Ecotherapy

“Groundbreaking . . . Creating a sustainable future means redefining sanity as if the human-nature relationship matters—as it profoundly does.” —Lester R. Brown, president, Earth Policy Institute

In 1995, the anthology Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind brought the worlds of psychology and ecology together to create a new vision of planetary and personal health. This book continues the conversation, delving further into the psyche-world connection and exploring ways to do hands-on work in this area.

Ecotherapy, or applied ecopsychology, encompasses a broad range of nature-based methods of psychological healing, grounded in the crucial fact that people are inseparable from the rest of nature and are nurtured by healthy interaction with the Earth. In this volume, leaders in the field, including Robert Greenway and Mary Watkins, contribute essays that take into account the latest scientific understandings and the deepest indigenous wisdom. Other key thinkers, from Bill McKibben to Richard Louv to Joanna Macy, explore the links among ecotherapy, spiritual development, and restoring community.

As mental-health professionals find themselves challenged to provide hard evidence that their practices actually work, and as costs for traditional modes of psychotherapy rise rapidly out of sight, this book offers practitioners and interested lay readers alike a spectrum of safe, effective alternative approaches backed by a growing body of research.