Some Reflections on Environmentalist Psychology

Environmentalist psychology is based on the correlation of our inner psychic and outer physical lives. This interdependence will help to recover lost values for the modern world. Among these values are ways of healing the spirit as well as the body, recovery of community on a deep level, affirmation of Earth as a living organism, and avoidance of environmental degradation.

Environmental degradation can result from a psychological or cultural dysfunction which blocks the achievement of environmental consciousness. Reverence for life disappears. Nature is treated as a means to serve frustrated psychological drives.

One or more archetypes can be projected onto various aspects of nature. One thinks of the television commercial in which a vindictive woman appeared, produced a storm by snapping her forgers and screamed, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!” The identification of nature with woman, and the mistreatment of both, has been the subject of much recent study. See Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983).

Projection onto nature is a force both in environmentalism and in environmental degradation. It is easy enough to organize opposition to the clubbing of extremely cute seal pups in the Canadian Arctic. But the movement to restore the wolf to Yellowstone has to overcome the negative symbolism of the wolf in the collective and the individual

Page 4

psyches. The tragic image of Moby Dick has probably preserved more than one species of whale. But the recent campaign to save the shark saw much less support.

Environmental health and psychic health are linked, both through physical factors that affect the nervous system and through perception of the degree to which the natural order has been disturbed. On a conscious or unconscious level, the psyche must deal with threats such as radioactive pollution, the diminishment of the ozone layer, increasing acidity of precipitation, global warming, expanding populations, and the extinction of thousands of species. Denial and repression as the defense mechanisms of choice are becoming less and less effective as the visible signs and effects of destruction increase.

Psychotherapy could have a role in environmental healing if it could assist in evolving a new ecological consciousness compatible with the world views that science is developing. Leff has offered a description of modern “ecological consciousness” which includes the following elements: (1) a sense of self as a part of a larger holistic system; (2) an understanding and awareness of the ecological processes within this system; (3) a high ability to enjoy and appreciate things in themselves (that is, without concern for their usefulness);

(4) a life-affirming value system; and (5) a creatively cooperative motivational orientation toward people and other living things. See H. L. Leff, Experience, Environment, and Human Potentials. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 13

Psychologists could also consider whether the evolution of some forms of “eco­ therapy” might be salutary. An environmental psychologist has advocated such a program, including “exercises for shifting from egocentrism to ecocentrism in feelings and thoughts; cross-species empathy training; and ‘ finding and feeling’ one’s sense of connection in the web of life.” See Richard J. Borden, “Personality and Ecological Concern,” in Ecological Beliefs and Behaviors: Assessment and Change, edited by David B. Gray, et. al. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), pp. 121­122.

What may be most needed psychologically is enabling the individual and groups to deal with inner and outer crises that arise from ever more threatening environmental crises such as Love Canal, Three Mile Island, and oil well fires in the Gulf War. Useful exercises are in Joseph Cornell, Listening to Nature: How to Deepen Your Awareness of Nature. (Nevada City, CA: Dawn Publications, 1987).

It would be perverse to expect that psychotherapy should limit its role to helping people to adjust to ­ to live tolerably in ­ a world of environmental disasters that threaten existence not only for a large proportion of the human race but for all forms of life. When the identity of self with nature is recognized, it will become clear that the restoration of both is part of the same necessary process.

Page 5