Subscribe to Gatherings
Diversity in Ecopsychology: A Review by John Scull
A Review of Peter H. Kahn, Jr., and Patricia H. Hasback. Ecopsychology: Science, Totems, and the Technological Species, by John Scull, Ph.D.
John’s review begins:
“There is a confusing tangle of words about the several psychological disciplines related to the environment – environmental psychology, ecological psychology, conservation psychology, human ecology. It is not just confusing for outsiders: When communicating among themselves, psychologists need to explain what they mean because different writers have used these words in different ways. These diverse fields all have one common feature; they are in the mainstream of academic social psychology. They all privilege experiments and other controlled quantitative research over qualitative research and they elevate all kinds of research above anecdotal evidence, clinical experience, opinion, narrative, and philosophy.
Ecopsychology has come from different traditions. The diverse pioneers in the field arrived at ecopsychology from humanistic and transpersonal psychology, experiential environmental education, scientific ecology, systems thinking, and deep ecology. As a result, the field has been much more interdisciplinary than the inclusion of “psychology” in the coined word suggests.”
Download this pdf for the rest …
Solomon Benatar’s Forward to “Billy Beaver: An Environmental Allegory”
photo by Amy Lenzo
Some years ago Michael Aleksiuk submitted a pdf of his book ‘Billy Beaver: An Environmental Allegory‘ to Gatherings. Its premise is that the human striving for status is at the psychological roots of environmental degradation. This ‘children’s story’ has been heartily endorsed by academics and scholars worldwide as a breakthrough in understanding. It is still available in the Gatherings Archives of Jan 05 – December 05.
All those years ago Solomon Benatar was invited to write a foreword to ‘Billy Beaver’ and he tracked us down so that we can include his foreword here with the original story; download and read his work here: Billy Beaver Foreword.
New Quote, New Book
“If you are divided from your body, you are also divided from the body of the world which then appears to be other than you or separate from you rather than the living continuum to which you belong”
~ From New Self New World, by Philip Shepherd
The quote comes from Parisian Pierre Goirand, who sends out an always-brilliant weekly quote to his mailing list.
New Ecopsychology Publications
A new ecopsychoanalysis blog.
And a new ecopsychology book, an anthology of writings from the UK: Vital Signs: Psychological Responses to Ecological Crisis by Mary-Jayne Rust & Nick Totton (Karnac, 2011).
From the Introduction:
“Vital signs’ are, of course, the basic physiological measures of functioning which health practitioners use to assess the gravity of a patient’s predicament. This anthology focuses not so much on our physical predicament, with so many of the Earth’s systems severely stressed and beginning to fail – there are plenty of other places to read about this. Instead we focus on our psychological predicament, as news of the situation slowly penetrates our defences and we struggle as individuals and as a society to find an adequate response.”
Ecopsychology and the Generative Approach
from Daniel Schwab, a video relating the correspondences between ecopsychology and Christopher Alexander’s generative approach to architecture, in several parts:
Schwab argues that the ecopsychology platform is shared to a high degree by architect Christopher Alexander (author of A Pattern Language and The Nature of Order) and that an ecopsychological understanding could enrich a nature-like approach to architecture.
The video was created for the 2011 Portland Urban Architecture Laboratory 2011 International Conference on “Generative Process, Patterns and the Urban Challenge.”
Partnering with Nature
by Catriona MacGregor
“Partnering With Nature”
Receives 2010
Best “Social Change Book” Award
A simple book with a powerful message that illuminates the fact that our connection to nature, animals, and the earth is a vital part of our existence.
Healing Natures, Repairing Relationships: New Perspectives on Restoring Ecological Spaces and Consciousness
Healing Natures, Repairing Relationships by Robert France brings together a leading group of distinctive voices to explore ideas underlying the restoration of environmental and human integrity in what pioneer restorationist Aldo Leopold once called our damaged “world of wounds.” This emerging paradigm—referred to by the editor as “Restoration Design”—is defined as the process by which participants creatively develop physical and conceptual relationships to engage nature through the architectural transformation of their inhabited ecological space as well as their internal environments. In this collection of essays, restoration design is shown to be a comprehensive process involving elements of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, ecopsychology, environmental art, ecological science, and landscape architecture. Continue Reading →
Our Choice
by John Scull
The library had a copy of Al Gore’s new book “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.” It’s a glossy book full of coloured pictures and laid out like a very thick magazine. He goes through various options for dealing with climate change, reviewing the research, supplying facts and figures, and telling histories.
- He gives high marks to solar, wind, geothermal, conservation, and the supergrid.
- He gives low marks to biofuel, carbon capture and sequestration, and nuclear power
- He gives very high marks to conservation
- He has good review of forests, soil, and population, factors often ignored in climate discussions
The book goes on to discuss “the obstacles we need to overcome” and “going
far quickly” but I haven’t read these sections yet.
From what I have read so far, I feel this book is good for informing people who are concerned about climate change and want to do the right thing and support effective policies. I doubt if it will have much effect on the unconvinced.
John Scull
www.naturecowichan.net
“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”
~ Walt Whitman
Deep Ecology: Steps to a new worldwiew
L’Ecologia Profonda – eBook
Lineamenti per una nuova visione del mondo
Author: Guido Dalla Casa
Price: € 5,90
Summary in English: Deep Ecology. Steps to a new worldwiew. Pangea, 1996 – Arianna, 2008 (Ebook)
Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature
Natural Attraction Ecology and The Web of Life Model: Planet Earth Speaks Through 53 Natural Senses For Personal, Social and Environmental Well-Being, by Michael J Cohen
In his new sensory environmental science book, Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature, Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D, demonstrates through a web-of-life ecology model that we inherit at least 53 natural senses and that they guide us to live in peaceful balance with Planet Earth’s global ecosystem and each other. The book documents from our human experience that, to our loss, Industrial Society’s seldom-acknowledged prejudice against nature-and-the-natural socializes us to injure and suppress most of these natural senses. This disturbance underlies many disorders we suffer.
Wild Swimming Revisited
by Harriet Greenwood
Wild Swimming has certainly caught on in the UK at least since I reviewed Roger Deakin’s Waterlog eight years ago
Two new books out this year chronicle the best places to swim, paddle or plunge outdoors in Britain.
Continue Reading →
Wild Swimming
Immersing yourself in the wildness, magic and history of Britain
by Daniel Start
When I was young, the rambling old house we shared with two other families came with lakes, woods, streams and an overgrown boat house. Situated deep in the heart of the Wye valley, close to the Welsh border, in the UK, it was here my brother and I first learned to make dams, build rafts and explore the river.
I loved one stream in particular. Gushing and snaking its way down the side of the Black Mountains, its mossy dingles and foxglove-filled dells enchanted me. Plunging into deep pools and sliding down chutes, my brother and I spent much of our summer squealing and slithering along its helter-skelter of cascades.