Robert has responded in quick order to my questions of Aug. 28. See italic below.
1) What do you mean by “ecopsychology”? We both know it’s a big and encompassing term, with many people using it to include all sorts of different approaches, so it is important at our outset to get some sense of the way we will be using it, and lay out some sense of the boundaries of the territory we intend to include in the term. It would be nice to keep this initial foray into definition fairly concise. One line of definition to consider is: what is the purpose, relevance, or cultural applicability of ecopsychology? In other words, why bother? In 1963 when I first formulated "ecopsychology" (then termed "Psycho-ecology" -- changed for obvious reasons) I was a scientific ecologist with graduate research experience (on the pollution of Lake Washington), and I had stumbled into the Brandeis University psychology department as a writer for Abraham Maslow. The juxtaposing of the two fields in which I was now involved seemed to please the Brandeis faculty, and immediately began stimulating wonderful insights about the human-nature relationship. Not psychology; not ecology -- but a new field, ecopsychology -- with both "sides" of the equation fully honored. (It is also important to note that this development at Brandeis had roots going back into a boyhood spent "in nature" -- gardening at an early age, weather studies "for the war effort", collections of all sorts of creatures, passionate skiing and mountain climbing and back-packing -- a full-on "nature-boy" background. Once establishing this rather primitive "ecopsychology", I began practicing it, rather than developing it: in the founding of an experimental college (Franconia, in New Hampshire), in Peace Corps training, in planning colleges within a University context (UC/Santa Cruz) and finally as a professor and developer of a "wilderness therapy" program at Sonoma State University. And though I was personally bringing to the field a full psychology (with leanings towards trans-personal psychology) and a full ecology practice, I found over time that most of those interested in ecopsychology ("EP") were psychologists rather than ecologists, and I saw the various "discoveries" and "new presentations" of EP drifting further from a juxtaposition of the two fields, psychology and ecology. This is the case to this day. EP has become, in my view at least, a mish-mash of ideas -- about "humans" and about "nature" -- and this about covers anything and everything. And thus the potential of a true, focused EP that includes both some form of psychology and serious scientific ecology and that might go "deep enough" to change things, has been lost. I propose therefore to recover that initial juxtaposition of ecology and psychology. (This is not to say that the myriads of human-nature-relational (HNR) studies (from Deep Ecology to Ecofeminism, Ecospirituality, Ecotherapy, eco this, eco that) do not have value. The public is awakening to "the natural world" in many ways, on many fronts -- in part because of anxiety over the obvious decline of "the environment". There is, I would suggest, massive and multi-faced attempts to at least acknowledge the disjunction (a full-blown dualistic split) between humans and nature. This "war against dualism" has been going on for 100 years at least, and is, thankfully, growing. But the irony is this: as EP evolves as a kind of superficial "cover" for all human-nature-relational expressions (anything and everything), it loses it's power, even as the HNR approaches continue to expand and deepen. I see the HNR approaches as the "bigger" (encompassing) field. Rather than EP attempting to conflate itself into the HNR, I see it as a subset of the larger field. In this way EP might have a very useful depth to add. I believe we need much more than we're now doing -- and a much better understanding of the underlying dynamics -- to achieve that "Great Turning" that Joanna Macy and Thomas Berry speak of. I maintain, therefore, that, amidst all these efforts to "heal the human-nature split" (some very wonderful, some not) -- we need to resuscitate the original formulation of EP: put a clear-languaged psychology together with a serious use of 'real ecology' -- and use this as a doorway (not an end in itself) -- a doorway that will provide a channel into the ability to live within the culture-nature (mind-nature) world as one world -- as one reality. This might be called getting "inside the ride" (the ride being evolution); or it might be called "living within the ecological thought" (see references); or it might be seen as similar if not identical to a spiritual awakening, and so on. But I believe that, for all the beauty and value of the myriads of human-nature joinings flowing out of movies and stories, dance and music, and so on, for all the power of these burgeoning approaches, a focused ecology and psychology, juxtaposed, offers something unique, perhaps a greater depth into the mystery of the mind, and consciousness, and nature, and the cosmos. All I'm saying: real ecology-psychology is worth a serious try -- as an adjunct to HNR studies -- if we are to achieve the mind-value changes necessary for our species to survive. 2) I’d like to ask you about books and authors. I seem to remember from maybe a couple decades ago a master list you were maintaining of books and articles related to ecospsychology. It was an impressively large list even then, so I wonder of its status today. But I’d like to ask you, if possible, to pick 1) five recent (last 10 years) books or articles that you consider most significant to the ecopsychology you have developed, and 2) five books older than 10 years that are most fundamental to building the background to your ecopsychology. If you can provide brief annotations to each choice, giving a hint as to why you value them, that will help us. [OK, but it's a tough question, because there are thousands of good books about the human-nature-relationship (what to many is "ecopsychology writ large"), maybe a few hundred really valuable, and a dozen or so that, historically and currently have, for me at least, been crucial turning points; and there have been no real ecopsychology sources..... yet. So I'll answer the question with those serious reservations.] A. Books enhancing our understanding of the human-nature relationship -- sometimes paralleling what I define as ecopshchology -- often with either the "psychology" side of the equation, or the "ecology" side of the equation, implied but not made explicit. 1. Historically, for me (back more than 10 years)
