{"id":1159,"date":"2009-05-27T14:53:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-27T14:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1159"},"modified":"2009-05-27T14:53:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-27T14:53:00","slug":"what-happened-to-ecopsychology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1159","title":{"rendered":"What Happened to Ecopsychology?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lupa posts on bioregionalism, animism, and ecopsychology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When M. was in grad school in psychology in the 1990s, she hoped that ecopsychology<\/a> would be the Next Big Thing. Articles on the psychological affects of interacting (or not) with the non-human world were popping up in places like McCall’s <\/span>magazine. Addressing “nature-deficit syndrome” would be a component of it–even the Girl Scouts are onto that<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But as an overarching concept–even without acknowledging “spirits of place”–ecopsychology does not seem to have caught fire except in a low-level therapeutic way: “Gardening makes you feel better.”<\/p>\n

Possibly related is the way in which a certain kind of self-righteous environmentalism may be ripe for mocking.<\/a> Are we still too leery of assigning spiritual value to non-human nature? Doing so has been a component of American spirituality since around 1800, as Catherine Albanese wrote in Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age<\/a>\"\". But it has always been a minority position, although a well-established one.<\/p>\n

I used to start my nature-writing students with the “Where You At?<\/a>” quiz. It offers a quick immersion in bioregional thinking and blends both non-human and human cultural material.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lupa posts on bioregionalism, animism, and ecopsychology. When M. was in grad school in psychology in the 1990s, she hoped that ecopsychology would be the Next Big Thing. Articles on the psychological affects of interacting (or not) with the non-human world were popping up in places like McCall’s magazine. Addressing “nature-deficit syndrome” would be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[18,48],"class_list":["post-1159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-nature","tag-nature-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-iH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1436,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1436","url_meta":{"origin":1159,"position":0},"title":"Thinking about ‘Nature Religion’ in the Snow","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I spent about an hour today on the snow shovel after fifteen inches fell yesterday, laughing a bitter and sardonic laugh at people who associate flowers and bunny wabbits with the spring equinox. (At least the Sun is stronger now than in midwinter.) Today's preoccupation is the talk that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=26","url_meta":{"origin":1159,"position":1},"title":"Australian "nature religion" grows","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 15, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"And in Australia, self-identified followers of nature religion grew 140 percent between 1996 and 2001, say census officials.","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2471,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2471","url_meta":{"origin":1159,"position":2},"title":"This is Civic Nature Religion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Deep in Mother Earth, an important ritual takes place. Don't tell the wrong people that we might count it as \"nature religion.\"","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12216,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12216","url_meta":{"origin":1159,"position":3},"title":"Interviews with Some Irish Witches","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 7, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Thoughts from several contemporary Irish practitioners about the Craft and nature, including an appearance by Jenny Butler, a member of The Pomegranate's editorial board.","rel":"","context":"In \"Ireland\"","block_context":{"text":"Ireland","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ireland"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1428,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1428","url_meta":{"origin":1159,"position":4},"title":"Talking to UUs about Nature Religion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 17, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I am busy working up a talk on \"nature religion\" to give to a Unitarian Universalist congregation on Sunday. Hey, it's a change: bring in the Pagan speaker at Ostara instead of Samhain. On the other hand, they did originally try to get me at Samhain, but someone messed up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":110,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=110","url_meta":{"origin":1159,"position":5},"title":"Nature blog The students in\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 8, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Nature blog The students in my \"Nature Writing in the West\" class have started blogging. Read their thoughts at Nature Blog. Now to crack the whip over them: more posts! more links! I am adding Natureblog to my links list.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}