With each issue of Ecopsychology On-Line, we will offer statements that introduce ecopsychology as environmental scientists, activists, and lawyers, academic psychologists and psychotherapists are defining the field. Each of these disciplines has its own methods, vocabulary, and terms of reference. Scientists, environmental and psychological, prefer to deal in hard data and precise statistics; therapists work by introspection, examining dreams, desires, fears, and the shadowed corners of the mind; lawyers need persuasive documentary evidence. Yet all these disciplines have something of value to offer the common cause of keeping our relations with the natural world sane and sustainable. Ecopsychology is intended as an open dialogue for many voices.

Healing the Split between Planet and Self Deborah Du Nann Winter

Deborah Du Nann Winter teaches ecopsychology at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. She is the author of the first, comprehensive, textbook study of ecopsychology Ecological Psychology: Healing the Split between Planet and Self.

IF YOU ARE like me, you know the planet is in trouble, but you also continue to act in ways that are damaging to it. The belief that our civilization is careening out of control toward environmental disaster is well accepted by most citizens, at least at a subliminal level. While technical experts may continue to debate the details of how much soil erosion, global warming, ozone depletion, air and water pollution, and deforestation is occurring and at what rate, the general public is painfully aware of impending crisis. Because we do not understand how to integrate this awareness into our daily lives, we live in a schizoid state of nagging, pernicious concern about our future. But we continue to conduct business largely as usual.          In 1992, over 1,670 prestigious scientists, including over 100 Nobel Laureates, signed a World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, urging public attention to the "human activities which inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environmental and on critical resources." The public is alerted, but daily life continues unaltered. One reason we maintain this split is that we assume that environmental problems are technical problems which require technical solutions, hoping we can leave the intimidating agenda to a small group of engineers to figure out some answers before it is too late. But, in fact, our environmental problems are psychological in origin: they have accrued because of the behavior, thoughts, beliefs, values and feelings that human beings have and continue to enact. Thus, solutions will require psychological changes -- changes in the way we see ourselves, in our relationship to nature, and even in the purpose we give our lives. We need to investigate mainstream psychology to see what insights it can deliver about how to change our current behavior and direction.

Can the field of psychology help us? I think so. In my book Ecological Psychology: Healing the Split between Planet and Self, I examine five major psychological theories (social psychology, psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitive, and transpersonal psychology) to analyze our ecological crisis and what to do about it. Each theory is discussed in a separate chapter that explains its historical context, major principles, and important applications to environmental problems. To use William James' phrase, "the roots and fruits" of psychology are examined so that the reader can learn what psychology can contribute, while also learning about how that contribution has come to be possible.          Just as important as studying psychology is doing so in a way that delivers hope, rather than despair. One of the ways in which we maintain the split between planet and self is through not acting on what we know. Education is traditionally conducted along these lines. Action and activism are not included as key features of education, for fear that we will create ideological robots of our students. I appreciate the importance of carefully considering our actions before doing them, but I also believe that we cannot completely know the results of our behavior before undertaking it. I also believe, along with John Dewey, that we do not really understand an idea until we apply it. We learn more about an idea from experiencing how it works, especially if we remain diligently open to feedback from our experience.

Inaction ensures that business proceeds as usual; action changes us as well as the world. Sometimes we make mistakes, but we don't learn unless we are willing to make mistakes.          No matter what actions you decide to undertake, becoming aware of your behavior, your thoughts, your feelings, and your consciousness will significantly facilitate healing the split between planet and self. But you cannot do anything for the planet or for yourself until you begin. As you select actions for healing yourself and the world, you will likely experience many of the defenses discussed in the book. My advice is to keep track of those defenses, but be careful about giving them too much power. You may feel overwhelmed. Feeling overwhelmed is a constant, recurring liability in this work because, as we learn more, we see how interconnected and colossal are the structures driving us toward ecological destruction.          Focusing on specific behaviors can help mitigate the experience of feeling overwhelmed, even though those feelings are likely to recur. Yet allowing ourselves to slip into despair or helplessness is the most destructive path -- destructive because it undermines our own growth and maturity, and destructive because it ensures a planetary outcome that justifies our despair. Just as we can best confront our feelings of being overwhelmed by action, so too is despair best confronted through action. So it is essential to proceed gently, with conviction, patience, perseverance and most of all, with trust, trust in yourself, as well as in the interconnected wholeness of nature that embraces you.          In the words of Terry Tempest Williams, "If you take one step with all the knowledge you have, there is usually just enough light shining to show you the next step." May your steps be steady, graceful, revealing, and rewarding, and my you know them as part of the greater ecological dance.

