CHILDREN, THE EARTH, AND US

To begin at the beginning ...

All psychology is "child psychology," the critical study of our inherent nature. What nourishes or starves the potentialities we bring to the world? What decides if the potentialities that belong to us at birth will flourish or wither in later life? Is childhood something we must outgrow in order to "grow up"? Or are there, as the Romantic poets believed, childhood gifts that we should seek to preserve?

No two schools of psychology or philosophy agree on the answer to these questions. Ecopsychology assumes that our innate nature includes some significant trace of our evolutionary heritage: our sympathetic bond with the Earth and all its creatures, as real as the ties that bind us to family or community. There is, of course, no way to "prove" such an idea. The foundations of human nature must always be the realm of speculation. In this growingly ecological time, some might find the ecopsychological assumption a matter of indisputable common sense; others are understandably skeptical. The idea of an "emotional bond" that reaches beyond other human beings may seem "mystical," even though it is among the oldest teachings of religion and art. Indeed, it seems odd that modern science, which has discovered ever more surprising continuities in nature, has done so little to investigate the one continuity that may have the greatest role to play in the environmental crisis of our time.

Is it perhaps the most fateful mistake that both scientists and psychologists make: to regard the human psyche as a sealed, purely social unit that shares nothing but physical-chemical connections with the flora and fauna, the rivers and the trees?

If an emotional bond exists between the human psyche and the natural world, one would expect to find it at its most robust in childhood. And here is where one might expect things to go most significantly wrong in our development if we fail to honor that bond.

We open the Eco-psy Forum with two essays that explore the ecopsychology of children, the first by one of the leading zoologists of our day and now a leading environmental activist, the other by a practicing child ecopsychologist.

THE MAGIC I KNEW AS A CHILD by Jane Goodall

THE ECOLOGICAL SELF IN CHILDHOOD by Anita Barrows

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