Against a darkening backdrop of poverty, disease, pollution, species loss and war, a fresh light is rising from a field called Systems Theory. This cutting edge science views humankind as one strand in a vast web of life embracing a highly conscious planet. It is also inspiring exciting new directions in both ecology and psychology, and preparing the way for a marriage of the two. Here pioneer ecopsychologist, Dr. Sara Conn explores the connection between the inner ecology of the human psyche and the ecology of the natural world. Recognizing our intimate embeddedness in the greater whole, she believes, is the first step to healing the planet, the body-mind, and our increasingly fragmented souls.

RDK: How do you define ecopsychology?

Sara Conn: The word ecopsychology comes from Theodore Rozak's book, Voice of the Earth. It came at the time when my colleagues and I at the Center for Psychology and Social Change at Harvard Medical School were laying the foundation for a new psychology that would integrate body and mind, ecology and psychology, soul and spirit. Referred by the Center, I was already teaching an ecopsych type of course titled "Psychology of Global Awareness and Social Responsibility" for human-services providers at Harvard Medical School. So the word Ecopsychology just happened to be coined at a time when we were getting very concerned about environmental degradation, and it fit what we were doing because it is about the connection of the inner ecology of the human psyche and the ecology of the non-human natural world. It is looking at the connection between human health and the health of the Earth. It is examining where the human psyche fits within the Earth as a living system and how the Earth as a living system moves through the human psyche in ways that not only enhance human health but also enhance the health of the larger whole. It is really looking at our ways of thinking and our ways of knowing and what effect they have on the larger system.

RDK: How is ecopsychology being received by other types of psychologists?

Sara Conn: Anyone who practices can identify the unhealthiness of the culture. Health care professionals are very drawn to this field for their own interest, but it is often kind of hard to figure out how to integrate this into their own practices and their own professional environments, particularly if they work for large health care organizations. For example, we offered a workshop on Ecopsychology at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, but we did not get enough people signed up to hold it. The trouble is that the health care profession, run as it is by corporations now, is on an unnatural path, as we all know who are working within it. The emphasis is on quick cure techniques. Although I think some of them are useful, depending on the context, techniques that provide quick relief are the Big Thing. And people in our profession do want to learn them so they will all get referrals from the big health care corporations. Unfortunately one problem that people are facing is that they are so entrained into the corporate rhythm of living and this is a fast, divisive and very unnatural rhythm of life..

RDK: How does the emphasis on quick care affect the patient's prognosis and recovery?

Sara Conn: Let us take, for example, one of the quick fixes like EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is within the hypnosis realm, and it provides access to the sources of original trauma in a very quick and powerful way. And there is also cognitive behavior therapy. I think these can work well in combination with a contextual approach that knows the whole person and the life that they have put together. But I have had some people come in who have used one of these methods in conjunction with drugs, and it hasn't quite worked for them. It hasn't quite connected with the rest of their lives. RDK: Is the use of drugs in psychotherapy now routine?

Sara Conn: Drugs can work for people, but there is widespread overuse of drugs in psychotherapy these days. Pharmaceutical corporations have been successful in selling their wares. They too often hear "you have got this symptom take this pill." I have seen people who may not be as anxious, but they aren't alive. They may get more isolated or disconnected from themselves as well as other people, and that is the danger with drugs. They can be very useful if the person is also doing work on their role in the larger context, but used by themselves or overused they can really flatten the person and worsen the disconnect. It is important, though, that we look at the larger bio-chemical situation that is showing up as problems within people.

RDK: Are you alluding to the environmental pollutants that are changing the chemistry of our bodies?

Sara Conn: That is part of it, but it is also because we don't live naturally in terms of rhythm of life. We don't eat well. We certainly take in a awful lot of stimulation that is too fast, too intense, and it has an effect on our bio-chemistry. It is physical in terms of what we are doing to our bodies by what we take in. I do not know the details of it. I am not a chemist or a biologist. It would, however, be interesting if someone would do some research on seratonin metabolism and how it is affected by modern life and stimuli and the ways we eat and the pollutants in the air and water.

RDK: Why is "larger context" work important?

Sara Conn: The importance of "larger context" work is in the looking at symptoms as signals of two factors. One is of distress in the larger context (expanded beyond family) and the other is the way it is coming through the particular individual. Family therapy is important, but it does not go beyond family to the larger community, and certainly not to the global community. In the early nineties the system theorists and deep ecologists started us looking at the impact of the natural, ecological non-human community on the human psyche, and this also became a part of larger context work. Each person's particular symptom contains a lot of information about their sensitivity to the world and their possible part in it. These insights have certainly energized me in my work

RDK How ready are people for ecopsychology?

