Key / Tudor Ecotherapy

A Field Guide
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-915565-03-7
Verlag: Karnac Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 168 Seiten

Ecotherapy: A Field Guide presents an extensive review of the field of ecotherapy that unearths a number of ambiguities in the way this therapy is understood and described. The review explores six themes derived from a critical analysis of the findings: human and nature; therapy and therapeutic; wilderness and wild; physical and meta-physical; culture and indigeneity; and the skin-bound self and the ecological Self. Throughout their exploration, the authors privilege traditions which predate the modern interest in this subject. They propose a new metatheory for ecotherapy practice that aims to bring some cohesion to the field, honour its heritage, and support its future development. Ultimately, the guide argues that great care should be taken in how ecotherapy is practiced and described, as many of the terms currently being used are culturally inappropriate and therapeutically counterproductive. 

David Key has designed and delivered outdoor programmes for psychological wellbeing and sustainability to a wide diversity of organisations and individuals for nearly 30 years. He has also taught, supervised and researched extensively in the academic sector. He is published in several languages, including with Karnac. See www.ecoself.net and https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhkey/ for further information.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Key, David

Tudor, Keith

Leseproben

1.
Scoping review
In this chapter, we set out the method by which we undertook this research and the methodology and underlying theoretical influences that informed it. Method In the Introduction, we referred to the fact that this work began in a series of group discussions with colleagues. These discussions and preliminary searches identified a considerable range of discrete terms and practices, that is, ecotherapy, ecopsychology, outdoor therapy and so on. However, the searches quickly revealed that the relationship between these terms was both complex and ambiguous, and so our initial working research question became: ‘How can we make sense of the field of ecotherapy?’ As this question involved defining the field, a scoping review was undertaken as a means of mapping the relationships between a wide range of practices and theories related to ‘ecotherapy’. Scoping reviews have become increasingly used to map broad areas of research within and across health science disciplines (Pham et al., 2014). The scoping review is a means of providing a broad overview of contemporary perspectives as well as theoretical gaps within a field (Peters et al., 2015), with the potential for this insight to inform further more systematic reviews in the future (Arksey & O'Malley, 2005). An initial list of 22 keywords was created, along with a broad research question, as is consistent with established methodological frameworks for conducting scoping reviews (Arksey & O'Malley, 2005). Following further discussion, our research question became: ‘What is the range of contemporary perspectives on ecologically minded and ecologically informed therapeutic practice, and what theoretical and/or practical relationships exist between these approaches?’ This research question was kept intentionally broad in order to keep the review process iterative and responsive to our developing knowledge of the field. Keywords were used to search for peer-reviewed studies and other relevant literature via various public health databases (i.e. PsycINFO, PubMed and Web of Science), along with supplementary searches of more general databases (Google Scholar and Dimensions). Given the large number of distinct terms in our list of keywords, it was decided that the priority for disseminating our search results would be by identifying the most widely cited publications, along with foundational texts for each of the respective search terms. This approach improved our chances of clarifying conceptual and theoretical overlap between as many sub-disciplines as possible, and as such was consistent with the traditional aims of a scoping review (Peterson et al., 2017). The process of identifying the key literature and delineating and defining search terms was undertaken by Ben Classen, our research assistant (and co-author of Chapter 2), over a period of three months. Notes, sources and data were exchanged within the research team throughout this process, and regular meetings over the same period enabled the group to discuss initial results and to make recommendations regarding search terms. Through this process, two search terms were excluded from the original list (‘animal-assisted therapy’ and ‘equine-assisted therapy’), as they were deemed to be less relevant to the overarching theme of ecotherapy than initially presumed. Similarly, one new keyword occasionally appeared during the preliminary stages of the review and was deemed relevant enough to our research question to warrant being added to the list of search terms (‘eco-anxiety’). The complete list of search terms used throughout the scoping review was: ‘adventure therapy’, ‘applied ecopsychology’, ‘despair and empowerment work’, ‘eco-anxiety’, ‘ecopsychology’, ‘ecopsychotherapy’, ‘ecotherapy’, ‘environmental psychology’, ‘forest