Archive for the ‘personal environmentalism’ Category
May 20, 2010
“After all the test preps, and all the focus on getting things just so you can get into college, I feel like an empty shell. There is no me, and the person who ends up succeeding and getting all that stuff isn’t me at all.” KF, 17 year old NYC teen.
As BP finally siphons some of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, it will most likely fade from public attention. The same can be said for forest fires. Crown fires that spread rapidly from treetop to treetop attract attention and frenzied intervention. Fires that smolder beneath thick layers of fallen leaves can burn undetected and destructively for many acres before anyone notices. The mind gradually assimilates most long term chronic events, and it can even seem as if they no longer impact our lives. Humans have an ability to get used to almost anything, a trait that is adaptive in the short-term and destructive in the long term. The mind numbing defenses of repression and dissociation are the cultural equivalent of bureaucratization, processes meant to dissipate and nullify the possible emotional tension of group behavior.
David Brooks recently expressed the feeling that Elena Kagan was too perfunctory, too organized around success, not inspired or even inspirational. While Brooks is wrong about her, I believe he might be on to something very important. What he is describing is the gradual dulling of individual expression and intellectual risk-taking brought on by the culture’s emphasis on an overly bureaucratic, professional and strategic presentation of self. Ask any teen in high school, like the young woman I once met who was interested in a certain 9/11 project for her college resume. Teens will tell you how the continued emphasis on the externals of success and the neglect of powerful socio-cultural values gradually wears them down.
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Tags:adolescent anxiety, adolescent burn-out, adolescent depression, adolescents, David Brooks, environmental influences on kids, peer pressure, teen behavior, teen burn-out, teen sexuality, teen stress, teens
Posted in adolescence, ecopsychcology, parenting, personal environmentalism | Leave a Comment »
May 4, 2010
Read this. Krugman echoes comments by Glenn Albrecht. The surprising issue is that given the severity of this disaster, so few people seem as upset as I might expect, at least here in NYC. I venture to say, however, that unless you live along the Gulf coast or work in it waters, the implications of this oil spill event are being conveniently tucked away in the dark corners of people’s minds. At a dinner over the weekend, friends commented, “This is terrible,” looking anguished and frightened in a manner that tightened their eyes. No one that I spoke to was motivated to do anything. There are, however, psychological concepts that can explain such apathy. They can also suggest strategies to enable a more authentic national dialogue about our energy choices. The Gulf Coast doesn’t only need Obama. It needs the citizenry.
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Tags:apathy Gulf Coast oil spill, Gulf Coast oil spill, pschological aspects of climate change, psychological response to Gulf Coast oil spill
Posted in ecopsychcology, environmental disaster, human interaction, personal environmentalism, politics, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
April 15, 2010
The importance of a sense of place to psychological well-being became evident during my travel to Israel. While we understand many psychological difficulties in terms of relationships (particularly parental), or development, or even the body, rarely do psychologists venture into the significance of space and place. Human geographers like Yi-Fu Tuan, Nigel Thrift, Steve Pile and Derek Gregory (to name a few) have written extensively about the mutual influence of space and consciousness. Clinicians have not focused on it as much, but my thinking is that we can learn about another facet of our minds from these geographers . (more…)
Tags:ecological unconscious. human relationship to nature, human relationship to nature, relationship to place
Posted in geography, human interaction, personal environmentalism, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
March 9, 2010
from uk.canada.travel/ConsumerWeb/ExperienceDetail...
Some people have been debating whether or not scientists should become climate change activists or if they should stick to the data. The concern is that the general population seems less worried about environmental issues. Given our culture’s typical reliance on external solutions to problems, it doesn’t surprise me that journalists and pundits are looking to Obama, scientists, activists, politicians and economists to motivate change. As someone who helps people transform less than optimal behavioral problems into opportunities for accomplishment, lets begin with this fact: People don’t always act in their own best interest. Usually, what most motivates people to behave in a manner that affirms self and others is direct emotional enlivenment that connects to an inner conviction or memory. Let me provide an example from my work to illustrate how it might be possible to get people interested in climate change. (more…)
Tags:climate change, ecoloical unconscious, environment, ground up environmental change, human relationship to nature, human relationships, mind nature relationship, personal environmentalism, pschological aspects of climate change
Posted in climate change, ecopsychcology, human interaction, personal environmentalism, relationships, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
March 2, 2010
An adolescent with whom I work discussed the complexity of privilege. “My parents paid just over $12,000.00 for our family to go on a 5-day wilderness backpacking trip, with a service that provides the gear, the food, a plane to transport you there and a guide. I loved it and it changed me, like any amazing experience your parents buy for you. But the fact that it didn’t come from within me made it seem like another thing that someone gave me. Maybe it would have felt less strange if having that relationship to the wilderness wasn’t something only wealthy people could buy, but just a more natural and expected part of how kids are raised.”