idea for ecopsychology grew from that moment)
create tools. This is a crucial guide to understand ourselves, and to track on the ways we assume powers -- powers we now see with horror as having such "unintended consequences")
should be memorized, and then transcended -- for his psychology was limited, has materialism a bias he couldn't overcome, and thus, ending with questionable assumptions. But still a profound beginning of EP
his work. But again, the original "Ecology of Mind" should be memorized ..... then transcended)
experience of so-called wilderness -- and this book provides it, in spades. It too is a proto-EP, because Nash delves on the one hand into the psychological base of the American cultures ambivalent attitude towards wilderness, and on the other hand, an almost ecological understanding of un-trammeled nature itself. (I find Max Oelschlaeger's more recent "The Idea of Wilderness" much more profound -- but Nash was a basis for understanding the depth to which a few short weeks immersed -- out of "culture", in "wilderness" -- could perturb one's hold on consensus reality.))
because of our deep understanding of Jung and archetypes, her friendship with Gary Snyder and other poets, her knowledge of Chinese nature poetry, and her ecological understanding, via geology and rivers. Her friendship with Paul Shepard deeply shaped her thinking. She and Max Oelschlaeger collaborated on a wonderful book of readings honoring Paul Shepard.)
the "noosphere" that flows, evolutionarily, from the biosphere and why we must somehow evolve (quickly!) into the "ecozooic")
2. More Recent, still general (more "human-nature-relations" than ecopsychology) that have influenced me
the meaning of the term "radical" in the title). Very short on "real ecology", though assumed at all points. Recent edition, a brilliant critique of "Integral Ecology") (see below)
perspectives" means Wilber's AQAL model ("all quadrants, all levels) and note -- this is all imposed ON the "natural world". It is an immense and useful mess -- if you have no penchant for Wilber's massive work this will not be useful. But if you do, it is a rich, in places scholarly, detailed guide to how human-nature relations can become coherent, given the multiple perspectives that each individual brings to the task. The book needs a strong ecopsychology; the entire edifice is based on "the intersubjective process" -- otherwise, the system would not be just dualistic, but "quadra-listic".
(reneelertzman.com/2012/08/review-of-dodds-book/) this is full-on psychology juxtaposed with full-on ecology -- then moving into chaos theory, and the practical needs to better understand climate change.)
entered "inside the ride" of ecology. His earlier book, "Ecology without Nature" calls up the confusion around "nature" and the ridiculous banality of the use of "eco" for nature -- and it also reflects the current separation between "mind" and "nature" .... and then reveals the illusory nature of this separation by joining the "sides" within ecology.)
the most useful to me; the most recent, "For Love of Matter -- a Contemporary Pan-Psychism" is a primer of pan-psychism, one of the most crucial-to-consider "roads back home". [I know I'm over my limit of books, and there are dozens more I'm leaving out, but I can't help adding the following. For, again, if it is "inside the ride" where a focused EP is meant to take us -- what I term 'querencia' -- then the Zen approach might be the most direct, and most laborious, route to that place!]
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The opening questions to Robert Greenway are:
1) What do you mean by “ecopsychology”? We both know it’s a big and encompassing term, with many people using it to include all sorts of different approaches, so it is important at our outset to get some sense of the way we will be using it, and lay out some sense of the boundaries of the territory we intend to include in the term. It would be nice to keep this initial foray into definition fairly concise. One line of definition to consider is: what is the purpose, relevance, or cultural applicability of ecopsychology? In other words, why bother? 2) I’d like to ask you about books and authors. I seem to remember from maybe a couple decades ago a master list you were maintaining of books and articles related to ecospsychology. It was an impressively large list even then, so I wonder of its status today. But I’d like to ask you, if possible, to pick 1) five recent (last 10 years) books or articles that you consider most significant to the ecopsychology you have developed, and 2) five books older than 10 years that are most fundamental to building the background to your ecopsychology. If you can provide brief annotations to each choice, giving a hint as to why you value them, that will help us. |
AuthorDiscussion between Walker Abel and Robert Greenway. Archives
January 2015
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