If reality is experienced by the ecological Self, our behavior naturally and beautifully follows norms of strict environmental ethics. We certainly need to hear about our ethical shortcomings from time to time, but we change more easily through encouragement and a deepened perception of reality and our own self, that is, through a deepened realism. How that is to be brought about is too large a question for me to deal with here. But it will clearly be more a question of community therapy than community science: we must find and develop therapies which heal our relations with the widest community, that of all living beings.
--Arne Naess

The core problem underlying the current environmental crisis is psychological: a delusion that humans are separate from the rest of nature. Helping people to recover from this incredibly destructive, mistaken belief is the task of the ecotherapist.

Arne Naess, one of the founders of the Deep Ecology movement in the 1960s, diagnosed the root cause of our problems: anthropocentrism. He and many other scholars have spent decades tracing the origins of the pernicious and narcississtic idea that humans are separate from, and superior to, all other living and non-living beings. John Seed, a colleague of ecophilosopher Joanna Macy, describes the causative factors this way:

We live in a world where only humans were created in the image of God, only humans have a soul and, prophetically: "the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth on the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hands they are delivered."[Genesis 9:2]

Given such deep roots in culture and psyche, little wonder that a change of concepts is not by itself sufficient to reorient ourselves, to align ourselves back with the flow. As Arne Naess pointed out, ecological ideas are not enough, we need an ecological identity, an ecological self. Ideas only engage one part of our brain, the frontal lobe, cognition. We need ecological feelings and actions as well as ideas to nurture ecological identity.

But how to do this? Seed reminds us that as the poets have always known, in wild places “we may expand into larger identities.” Time spent in nature allows the soul to breathe in its full dimensions and helps us grow into our full Ecological Self.

It’s also wise, however, to remember that “nature” includes not only far-away wilderness but also wild psyche (our dreams, the unconscious both individual and collective), our wild, untamed bodies and all the physical, mental and spiritual mystery that surrounds us, including the herbs on our kitchen windowsill, the spider spinning her web on our office ceiling, the cat who nestles up to us at night and the trickster raccoon who visits our patio veggie containers under the full moon. Especially for those of us living in cities and towns, it’s good to know that all these forms of “nearby nature” can be as potent healers as Yosemite or the redwood forests.

So nature can be seen to include all that is not under the direct control of the arrogant and controlling human ego. But it’s also important to remember that even the human ego is, at core, also part of nature.

John Seed and Joanna Macy invented the “Council of All Beings,” a set of experiential deep ecology processes, ceremonies, and rituals designed to help us to expand our identification with the rest of nature. "‘Community therapy to develop ecological self’ is a good way of thinking about this work,” says Seed, and he takes inspiration from the processes indigenous cultures use to remind themselves over and over again of the indissoluble connections between people and the rest of nature.

So how to include all of this in our normal psychotherapy practice?

One simple thing we can do is to expand our view of our clients to include their “ecological Self” as well as their social and intrapsychic selves in our diagnoses and treatment plans. We can begin to deepen our understanding to include the fact that in addition to whatever presenting problems our clients bring to us, they also carry the anthropocentric narcissism we all suffer from and the pain of disconnection from the rest of nature. Treatment possibilities can then include the powerful healing potential of reconnection with nature and Nature. With this small shift in perspective, we can gently encourage clients to open their hearts and minds to the widest realms of the ecological Self both within and without.

Resources:

Macy, Joanna. World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2007. Especially the chapter on “The Greening of the Self.”

Seed, John. “The Ecological Self.” EarthLight magazine #53, Spring 2005, vol 14, #4

Linda Buzzell, M.A., M.F.T. is a psychotherapist, ecotherapist and career counselor in private practice in Santa Barbara and Woodland Hills. She is the founder of the International Association for Ecotherapy (http://thoughtoffering.blogs.com/ecotherapy) and the co-editor with Craig Chalquist, M. Sc., Ph.D., of Ecotherapy: Psyche and Nature in a Circle of Healing (in press, Sierra Club Books).