Sara Conn: People still come to psychotherapy wanting to get "fixed". And the practices that work best for people are those that really explore their problems as systems. Our approach is to sit with them, explore them, get familiar with them, befriend them. Since they often come with a different goal, it is hard at first for people to learn to step back and sit with their pain in a way that gives them access to the information it holds and allows them to find ways to move through it themselves. People need to open to the flow in the world and their part in it, and learn from that what they are needing, and find it in their lives. The "fix" will come from inside out, not from me or outside in. I think people are more and more ready for ecopsychotherapy because it certainly has a lot of what acupuncture, yoga and various other medicinal traditions try to offer - an opening of your "channels" to allow things to flow through.

RDK: What are some of the typical complaints that your clients come to you with? Sara Conn: I see people with regular problems in life they are either anxious or depressed. They are not feeling. Lately one of the ways people are expressing their problems is that they aren't being themselves. They say it in different ways, but they really are noticing that they are in pain about not expressing themselves in the ways they want to in the world. They feel they are either held back because of self esteem issues or they're not doing what they feel is right in their work or their relationships. But they are not sure what it is. So they are more existential questions than they are pathologies. I say that in quotes.

RDK: Do psychologists have to treat all mental discomforts as pathologies?

Sara Conn: Well in order to get insurance reimbursement, we need to give a diagnosis. I see a lot of people who are not on insurance, so we don't have to do that but if we do have to do it, I always consult my client about the possibilities and what seems to fit. Personally I do not like labels or diagnosis at all, because I think what is important is the process. It is really not what may or may not be going on at the moment.

RDK: So you feel labeling is not that important.

Sara Conn: I think the name is less important. What is comforting is feeling heard and connected with. Like "yeah I get what you are experiencing, it is familiar. I have heard it from other people. Yes it is a way of being connected to the world, it is your way of experiencing what is going on in the world." People are comforted by this understanding. I really don't think I have ever had anybody beg for a diagnosis, but they do want to know that it is a way of being that it is familiar to me or that other people share the experience, so they won't feel so alone. There are, however, some people who want a diagnosis because that means there are ways to fix it and they would feel comfortable. And sometime it is appropriate, and I will suggest it. It is not, however, the only thing that helps. It is very important to really do the therapy and look at the larger picture, larger than the bio-chemistry that triggers or stimulates the depression or the anxiety or any of those things.

RDK: What is a typical larger context or eco-psychology therapy like?

Sara Conn: I was doing larger context work long before eco-psychology. Eco-therapy is really more specific in that it explores with people their connections with the natural world. I always ask those questions in the beginning and come back to them during the course of therapy because that is a potential source of nourishment. So I really explore that and encourage it.

We have a class right now in the Boston Architectural Center and they are doing their "natural being" exercise every day, which is spending five minutes or more a day with a natural being in their daily landscape which they felt drawn to in their first week of class. They do this exercise religiously! There are times when I suggest this exercise to my clients. I ask them to pick a quiet moment to develop a relationship with a natural being. I tell them that it is a way of getting out of their normal everyday routine and instruct them to step back and ask general questions about their life.

There was a man I saw who was an MD. in a busy HMO. He was dealing with a lot of stress in his work situation, his marriage, with his kids, and was at a loss about what he was going to do about it. I suggested the "natural being" exercise to him, and he chose this tree that was on an island, a little island, in this little body of water. He could sit on the banks and see the tree on the island not too far away and he would sit there with it. He did this, it was like a prescription and he followed it. And he really got a lot out of it. He had the ability to ask general questions such as, what is right for me right now, what is my part in all of this, and then just sit with those questions and wait. And he would come back and say, "you know, that is powerful." He came back for a check after a big break just last year and he said "you know I still go to that tree. It really, really helped. me." It enabled him to step back and do the kind of work that we are working on here, too. And another technique that I have used is to invite people to play with whatever I have here in my office. I ask them to take a moment to be still with a rock or shell or crystal or whatever. And then we walk or drive down to Sky Pond and do an exercise which is sort of like my colleague Cindy Krum's Soul Tracking exercise. It requires them to be still and open to "the other" and then when they are drawn to some spot or natural being, I leave them in an interaction with it, and they see what it has to say to them about where they are right now in that moment of that day. Sometimes it is not immediately revelatory but it is refreshing and then later they will say remember the time that we went out. The experience stays with them. It keeps working. And then they can try it on their own.

