPSYCHOLOGY
ONLINE. His work is historical, theoretical,
and often oriented to the implications of our
disconnection from nature for mental health and
environmental action. It also seems to me that
it often has a city-oriented flavor. Important
collaborators are
Mary
Gomes and Allen Kanner.
- Steven Foster and Meredith Little have been
using this term for their important work for a
number of years. Their work, through their
School of Lost Borders, is deeply earth-based
and often wilderness-based. It has strong
theoretcial foundations but really comes alive
in their work in the field. Thus, they have
called it "Primitive Ecopsychology" suggesting
its basis in our primal connection to the land.
They describe their work in several excellent
books, including
THE
BOOK OF THE VISION QUEST and
THE
ROARING OF THE SACRED RIVER. See also a
video of their work with youth,
LOST
BORDERS: COMING OF AGE IN THE WILDERNESS and
an
online
article by Foster about rites of passage for
young men.
- Indigenous wisdom has not used the term
exactly, however these ideas have come into
awareness again as we rediscover and explore
indigenous people's views of our relationship to
the Earth. This is partly because, I think, it
would be redundant; ecology and psychology are
always part of a larger enterprise.
- Robert Greenway used the term,
psycho-ecology, years ago and revised it to the
more familiar ecopsychology recently. He started
a Wilderness Psychology program at Sonoma State
University and has taught many of the leaders in
this area.
- A related development is Deep Ecology.
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The deep and enduring questions&emdash;who we
are, how we grow, why we suffer, how we
heal&emdash;are inseparable from our relationships
with the physical world. Similarly, the over-riding
environmental questions&emdash;the sources of,
consequences of, and solutions to environmental
disaster&emdash;are deeply rooted in the psyche,
our images of self and nature, and our behaviors.
Ecopsychology integrates ecology and psychology.
Among its contributions are bringing psychological
principles and practices to environmental education
and action, bringing the contributions of
ecological thinking and the values of the natural
world to psychotherapy and personal growth, and
fostering lifestyles that are both ecologically and
psychologically healthy.
Ecopsychology is rooted in three insights. (1)
There is a deeply bonded and reciprocal
relationship between humans and nature.
Ecopsychology has presented two metaphors for this
relationship: (a) nature as home and family
(siblings, Mother) and (b) nature as Self, in which
self-identifications are broadened to include the
"greater-than-human" world and Gaia. (2) The
illusion of a separation of humans and nature leads
to suffering both for the environment (as
ecological devastation) and for humans (as grief,
despair, and alienation). (3) Realizing the
connection between humans and nature is healing for
both. This reconnection includes the healing
potential of contact with nature, work on grief and
despair about environmental destruction,
ecotherapy, psychoemotional bonding with the world
as a source of environmental action, and
sustainable lifestyles.
AN EXTENSION:
ECOPSYCHOLOGY AND
TRANSPERSONAL
PSYCHOLOGY
At their deepest, psyche and nature emerge as
expressions of the same whole and reveal these
questions and insights as essentially spiritual. I
propose that ecopsychology be extended to a view
that both includes and transcends the
nature-as-family and nature-as-self metaphors,
recognizing a fundamentally non-dual, seamless
unity in which both nature and psyche flow as
expressions of the same absolute source. This is
not simple a reciprocity between humans and nature,
nor merely a broadening of the self to include the
natural world, though it includes both. Rather, it
calls for development beyond the self
(self-transcendence) to an identification with the
spirit or mystery which gives rise to all
manifestations--human, nature, and otherwise.
The implications of this transpersonal view are
radical. Here, Being is characterized by awareness,
presence, and the richness and beauty of the
unfoldment of being in its myriad forms. These
forms include both nature and the human. At a
surface level, we can distinguish human and nature,
and this distinction i s useful in some contexts.
However, as we look deeper, this distinction
dissolves, and we sense that human and nature both
lead us to a deeper and more fundamental level of
Being.
Both nature and human are expression of a common
source, as two waves are both expressions of a
common ocean. This view recognizes human and nature
as two seamlessly connected forms, a common ground
(which is both full and empty), and, beyond that, a
transcendence of both emptiness and form. Action is
revealed as a caring reflex responding
simultaneously to the suffering of the psyche and
the destruction of the ecosystem. Mindfulness,
contemplation, and ritual become the core practices
for awakening this understanding, and through it,
we find the extraordinary is revealed in the
ordinary, spirit in the world.
For more on this "extension," see my paper in
the forthcoming issue of THE HUMANISTIC
PSYCHOLOGIST on The Transpersonal Dimensions of
Ecopsychology.
A DIFFERENT KIND
OF DEFINITION
Ecology and psychology, having grown up on
different sides of the mountain, met one day in the
thick brush at the ridge line separating their home
places. Their first contact was awkward and
hesitant&emdash;different dress, different
languages, different dances, songs, and stories.
Yet, there was a strong mutual attraction, a sense
in each that a longing could be satisfied here.
They began to circle, they danced, and finally they
joined. Their offspring are twins. One is vigorous,
skillful, joyous, and sustainable environmental
action. The other is the wonder, intimacy,
expansion, and grace of finding ourselves at home
in the world. They realized, too, that there was
much work to be done together. There were other
such liaisons in the thick brush at the edges, but
this one was particularly juicy, wild, and fertile.
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TWO QUOTES I
HAVE ENJOYED AND LEARNED FROM
regarding the transpersonal extenion of
Ecopsychology
The backpacker-pilgrim's step-by-step,
breath-by-breath walk up a trail, carrying all on
the back, is so ancient a set of gestures as to
trigger perennial images and a profound sense of
body-mind joy.
Not just backpackers, of course. The same
happens to those who sail in the ocean, kayak
rivers, tend a garden, even sit on a meditation
cushion. The point is in making intimate contact
with wild world, wild self. Sacred refers to that
which helps take us out of our little selves into
the larger self of the whole universe.
Inspiration, exaltation, insight do not end,
however, when one steps outside the doors of the
church. The wilderness as a temple is only a
beginning. That is: one should not dwell in the
specialness of the extraordinary experience, not
leave the political world behind to be in a state
of heightened insight. The best purpose of such
studies and backpack hikes is to be able to come
back into the world to see all the land about us,
agricultural, suburban, urban, as part of the same
giant realm of processes and beings&emdash;never
totally ruined, never completely unnatural. Great
Brown Bear is walking with us, salmon swimming
upstream with us, as we stroll a city street.
Gary Snyder. (1984). Good Wild
Sacred. Five Seasons Press. p. 26.
At the [first transpersonal] level, a person might
temporarily dissolve the separate-self sense (the
ego and find an identity with the entire gross or
sensorimotor world&emdash;so-called nature
mysticism. You're on a nice nature walk, relaxed
and expansive in your awareness, and you look at a
beautiful mountain, and wham!&emdash;suddenly there
is no looker, just the mountain&emdash;and you are
the mountain. You are not in here looking at the
mountain out there. There is just the mountain, and
it seems to see itself, or you seem to be seeing it
from within. The mountain is closer to you than
your own skin. ... Inside and outside&emdash;they
don't have any meaning anymore. You can still tell
perfectly well where you body stops and the
environment begins&emdash;this is not psychotic
adualism... It is your own higher Self at this
stage... You are a "nature mystic."
[In regard to this higher Self ]I am a big fan
of the deep ecologists. They have an important
message for the modern world: to find that deep
Self that embraces all of nature, and thus to treat
nature with the same revereance you would extend to
your own being.
Ken Wilber. (1996). Brief History of
Everything. Shambhala. p 202-204.
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