MOUNT RUSHMORE SYNDROME Allen Kanner

Allen Kanner is an Associate Director of the Ecopsychology Institute and a co-editor of Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind (Sierra Club Books). As a practicing ecopsychologist in Berkeley California, he was featured in the January/February Utne Reader as one of the psychotherapists who are seeking to make psychology socially relevant. His comments on what he calls "Mount Rushmore Syndrome" define a line of battle where ecopsychology meets the anti-ecopsychology of Madison Avenue and corporate green washing. He reminds his colleagues, especially those who provide the professional expertise behind contemporary public relations, that they have quite a lot to live down. Those who ask how effective psychology can be in solving the environmental crisis might begin by asking how effective it has been in creating the crisis in the first place.

IT IS ALWAYS worthwhile to look at the symbols of a culture. In America, no image is more easily recognized than the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Set high atop the Black Hills of South Dakota and visible from sixty miles away, Gutzon Borglum`s Memorial features four faces of former American presidents gazing impassively at the horizon. As a permanent testimony to the engineering genius and sheer audacity of America, the world's largest sculpture will last far longer than the species that built it.         Yet what does the symbol mean? So striking is the Memorial that the presidential profiles overwhelm Mount Rushmore itself. The onlooker is swept up in human grandeur -- dazzling technological prowess, artistic magnificence, the imagination and daring of the project itself, and a stunning attention to detail down to the gleam in each president's eye produced by strategically placed granite shafts.         In much the same way, the United States has imposed its human face onto the nation's countryside, overriding nature's presence with monumental cities, insatiable suburbs, extravagant pollution and a national ego to match. The result is an overdeveloped landscape that, like Narcissus absorbed by his reflection in a pool of water, mirrors back to Americans only themselves. Such self-fascination serves to reinforce a narcissistic cultural tradition, found in most urban-industrial societies, of a superior, detached humanity believing itself to be entitled to all that can be wrested from the land. This tradition, magnified by modern technology, could be called Mount Rushmore Syndrome. Psychology has a lot to do with the damage wrought by this peculiar modern pathology. Consider what a multi-national corporation, a government agency, or even a foreign government does when U.S. environmental regulations, health laws, and public sentiment all stand firmly in the way of increased profits. Easy. Hire a public relations giant to orchestrate an all-out psychological attack on legislators, environmental groups, scientists, and, of course, the public itself to clear (cut) the way. Those who want more documentation on these ultra- sophisticated techniques can consult a recent, out-of-the-way book Toxic Sludge is Good for You (Monroe Maine, Common Courage Press, 1995). There John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton describe the ruthless practices PR firms routinely employ to serve their ecologically destructive clients.

Behind these well-honed techniques lies a subtle grasp of human motivation and vulnerability. When PR firms work through friends of legislators to create spontaneous support for a client's program or product, they are manipulating one of the most powerful human emotions trust. When they rig false controversies among experts or fund seriously-flawed scientific studies that contradict sound research, they confuse and anger us, leaving us less willing to defend environmental values. These practices form a kind of anti-ecopsychology, a large scale abuse of the public and the planet that drives both even further apart.         Ecopsychology can counter these PR ploys by identifying the cynical psychological methods being used, diagnosing the emotional damage they do, alerting colleagues to the misuse of their insights, and joining environmental allies in public protest and planet-saving work.         Ecopsychology, then, is about healing Mount Rushmore Syndrome. It is about coming down to Earth, so that the very idea of emblazoning our image into a mountain would feel sacrilegious, as it does to the Lakota Sioux people who originally inhabited the Black Hills. It is about intertwining art and engineering so as to produce an aesthetic of harmony and technology of wisdom. It is about our symbols -- the bald eagle, the black bear of California, the actual Mount Rushmore, no longer being threatened by our presence but instead thriving within it.         Ecopsychology is about coming home.

Back to the Eco-Psy Politics Page

© 1997 The Ecopsychology Institute