From Publishers Weekly
Our culture is psychotic in its rift between the personal and the planetary, maintains Roszak ( The Making of a Counterculture ). Drawing freely on Jung, Freud and the Gaia hypothesis, the California State University historian posits an "ecological unconscious" in each person, a living record of cosmic evolution capable of linking us synergistically to the natural environment. But this awareness has been repressed, he contends in a bold, ambitious philosophical essay. His sketchy outline of a new discipline and therapy, "ecopsychology," is built around a dense critique of tribal animism, systems theory, Teilhard de Chardin, humanistic psychology, ecofeminism and "deep ecology," the mystical-feminist wing of environmentalism. The tools of Roszak's therapy include communion with wilderness, nature mysticism and traditional healing techniques, coupled with a sizing down of large cities, which he condemns for their inhuman scale.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In his new book, Roszak explores the correlation between the degraded condition of the earth and the uneasy state of the human psyche that he introduced in Person/Planet ( LJ 10/1/78). He elaborates on the conflict between our devaluation of the natural world--the result of an outdated picture of the universe as mindless matter in motion--and the contemporary model of the universe as a web of open, evolving, and interrelated systems. Humans belong in the universe, he argues, and as microcosms of the whole we carry its history in our collective unconscious. Roszak supports this argument by examining the anthropic principle, Deep Ecology, the Gaia hypothesis, and systems theory. Scientists will be troubled by his teleological reasoning and the speculative nature of his "ecopsychology." Nevertheless, this book makes a thought-provoking contribution to the search for an ecologically sound way of being in the world. For academic and large public libraries.
- Joan Elbers, Montgomery Coll. Lib., Rockville, Md.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.