His comment reminded me of a question: how will people who have been raised in a time of excess choose to live sustainable lives ? Evan Thomas said in this week’s Newsweek, “The problem is not the system. It’s us – our ‘got mine’ culture of entitlement.” I know the people of whom he writes. They are not of any particular subculture but rather inhabit every landscape from poverty to opulence with a unfamiliarity with limits and boundaries of any kind, as well as personal needs that seem small in comparison to what the planet has to offer.
And, Al Gore is asking these people to be the opposite of who they are in order to save the planet. How does the culture of excess shift gears to become a sustainable one?
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Tags:AL Gore NYT, climate change, ecological unconscious. human relationship to nature, Evan Thomas Newsweeek, excess living, ground up environmental change, human relationship to nature, personal environmentalism, pschological aspects of climate change, sustainability
Posted in climate change, ecopsychcology, human animal interaction, personal environmentalism | Leave a Comment »
February 12, 2010
Yorkshire countryside, UK, photo by hchalkley
Having read my Wasted and Bombed paper, Nick Totton contacted me. He is a body therapist with an MA in psychoanalysis from Yorkshire, part of a network of British therapists of different specialties working on the interface between psychology and the environment. Check them out. And here too. Totton is currently editing a collection of writing on ecopsychology for the journal he edits Psychotherapy and Politics International . He is also working on a book which is intended to bring together ecopsychology, ecotherapy, and political issues. I had the opportunity to read his enlightening key-note address to an Adventure therapy conference.
He wrote: “But as a therapist, I am also aware of the need for a change of mind, a huge shift of consciousness, if humanity is going to take a different path into the future. That is why I have become involved with ecopsychology – an involvement which stems from my work as a body psychotherapist: it seems to me that a positive relationship with the other-than-human is founded in a positive relationship with our own embodiment.”
Between Glenn Albrect in Australia, Thomas Doherty and Peter Kahn on the west coast and now these folks in the UK, along with myself and the folks at CRED in NYC where I have spent some time learning and researching, it does feel as though there is a growing international interest in the unacknowledged relationship between our psyches and our environment. Thrilling, really.
Tags:ecopsychology, Ecopsychology UK, ecopsychology west coast, ecospsychology Australia, international ecopsychology, mind nature relationship
Posted in climate change, ecopsychcology, personal environmentalism, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
February 1, 2010
A NYTimes article by Daniel Smith describes a growing field of psychology, ecopsychology, that examines links between the function of the human psyche and nature. Glenn Albrecht in Australia coined “solastalgia” – “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault.” Thomas Doherty is a clinical psychologist in Portland Oregon trying to analyze and explicate the relationship between environmental issues and psychological well-being. Peter Kahn is a developmental psychologist researching, among other things, how technologically mediated nature versus real nature impacts human functioning. My take? In an article published in Psychoanalytic Dialogues (which to my delight Doherty has used in his courses), I suggest that some common behaviors of young adulthood like obliterative drinking, excessive sexuality and dissociative materialism – as well as other classic psychological difficulties – are very much an expression of our changed relationship to the physical environment. In another paper based on random interviews I see a pattern. The more engaged a person’s relationship to the physical world, the more active they are in making choices about their life. In other words, the mind’s agency is directly affected by experiences with the environment. Like Gregory Bateson , I believe that the mind and the planet/environment/ecology in which we live define each other in an ongoing dialectic. What does this mean for you? (more…)
Tags:ecological unconscious. human relationship to nature, green consciousness, mind nature relationship, solastalgia, urban environmentalism
Posted in climate change, human interaction, personal environmentalism | Leave a Comment »
January 5, 2010
In his New Year’s address, the pope called on Catholics (and I assume the rest of us can participate) to consider protecting the environment a personal responsibility as well as a political event. The Pope said, “An objective shared by all, an indispensable condition for peace, is that of overseeing the earth’s natural resources with justice and wisdom.”
If we don’t protect our planet and treat it as the sacred entity that supports life, we risk our own lives, we threaten humanity. Political decisions and legislation often brings about social changes. Copenhagen was a little more important than the Pope might wish to acknowledge. Yet, I also believe that change begins at home. Most of us wonder, what might living differently entail? How would it help me? What follows are three things anyone can do that will help the environment and support psychological health.
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Tags:Copenhagen, environment, ground up environmental change, personal environmentalism, Pope's new year address, relationship to nature
Posted in climate change, ethics, personal environmentalism, politics, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Ordinary Earth ™ 