Giegerich, Romanyshyn, and the Eco-Apocalypse Witnesses Only Club 

A critique of two academics who talk about
  ecopsychology without knowing much about it.

 

Craig Chalquist

Chalquist.com

 

Published in Spring Journal (Spring 2011).

 

Craig Chalquist, PhD is a core faculty member in East/West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He holds a certificate in Permaculture Design and is a certified Master Gardener through the University of California Cooperative Extension. In addition to being a "do-gooder," "moralizer," "preacher," and ecopsychologist, he trains activists and psychotherapists in ecotherapy. He is the author of six books, including Terrapsychology: Reengaging the Soul of Place (Spring Journal Books, 2007), and co-editor with Linda Buzzell of the anthology Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind (Sierra Club Books, 2010). Visit his website at Chalquist.com.

 

The debate began in Spring Journal, with Robert Romanyshyn’s thoughtful and moving article reflecting on the decline of polar ice.1 Wolfgang Giegerich responded by calling Romanyshyn a preacher,2 prompting Romanyshyn to define his position in contrast to “eco-psychology” (it’s actually spelled “ecopsychology”), a field he sees as largely self-righteous and activist.3 Jung was invoked, and Rilke. Latin phrases were resorted to. That kind of debate.

Both men agreed at least on this, though: that being an ecopsychologist and activist precludes deep psychological work. For Giegerich, eco-oriented activism of the type he accuses Romanyshyn of indulging in is not only “incompatible with what I would consider psychology proper”4, but moralistic,5 an imposition of subjective value judgments,6 an ego trip,7 playing world-rescuer,8 being “a politician, a technician...a social engineer...a healer or savior, educator, or reformer...do-gooder,”9 and other presumably bad things. “Ecological psychology,” he announces without realizing the field bearing that name is completely different in aims and methods from ecopsychology, is “an oxymoron or even a down-right contradiction in terms,”10 evidently because it takes the external world seriously enough to do more than think about it. As for Romanyshyn, he “would not label my work eco-psychology” (sic) without extensive qualifications,11 presumably because it represents “a psychology that often seems to lack a proper humility in the face of the Anima Mundi”12 and “serves our own narcissism.”13 He gives no examples of these faults, but in spite of them he approvingly cites ecopsychologist Andy Fisher for his lack of inner/outer self/world dualism.14

If either academic ever had an earnest conversation with real activists or real ecopsychologists, it didn’t show. Neither acknowledges any of the significant psychological differences between activism as narcissistic rescue and activism as legitimate soul work. Both accept without question the entrenched, institutionalized split between psychological/intellectual speechifying and getting one’s hands dirty in the real world, although Romanyshyn does wonder briefly, if only about Giegerich, why depth psychology “too often seems irrelevant today and perhaps even dangerous in its disregard of the world?”15 My activist students would have much to say about that!

This relatively recent split between psychological work and activism is puzzling given the activist history of depth psychology. Jung, who began scribbling mandalas while on active military duty at the end of WW I, drew up psychological portraits of leading Nazis for the American Office of Strategic Services during WW II. Alfred Adler, a socialist, helped build and promote child guidance clinics. Wilhelm Reich worked as an advocate for women’s rights, and Harry Stack Sullivan for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). Otto Fenichel was an active socialist. Nancy Caro Hollander has written movingly of psychoanalysts working under conditions of extreme political oppression in South America.16 Ignacio Martin-Baro, the founder of liberation psychology, was shot to death in El Salvador while conducting psychodynamic research on the inner consequences of state terrorism. His last words were, “This is an injustice!” Karl Abraham treated wounded soldiers.

More recently, Mary Watkins and Helene Lorenz have conducted depth-psychological cultural work in South America.17 James Hillman has a long record of showing up for civic events. Analyst Andrew Samuels is a political consultant; in 1995 he co-founded Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility.

Are we seriously to believe that all these foundational depth psychologists stopped being depth psychologists every time they worked for a just cause? Would they have seen their activities in this pale, intellectually filtered light? And not only them, but the feminists, the deep ecologists, the environmentalists, the protesters who speak out so eloquently against sexism, racism, and totalistic control: all to be diagnosed as self-absorbed narcissists, saviors, and do-gooders unworthy of carrying the official Soul ID card issued by the Department of Homeland Psychology?

It seems to me that Giegerich and Romanyshyn are trying to write a one-size-fits-all prescription for what should be a matter of temperament, talent, and personal passion: namely, how much activism a depth practitioner feels called to undertake. A basic strength of depth psychology remains its capacity for tending psychic diversity and polycentricity, actively welcoming in silenced voices inhabiting the margins of culture and consciousness. Likewise, in ecopsychology we delight in how the natural world avoids monolithic absolutes in its ongoing abundance and organic experimentation.

Both fields teach us that the more diversity we welcome, and the less “othering” we indulge in, the more productive the ecosystem to which we belong. Neither field seems to favor a Witnesses Only Club of those who prefer to write at each other from across the ivory ramparts while the hard work of cultural transformation goes on elsewhere, carried forward by those who fight every day the wholesale dismantling of education, academia, and what’s left of democracy.

Nevertheless, if eco-activists and their colleagues don’t get to be credited with doing “real” psychological work out in the field where it counts, perhaps it doesn’t matter in the long run. They will struggle on as usual, rising seas or no, until the academic theorists finally catch up or float away.

 

NOTES

 

  1. Robert D. Romanyshyn, “The Melting Polar Ice: Revisiting Technology as Symptom and Dream,” Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture 80 (Fall 2008), pp. 79-116.

  2. Wolfgang Giegerich, “The Psychologist as Repentance Preacher and Revivalist: Robert Romanyshyn on the Melting of the Polar Ice,” Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture 82 (Fall 2009), pp. 193-221.

  1. Robert D. Romanyshyn, “Who Is Wolfgang Giegerich?” Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture 84 (Fall 2010), pp. 273-310.

  2. Giegerich, p. 194.

  3. Giegerich, p. 200.

  4. Giegerich, p. 201.

  5. Giegerich, p. 206.

  6. Giegerich, p. 210.

  7. Giegerich, p. 211.

  8.  Giegerich, p. 215.

  9.  Romanyshyn, 2010, p. 275.

  10.  Romanyshyn, 2010, p. 278.

  11.  Romanyshyn, 2010, p. 296.

  12.  Romanyshyn, 2010, p. 298.

  13.  Romanyshyn, 2010, p. 298.

  14.  Nancy Caro Hollander, Love in a Time of Hate: Liberation Psychology in Latin America (New York: Other Press, 1997).

  15.  See Mary Watkins and Helene Shulman, Toward Psychologies of Liberation (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2010).