RDK: What are the most tangible outcomes of eco-psychology in education or therapy?

Sara Conn: People acquire the ability to step back and gain other ways of taking in the world and visualizing it and talking about it. And it often requires community to support the continuation of this development of other ways of knowing. Community is really the key. What everybody talks about is that they really need support in their lives to continue to explore their inter-connectedness to the whole. So one of the positive outcomes of our therapy is that it encourages people to seek out supportive communities.

RDK: Forming community is the most basic human need - people even seek it in corporate enterprises......

Sara Conn: Those are repressive communities that hold you in a certain way of knowing, a certain way of thinking about the world. Eco-psychology honors diversity and flow through. Flow through of information and energy is required and is an essential part of any healthy system. And if a community is going to be healthy it needs a flow through of energy and information. Eco-psychologists feel hymanbeings require diversity in ways of knowing, as well as other kinds of diversity that include being able to trust our gut senses, our intuition and imagination. The images that come to us when we step back and allow ourselves to quiet the incessant "talking-talking inside our heads" and open up to other channels and connections are a part of the healing process. And that is a key part of the teaching and it certainly is a key part of the work I do here, too. People are so into their stories sometimes that the real challenge is to step back and say, "OK what is going on with this body and what is going on with this larger body, which is your culture, your larger home, the wider community you are connected with.

RDK: What do you mean by "talking-talking inside the head"?

Sara Conn: Well, there is a lot of support for it in our culture. We so emphasize a way of knowing that is linear and mechanical and conceptually focused. As long as you understand things intellectually and conceptually then you've "got it" and it really leaves out other ways of knowing and understanding. The over emphasized verbal, conceptual and linear mechanistic way of thinking.- that is what I mean by "talking talking inside the head."

RDK: How hopeful are you about human beings given the social realities that surround us and the way in which we process our information?

Sara Conn: I actually have my moments of darkness and despair, but lately I find myself excited about the possibility that we are on the edge of transformation, that people are more and more ready to get it. Driving back from church the other day I came around the corner of Mass Ave and Route 16 and there were people on one side holding signs for peace and against war. And then there were people on the other corner holding American flags saying "Support our troops!", but I saw them as one. I mean, yes, support our troops. Yes, of course. And of course there are those saying bring them home now or do not bring them home now because we have created such a mess over there that we have to do something to help. But in these confrontations people are getting to know each other more. It is a greater possibility that we are going to learn how to listen to each other and face the Bush or the Saddam within me and the conservative within me or the pro-war voice, whatever- they really are parts of me and I can understand that and honor that within somebody else and continue with dialogue.

I think transformation is possible because of people's need and intense yearning for connection. Well, I don't know if it is always there in everyone, and some people don't know what they are missing, but then when they taste it, "oh, wow, that is it!" - the celebration of life, the connection with others, with the Other. It is a challenge to widen ourselves to include all of it. So the transformation that is needed feels possible. Probable? I do not know.

RDK: What will it take to bring back balance within human societies?

Sara Conn: I do not know how to answer you specifically but for me what comes up is the Arnold Toynbee quote about spirituality coming back to the foreground in the 21st century. And that is what I see happening Even in the psychotherapy at our institute, we focus on psychological and spiritual development and the connection between the two. Modern sciences, invite us to the kind of world view that is convergent with Buddhism and other types of spirituality that point to the unity and oneness of life. These views still hover outside the mainstream, but they are getting stronger and stronger over the years. I have met people from scientific and medical networks in England and Scotland and they too are into this kind of work. I am also seeing this kind of work outside of Europe, so it feels like the conceptual shift is inevitable, but whether it is going to be achieved in time - that is the big question.

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ECOPSYCHOLOGY WEBSITES

Center for Psychology and Social Change
Cambridge, Ma 02139
Tel: 617-497-1553
Internet: www.centerchange.org/eco

http://ecopsychology.athabascau.ca/0197/resource.htm

http://www.goshen.edu/bio/Biol410/BSSPapers98/nussbaum.html

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Kennebunkport resident, Ms. Dixit-Kubiak is an independent health/environment researcher, yoga teacher, shiatsu therapist, and program coordinator for Big Medicine's Eco-Holistic Health Exchanges. Her email is metamed@nancho.net.