Deborah Du Nann Winter's Ecological Psychology: Healing the Split between Planet and Self, HarperCollins College Publishers, 1996, (ISBN 0-673-99764-2) is available from: Addison-Wesley Phone (800)782-2665/ fax (800) 333-3328. In the UK, contact: Longman UK, Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, Essex CM20 2JE, England.

What on Earth is Ecopsychology? Malachy Shaw-Jones

Malachy Shaw-Jones is a clinical psychologist in independent practice in Cambridge Massachusetts and at the Center for Integrative Therapy in Natick. His comments on Ecopsychology appeared in the Massachusetts Psychological Association Quarterly.

ECOLOGY IS THE study of community, of the interrelationships among all forms of life. Psychology is the study of the psyche or soul. Ecopsychology, then, may be viewed as the study of the psyche or soul in of self in relation to circumstance.         James Hillman, in questioning the focus of psychotherapy, offers us the image of a sinking ship. Deep in the boat's bowels, in a safe and cloistered cabin, a therapist and client are earnestly working away while the ship sinks lower and lower in the water, its crisis becoming increasingly critical. Ecopsychology looks at the role of psychology in a world that is in crisis.

Clinical psychology once focused on the individual ego but has broadened its scope to consider the couple, the family, the group, and society. Recently, ecopsychologists have begun to consider the relationships of the individual and the social community to the larger context of the non-human natural environment, our home, the Earth.         How do we experience nature? How do we respond to the news that our ship is leaking badly? What defenses, both healthy and otherwise, do we use to manage the feelings evoked by this news? How might we modify our worldviews to illuminate our path at this time of unprecedented change? What models can we construct of self and world that will, like stilts, lift us up out of the stream of evolution so we may see what course to take? How can we learn to live with nature and accept our roles as members of the larger community, the whole planet?         The interconnectedness of life on Earth has been described as a multi-dimensional web, a seamless "neutral" network of interdependencies. With Earth in mind, ecopsychology is the study of this interdependence and interconnectedness, the psychology of our relationship with Mother Nature - the natural world.         The historically recent tendency in the West to emphasize the individual self over more collective definitions of personhood has contributed to the alienation of the self from other people, from nature, from the world.         Ecopsychology is exploring broader definitions of the self beyond the skin-encapsulated ego and the rugged individualism of the American Dream. One might consider aspects of an ecological self such as E. E. Sampson's "ensembled individualism," or sociocentrism, biocentrism, and other "trans" personal concepts of the self that are also to be found in non-Western cultures worldwide.         At a recent Harvard commencement, commenting on the dangers of human alienation and its accompanying cynicism, Vice President Al Gore observed, "The notion that the individual has a responsibility for the community is considered a dangerous radicalism." But, perhaps, radical solutions to our problems are needed.         Universal health care is a step in the right direction. But how do we address health care issues raised by a degraded environment? What do we do about the madness of fouling our own beds as we generate toxic waste dumps for our children and their children's children to deal with? What does a psychology of interdependence tell us about how to provide health care in a world of limited resources? What would sustainable health care look like? It would accept limits to what it could do. It would address environmental causes of illness. It would be particularly interested in primary prevention.         How we think, how we see a problem, in what contexts it appears to us affects how we behave in response to it. Our frames, models, paradigms, worldviews, cosmologies, and epistemologies may need to shift and grow at this particular time of flux.

Ecopsychology, with some of its many roots in systems theory, holism, self-in-relation theory, native wisdom, and that subversive science, ecology, leads us to review our relationship with the larger community of the biosphere. It leads us to acknowledge our interdependence and relatedness, to explore our belonging, and to value the feminine traits of care, mutuality, and reciprocity in relation to the environment.         Ecopsychology asks us to face the implications of our interdependence. When the ship shows so many signs of sinking, how can we help? Preventive work at all levels is needed. This includes expanding our hearts and minds while accepting limits to material growth. We need to work together, reconsider the extremes of individualism that have diverted us from the need for universal health care, and attend to the context as well as the symptoms that appear within it.         Ecopsychology is an idea in progress. It raises many questions about the relationship of self to society and of the person to the planet. I believe it is work we would do well to explore whether health insurance will fund it or not.

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© 1997 The Ecopsychology Institute