Patricia H. Hasbach

Peter H. Kahn, Jr.

An ecopsychology that integrates our totemic selves—our kinship with a more than human world—with our technological selves. We need nature for our physical and psychological well-being. Our actions reflect this when we turn to beloved pets for companionship, vacation in spots of natural splendor, or spend hours working in the garden. Yet we are also a technological species and have been since we fashioned tools out of stone. Thus one of this century's central challenges is to embrace our kinship with a more-than-human world—"our totemic self"—and integrate that kinship with our scientific culture and technological selves. This book takes on that challenge and proposes a reenvisioned ecopsychology. Contributors consider such topics as the innate tendency for people to bond with local place; a meaningful nature language; the epidemiological evidence for the health benefits of nature interaction; the theory and practice of ecotherapy; Gaia theory; ecovillages; the neuroscience of perceiving natural beauty; and sacred geography. Taken together, the essays offer a vision for human flourishing and for a more grounded and realistic environmental psychology.

Science, Totems, and the Technological Species

Ecopsychology

Peter H. Kahn (Jr.)

This book takes on that challenge and proposes a reenvisioned ecopsychology.

Peter H. Kahn

We often enjoy the benefits of connecting with nearby, domesticated nature -- a citypark, a backyard garden. But this book makes the provocative case for the necessity of connectingwith wild nature -- untamed, unmanaged, not encompassed, self-organizing, and unencumbered andunmediated by technological artifice. We can love the wild. We can fear it. We are strengthened andnurtured by it. As a species, we came of age in a natural world far wilder than today's, and much ofthe need for wildness still exists within us, body and mind. T he Rediscovery of theWild considers ways to engage with the wild, protect it, and recover it -- for ourpsychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species. The contributors offer a rangeof perspectives on the wild, discussing such topics as the evolutionary underpinnings of our needfor the wild; the wild within, including the primal passions of sexuality and aggression; birding asa portal to wildness; children's fascination with wild animals; wildness and psychological healing;the shifting baseline of what we consider wild; and the true work ofconservation. The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket.

Patricia H. Hasbach

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