bathing’, ‘Indigenous psychology’, ‘Indigenous (psycho)therapy’, ‘nature therapy’, ‘nature-based therapy’, ‘outdoor therapy’, ‘outdoor yoga’, ‘rites of passage work’, ‘shamanic practices’, ‘terrapsychology’, ‘wild mindfulness’ and ‘wild therapy’. Having established search terms and completed the initial scoping work, the two authors took on the completion of the project. We have: reworked and reordered the material (the findings presented in Chapter 2), privileging Indigenous traditions; become much clearer about the methodology underpinning the second phase of the project (see next section); written up and developed the discussion (which forms Chapter 3); and identified and added an analysis (Chapter 4). We are aware of the exponential growth of this field, and that even our relatively extensive list of search terms is not complete. In the time since the original search was conducted, we have become aware of ‘marine therapy’ (Soto, 2008), ‘green therapy’ (Verzwyvelt et al., 2021) and ‘blue therapy’ (Britton et al., 2018; White et al., 2016), to name just a few. Whilst we acknowledge this, it does not detract from the main purpose of the scoping review; it simply suggests that practitioners, educators and activists need to keep up to date with the field. Nor does it detract from our analysis and the metatheory we propose, within which, we suggest, any addition to or development of the field can be located. Methodology Two methodologies inform the way in which we consider the findings of this scoping review: one based on critical theory and specifically post-colonial theory and the other based on deep ecology. Critical and post-colonial theory In modern times and in the Western intellectual tradition, critical theory is often associated with the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany, more commonly referred to as ‘the Frankfurt School’. Founded in 1923 by Carl Grünberg, a Marxist professor of law, the Institute was largely funded by Felix Weil, a wealthy student whose doctoral dissertation had dealt with the practical problems of implementing socialism. The Frankfurt School comprised intellectuals, academics and political dissidents who were dissatisfied with the contemporary socio-economic systems (capitalist, fascist and communist) of the 1930s. The independent and multidisciplinary integration of the social sciences was facilitated by Max Horkheimer, a philosopher, sociologist and social psychologist, who was appointed as director in 1930 and who recruited intellectuals such as Theodor Adorno, a philosopher, sociologist and musicologist, Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and Herbert Marcuse, a philosopher. Based on Marx's (1888, p. 423) view that ‘philosophers have only interpreted the world…the point is to change it’, the critical theory proposed by the Frankfurt School was a social critique intended to effect change. Thus, the methodology of critical theory in this tradition interrogates a subject (a text, a field, a review) with the intention of effecting change (in thinking and practice). This is evident in the present work in our method and in our discussion, especially when we ask questions (a literal form of interrogation) when things (concepts, notions and categories) are ambiguous. The principal method of critical theory in the Frankfurt School was the application of Hegel's dialectical method (and its focus on negation, conflict, contradiction, interrelation and interaction), which Marx drew on to uncover contradictions in predominant ideas of society and social relations. Whilst this present work does not formally use the dialectical method as such, in the discussion section we do analyse contradictions in the field. Due to the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s, the Institute moved from Frankfurt to Geneva and then, in 1935, to New York City. What is referred to as the second phase of the Frankfurt School was marked by two publications – Dialectic of Enlightenment (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1947) and Minima Moralia (Adorno, 1951) – which shifted the emphasis from a critique of capitalism to a critique of Western civilization; this, in turn, laid the foundation for anti- and post-colonial critiques. As the word suggests, post-colonialism is the critical study of colonialism and imperialism, whereas post-colonial theory refers to a number of theories and theoretical developments that support such critique, such as subjugation (Fanon, 1961), orientalism (Said, 1978), the subaltern (Spivak, 1988) and hybridity (Bhabha, 1994). Post-colonial theory challenges some of the embedded assumptions in the Western intellectual tradition as well as the dominance of the Global North. This is represented in a modest way in this current work, especially in our presentation of the findings in our privileging of the ancient over or before the modern and the Indigenous before the Western. Deep ecology Deep ecology describes a diverse and fluid collection of ideas originally based on the paper ‘The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movements’, written by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss (1973). Although often assumed to be a philosophical position, Næss was adamant that deep ecology is not a philosophy at all but a movement, guided by prevalent – but not fixed – ideas. One idea common in this movement, which informs the...