About Ecopsychology
photo by Karla Souder
What is “Green Psychology”?
Because ecopsychology is a broad and developing field, it is often referred to by different names. Individual practitioners and scholars may define each term they use slightly differently. Not every psychotherapeutic approach that occurs in nature is necessarily ecopsychological by default. But some of the descriptors often seen used interchangeably with the term “ecopsychology” could include:
• Green psychology
• Eco-counseling
• Nature-guided therapy
• Nature-based counseling
What are a few core ideas of ecopsychology?
In the Association for Humanistic Psychology’s journal (AHP Perspective, Feb/Mar 2007), John Davis summed up the following core ideas underlying many ecopsychological practices. Rather than see nature as a danger to be controlled or dominated or just as a commodity to be used, ecopsychology seeks to shift our fundamental perception of our relationship with the earth and all other-than-humans. If we can relate to earth and its beings as home and family, our relationship with earth becomes of one of caring and preservation and ethical, sustainable use and stewardship.
Ecopsycology assumes that humans are as naturally connected to our world as anything else and that our perception of disconnection is an illusion. Ecopsychology assumes that reconnection is possible. As we heal ourselves, we heal our world.
Research supports the idea that exposure to nature reduces stress, increases personal transformation and addresses despair and grief associated with environmental changes and losses that will effect us all for many generations to come.
What are more common themes, principles, goals or guidelines in ecopsychology?
Here are a few:
1) Exploring the best practices to enable human beings to mature enough to create a sustainable coexistence with our world
2) Articulating and defining ecopsychology’s independence or affiliation with existing modes of counseling. Ecotherapy is applicable but not limited to issues related to overconsumption and materialistic disorders, anxiety and stress, life transitions, ecological grief, biophilia, and biophobia.
3) Cognitively restructuring people’s beliefs about humanity’s relationship to the natural world by expanding the definition of self and one’s identity with the environment. We humans are most likely to protect and defend that which we include in our family-identity and self-identity.
4) Adhering to the general consensus across ecopsychological scholars includes:
• an ethic of living sustainably with our fellow living beings,
• a respectful and careful approach to working with habitat and plant life
• a general respect and non-contamination of the other non-living elements of earth.
5) Seeking to incorporate humanity’s previous successes in living sustainably by incorporating some of the critical practices, attitudes and societal experiences of indigenous cultures
6) Examining the cause of human behavior on all scales (individuals, groups, nations) that damage our planet. What are the deficits in human psychological development that currently lead to our self and other-harming behavior?
7) Working with the grief that we all will likely face in the course of many deep and certain losses and difficulties from climate change and other environmental changes in the next few generations.
What other types of psychology is ecopsychology most like?
As mentioned, ecopsychology is a broad and developing field, so it is impossible to foretell how creative people may combine this body of work with other schools of psychology in the future. Up until now, however, ecopsychology seems most frequently paired with depth psychology, transpersonal psychology, existential or gestalt psychologies.
What is “applied ecopsycology?”
Because it is a relatively new field in development since the 1980’s, around the time of the publication of the book The Voice of the Earth in 1992 by Theodore Rozsak, a lot of the work being done in the field is still aimed at defining and consolidating theoretical basis and scholarship within the field. Yet, practitioners are eager to apply the concepts and manifest these ideas in the real world. Examples include:
• individual counseling
• nature ritual
• some wilderness/adventure therapy programs
• transformational adventure trips
• vision quests
• ecological grief groupwork
• experiential nature education programs.
Who are some of the elders and experts associated with this field?
Try looking into the books and work of a few of these authors to explore some different ideas associated with the broad field of ecopsychology. Just to name a few:
• Bill Plotkin
• Father Thomas Berry
• James Hillman
• Joanna Macy
• Sarah Conn
• Theodore Roszak
• Laura Sewall
• John Seed
• Arnae Ness
