European Ecopsychology Society

Ecopsychology:
Personal growth
and environmental awareness

Marcella Danon, Edizioni Apogeo (gruppo Ferltrinelli), Milano-Italy, 2006

Ecopsychology is a psychology that promotes personal growth in order to open a path toward a higher awareness and to allow human beings to became self realized persons and then free, creative and responsible citizens of Planet Earth.

At the base of the research there is the concept of interagency between inner and outer world, the parallelism between a conceived world vision and the kind of reality effectively created, between the sides of personality neglected and the environmental aspects penalized, between what we do to ourselves and what we do to others and to the world.

Finding again attention, respect and love for nature signify, first of all, to give meaning, integrity and direction to our own lives. Two points - an arrival and a departure one - strictly interconnected, that defines the field of ecopsychology trough a multidisciplinary path that includes psychology, ecology, epistemology, philosophy, geography and anthropology; with working instruments chosen among the ones of counseling, psychological techniques for personal growth, meditation, artistic activities, trekking and old shamanic techniques reviewed.

Ecopsychology becomes a "Psychology of the us", stimulates toward a global vision at different levels and elaborates interaction strategies that lead toward dialogue and collaboration. It has multiples applications, from the enrichment of the helping activity in a psychological field - psychotherapy or counseling - with new reflection cues, new settings, new methodologies; to the elaboration of new strategies of environmental sensitization in schools, parks; to training in management field, of mass communications in the environmental activism, of animation in communitarian or recreational projects.

The strength of ecopsychology it is not only in a practical field but also in a philosophical one, where it suggests a vision of the world that is no more anthropocentric, but able to include all the creation, coherently with the paradigmatic shift that is going on in an epistemological and scientific ambit toward a systemic vision of reality.

Young science, not yet structured and codified, ecopsychology rises from a need of nature, beauty, wide spaces, and she offers a concrete contribute to the individual growth in this peculiar historical situation involving any cultural and experiential work that proceeds in the same direction, seeing human not opposing but within nature, life and the universe.

«We don't have to change human being, we have to change the idea that we have of ourselves and of the relationship we have with the rest of the world. We have urgent need to build new strong bases to a culture of human dignity, to a vision of man that recognizes his heights and not only his miseries, that focus the attention toward promotion of health instead of worrying only about pathology.

We all have to regain possession of our own freedom, creativity and responsibility toward ourselves and toward life, widening the idea of our ego in order to include others, humanity, nature, the whole Planet. In order to direct our caring, attention and dedication toward life's love in all his forms».

Marcella Danon

THE INDEX:

M a r c e l l a D a n o n
E C O P S Y C H O L O G Y
Personal growt and environmental awareness

I N T R O D U C T I O N
Seeking for a new vision

·Opening the dialogue with
· Refinding the connection with the earth and the infinity
· Ecopsychology in action

F I R S T PAR T - T H E I D EAS

Planetary crisis , growing opportunity

· Man searching for himself
· From hutilitarism to a culture of human dignity
· Toward a new humanism
· Too assume the bodily identity
· The inner barycentre
· The silent revolution

Psychology meets ecology

· A hat for green psychology
· To awaken psychology
· Healing ourselves healing the earth
· Psychopathology of man-nature relationship
· The ecological unconscious
· Caring of the planet, caring of oneself

The bounder between me and the world

· Psychology open the doors to spirituality
· Beyond boundaries
· The oceanic feeling
· To look higher
· What does life wants from me?

Ecology meets psychology

· From analysis to synthesis
· Toward a science of relations
· Human being is part of life
· Physics revelations
· The noosphere
· The environmental movement is born
· Superficial ecology, deep ecology

We are all Earthlings

· To wide the limits of identity
· Short biography of planet Earth
· Placing ourselves in time and space
· Evolution continues
· We live in an intelligent planet
· Toward a planetary consciousness
· Terra-Patria
· From personal growth to environmental awareness

The power of the feminine

· Finding Mother Earth
· Woman and Nature
· The two poles of the being
· Becoming whole
· Sexuality, language of life
· Sacred geography
· Another turning of the spiral

S E C O N D P A R T – I D E A S I N A C T I O N

Toward a psychology of the us

· All is relationship
· Quality of relationship, quality of life
· How to create an authentic relationship
· The art of relationship at different levels of existence
· Toward a planetary consciousness
The role of ecopsychology
· Psychology awakens
· Ecopsychology as a profession
· Ecopsychology as education
· Ecopsychology as vocation

Ecopsychology for personal growth (exercises)

· Listening inside to hear outside
· meditating to enlarge the inner horizon
· The dialogue among body, emotions and mind
· Recognize the four elements
· Contemplation, the way of the non-doing
· Ecology of the psyche
· The atlas of Planet I
· Wild nature, cultivated nature
· Becoming nature

Ecopsychology for environmental awareness (exercises)

· Walking meditation
· Resonances
· Sensorial path
· The window on the meadow
· Microenvironment
· The cycle of life
· Meeting a tree
· Power places
· Gnomes, fairy, elves and goblins

Ecopsychology for the terrestrial citizenship (exercises)

· The genius loci
· Earth's forces, sky's forces
· Searching the animal guide
· Counseling with Gaia
· Visit from the future
· We are all bodhisattva
· Land art: 3 talismans
· Building stories
· Healing rituals

C O N C L U S I O N

Loving the Earth because we are the Earth

· Gaia, yesterday and today
· The key for a quality jump at a planetary level
· The values to awaken and develop
· From theory to practice
· Inventing the world
Appendix
· Ecopsychology in the world
· Manifesto for ecopsychology – (EES)
www.ecopsicologia.it

The book it has been written and published in Italian, English rights available:
please contact Marcella Danon

Read the introduction in Italian