We seek renewed reverence for the biosphere as
the ultimate context for human existence....
We seek renewed reverence for the biosphere as
the ultimate context for human existence....
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BOOK REVIEW:Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth/Healing the Mind by Harold W. Wood, Jr.
This collection of 26 essays by leaders in the new field of ecopsychology is in three parts: (1) Theoretical Perspectives, (2) Ecopsychology in Practice, and (3) Cultural Diversity and Political Engagement. While the topics covered are numerous and eclectic, and collection of writers diverse, it seems that the whole book is geared toward reaching the final third. That is to say, the intent of the book is intensely political, in the sense of using ecopsychology to contribute to protection of the Earth. The writers featured include such luminaries as Theodore Roszak, Lester Brown, Paul Shepard, Joanna Macy, David Abram, and our own Universal Pantheist Society board member William Cahalan. Some are environmentalists, but perhaps most of the authors are clinical psychologists. The central part of the book is not the only part to emphasize the practical; even "Theoretical Perspectives" comes from people with profound actual experience or expertise in the field. One essay that stood out as being important to Pantheists was "The Ecology of Grief" by Phyllis Windle. As I have argued elsewhere ("Species Requiem Day", Wild Earth , Spring, 1995, pp. 49-50), it may be as important psychologically to observe and commemorate tragedy as it is to celebrate joyous occasions. Windle points out here that mourning is a psychological necessity to recover from grief. Just as funerals provide support and guide the needed reorganization of life, so ritual expression of mourning is important to the lovers of the land and life. Windle suggests that ecologists and others perform rituals to cope with the loss of species and natural places. As the "Names" quilt memorialized those dead of AIDS, so we could make a quilt of our own, she suggests, with panels to celebrate the species we have loved and lost. She goes on to suggest that we could "hold a wake for a precious piece of land," or "create a family album, filled with the recollections" of natural areas lost, or "create a fund for memorials to invest our losses with public meaning." Such rituals need not confine themselves to grief, however: "Our mourning rituals could celebrate, too, and affirm our faith in the processes of ecology and evolution. We could note the remaining beauty of the earth, the birth of new species or subspecies,and the grand rhythms of the biogeochemical cycles." It is nice to see some mainstream press dealing with some of the topics that the Universal Pantheist Society is concerned with, as noted in our "Sacerdotal and Ceremonial Policy." Also on the subject of grief, Joanna Macy's essay "Working Through Environmental Despair" argues that just as grief work helps bereaved persons unblock their energies by acknowledging and grieving the loss of a loved one, so do we all need to unblock our feelings about our threatened planet. As she has worked on "despair work" workshops around the world, many with UPS Spinoza Award-winner John Seed in the popular "Council of All Beings" rituals, she has principles that lead from pain to empowerment. We begin, she says, by recognizing that feelings of pain for our world are natural and healthy, and then recognizing that "information alone is not enough." From there, we find that "unblocking repressed feelings releases energy and clears the mind," and "unblocking our pain for the world reconnects us with the larger web of life." Macy observes that by knowing about the interconnected-ness of life and all other beings, knowing that "our lives extend beyond our skins, in radical interdependence with the rest of the world," not only may bring us pain, but also power: "Through the systemic currents of knowing that interweave our world, each of us can be the catalyst or 'tipping point' by which new forms of behavior can spread." Another essay that struck a responsive chord in my Pantheist soul was Steven Harper's "The Way of Wilderness." Moving from "office therapy" to "wilderness practice" as a psychotherapist, Steven Harper argues that authentic experience of wilderness leads to healing and growth. Harper notes that "Wilderness is not always a carpet of flowers. Wilderness also includes gray rainy days, animal fouled water, dark, perilous forests, and deathly dangers." But, "Metaphorically, our willingness to be in the mud and rain can reflect our willingness to be in our internal mud and rain... True contact with wilderness requires more than resignation to muddy times; it requires nothing less than attentiveness to all there is around us if we desire to know its secrets." The closest approximation to any pantheist philosophy in the book may be in Laura Sewall's "The Skill of Ecological Perception" and John Mack's "The Politics of Species Arrogance." Sewall, a perceptual psychologist, argues that only by reawakening our senses can we renew our bond with the Earth. By understanding the ecological self, in which the division between inner and outer worlds becomes an arbitrary and historical distinction, we can manifest empathy and identity with family, friend, lover, community, humanity, and the nonhuman world. Similarly, John Mack deals with the prevailing attitude of Western and industrialized nations that the Earth is "a thing, a big thing, an object to be owned, mined, fenced, stripped, built upon, dammed, plowed, burned, blasted, bulldozed, and melted to serve the material needs and desire of the human species," an attitude which contrasts sharply with the "pragmatic, live-and-let-live, and reverential relationship with nature" common to indigenous leaders, who "recognize our complete interdependence with the Earth and the need to live in balance and harmony with nature." Mack calls for more than individual efforts to reanimate our connection with the Earth, contending that we need "a psychology of the environment that addresses powerful institutional, structural, and systemic realities." Unfortunately, none of the essays in this book address the importance of recognizing the sacred in the universe. None of the essays deal with transcending mere inter-personal psychology, even if on the scale of human-to-planet, to achieve a true pantheist reverence for nature, which embraces true Pantheism - the worship of the material universe as sole divinity and reverence for the natural earth as sacred. Book Review: Ecopsychology Reprinted from:
Letter to the Editor from Vol. 17, No. 3 responding to the above book review: I liked Harold Wood's review of Ecopsychology, by Roszak et all, except for his last paragraph, where he wrote, "none of the essays in this book address the importance of recognizing the sacred in the universe." The last section in my own essay in the book, "Ultimate Ground" does just that. And the rest of my essay I think includes the "spiritual" dimension throughout (although without naming it with such a designation) in its emphasis on reaching beyond the contained, rational self to the mystery in the other-than-human world. Several other essays also strongly emphasize this dimension, especially Abram's "The Ecology of Magic" and Jeanette Armstrong's "Keepers of the Earth." Admittedly, the words "sacred," "spiritual," or "pantheist" are not used, but mystery and the sacred are still being emphasized anyway. So how you can also write that none of the essays "deal with transcending mere inter-personal psychology" when that is what most of them are about I do not understand. - Bill Cahalan |
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