"The Love of Nature and the End of the World" (Book)

Written by Shierry Weber Nicholsen

I read this book recently. It's from the viewpoint of eco-psychology / environmental philosophy.

I googled the author and up came a blog -Ecotherapy News (by Linda Buzzell-Saltzman - founder of the International Association for Ecotherapy (IAE). "The Love of Nature and the End of the World" was the "Book of the Month" - in October 2005.

From there I found the International Community for Ecophsychology, Centre for Human Ecology, and the Danish Centre for Ecotherapy. There are also sites related to Art and Ecopsychology, Art Therapy and Ecotherapy.

There is a review of the book by Louise Chawla at the Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter website:

This book has its starting point in a persistent question: How can the public mind relegate matters of the environment, which is the ground of our whole lives, to the periphery of concern, as though they were the private interest of a group called “environmentalists”? At the same time, I have never met anyone who did not value and appreciate some part of the environment. How can we be so split in our thinking.

This opening question guides this book by Shierry Weber Nicholsen, a psychotherapist in private practice in Seattle, who for many years taught environmental philosophy and psychology in Antioch University’s Program on Environment and Community (in Seattle).

By the “public mind,” she does not mean politicians and the voters they mobilize: at least, not only actors in formal political processes. If this were the case, her question would be relatively easy to answer, because there is no shortage of reports that document how big money influences politics by attributing concern for the environment to “special interest” groups of environmentalists.

Instead, Nicholsen explores a much more difficult and less charted territory by extending the public mind to include people in their spheres of everyday life. As she uses the word “mind,” it includes perceptual experience and emotion. To answer this question, she assembles the insights of aesthetics and psychoanalysis. (more)

I was especially interested in Nicholsen's discussion of the unspoken. She often refers to art and expression of nature through painting. And she is a fan of Cezanne.

A lot of the problem seems to be coming to terms with guilt and despair - even as we love nature and life - in the face of what is going on with our planet. How do psychologists "fix" such as that?