FEBRUARY/MARCH 2007

HEALING HUMANKIND’S DISSOCIATION FROM NATURE:
DOES ENVIRONMENTAL DISREGARD SUGGEST THE NEED FOR A NEW DSM CATEGORY?
— Mark A. Schroll

During the forum “Ecopsychology, Transpersonal Science and Psychedelics,” Stanley Krippner said, “if we are stuck with the diagnostic and statistical manual, we should have a category for people who are destroying the environment” (Krippner S, Ecopsychology, Forum with Vich M, Fadiman J, Krippner S, Mojeiko V; Schroll MA, moderator, Association for Transpersonal Psychology conference, Palo Alto, CA, Sept. 8, 2006, http://www.conferencerecording. com). Clarifying this point, Krippner adds that ecopsychologists:

. . . take the position that human beings are an integral part of a greater system. . . . Healthy functioning needs to include the realization of this interconnectedness and interdependence, an insight that has been an essential part of shamanic traditions for at least 30,000 years.

Speaking to the concerns of how much further mainstream psychology has to evolve to embrace the worldview that humanistic, transpersonal, and ecopsychology are calling for, Krippner and Jeanne Achterberg point out, “biomedical investigators rarely ask such questions as, is there a recovery prone personality?” (Krippner & Achterberg, Anomalous healing experiences, in Cardena E, Lynn SJ & Krippner S, editors, Varieties of anomalous experience: Examining the scientific evidence, 2000, APA, p. 356). In other words, do some people have a personality that not only assists them in healing, but prevents them from getting ill in the first place? Carl and Stephanie Simionton explore this question in relationship to cancer patients in their book Getting Well Again (Simionton OC, Matthews-Simionton S, & Creighton J (1998, Tarcher/St. Martin’s).

More recently, [Etzel] Cardena added that there is no current diagnosis in psychology and psychiatry for the underdevelopment of a person’s capacities for achieving an enjoyable quality of life; nor is disregard for the environment looked upon as a disorder by biomedical practitioners, although it would be a sign of imbalance and dysfunction by most indigenous practitioners (Cardena, 2000, p. 356).

This need to create a DSM category for “achieving an enjoyable quality of life,” in many ways reflects the concerns that lead to humanistic psychology’s formation, yet this goal has not been fully achieved in its 45 years of existence (behaviorism, and to a greater extent psychoanalysis, view human existence in terms of a symptomoriented medical model focused on abnormal behavior, deviance, and social control, which is one of humanistic psychology’s many arguments for moving beyond behaviorism and psychoanalysis).

Juxtaposed, the closest to creating a DSM category for an enjoyable quality of life—thereby actualizing the vision of humanistic psychology— is DSM-IV (V62.61) Religious or Spiritual Problem (Lukoff D, Turner R, & Lu F, “Transpersonal psychology research review: Psychoreligious dimensions of healing,” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1992, 24(1): 41-60).

A complete examination of this point will need to be taken up elsewhere as its discussion exceeds this essay’s limits. Instead, this essay is concerned with the question Cardena, Krippner, & Achterberg raise: Do we need a new DSM category for our environmental disregard? Likewise, this concern prompted me to title my review of Ralph Metzner’s book The Well of Remembrance: Rediscovering the Earth Wisdom Myths of Northern Europe (1994, Shambhala) as “Diagnosing Humankind’s Dissociation From Nature” (Schroll MA, 1995, CenterPiece Spring: 14–15, Center for Psychology and Social Change), because the schizoid personality type resembles environmental disregard. In Green Psychology, Ralph Metzner defines our environmental disregard as “the collective psychopathology of the relationship between human beings and nature,” or dissociation (1999, Inner Traditions).

Examining these concerns in the present essay, we will gather evidence to suggest a new DSM category: Anthropocentrism or the Humanist Superiority Complex. The ecopsychological movement is involved in the process of urging people to re-examine their attitudes about humankind’s relationship with the nonhuman world (Schroll, in press, provides a comprehensive history and origin of ecopsychology). Today many of us who have grown up under the influence of EuroAmerican colonialism like to think of ourselves as stewards of the Earth, as caretakers of a wild and dangerous planet that needs our guidance and domestication. In a strange ironic twist, this perception of our selves as planetary steward may be a symptom of one of the many ways humankind has learned to rationalize our disregard for the environment. A symptom the deep ecology movement refers to as anthropocentrism, or that Metzner calls the humanist superiority complex (Green Psychology) ecopsychologists argue is an attitude of human superiority that has placed humankind in the role of planetary executioner.

DIAGNOSING HUMANKIND’S DISSOCIATION FROM NATURE

This stark realization of a world at risk (Walsh R, 1984, “World at risk,” Association for Transpersonal Psychology Newsletter, Spring: 10–14) prompted Donald Rothberg to suggest that humankind’s cultural evolution has reached a crisis of modernity (Rothberg D, 1993, “The crisis of modernity and the emergence of socially engaged spirituality,” ReVision 15(3), 1993: 105–114). The story of the universe needs retelling (Swimme B & Berry T, 1992, The universe story: From the primordial flaring forth to the ecozoic era—A celebration of the unfolding of the cosmos, HarperSanFrancisco), though a more contemporary image of story would be to suggest the universe is like an unfolding movie. Keeping this analogy of the universe as movie in mind for a moment, we know that the coherence of a movie comes from the way it tells a story. Now suppose that we were to start cutting pieces out of this movie. At first the changes in content would be so subtle that we might not notice a difference. This process—editing—goes on all the time in films, and is similar to the process of natural selection in nature: Rather than being destructive, the process of editing serves to sharpen the focus of the film’s coherence and meaning. Natural selection achieves the same function by eliminating those species and cultures that do not produce the “best fit” to the bioregional coherence of the Earth’s natural systems. If we continue editing, we begin to notice the story becoming more and more fragmented; it begins to lose its meaning and coherence. Taken to an extreme, the fragmentation created by continued editing passes a certain threshold; the movie starts to become incoherent and eventually reaches a point where it no longer contains enough content to hold itself together as a meaningful story.

The same is true of the world in which we live because the story of the universe is told through the story of meaningful content and its coherence. The story of this Earth is told through the diversity of human cultures and the biodiversity of the nonhuman world upon which humankind sustains itself. It is a story that through the process of natural selection has continued to change and transform its characters throughout its evolutionary history. It is important to make a distinction between natural selection and the systematic genocide of cultures and species that has taken place at the hands of humankind.

Natural selection does not produce fragmentation or incoherence within the universe story because this process actually stimulates the creation of new cultures and species, thereby maintaining its coherence. This is the process that James Lovelock (1988, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth, Bantam) has referred to as the Gaia hypothesis, and Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (Fox W, 1990, Toward a Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism, Shambhala) have referred to as autopoiesis.

Consequently the genocide of cultures and species that has taken place at the hands of humankind— the “humanist superiority complex”— should not be confused with natural selection; because humankind’s genocide of cultures and species does not contribute to a self-maintaining system of coherence and meaning. Instead, each time humankind commits an act of genocide resulting in the loss of a culture, ethnic group, any life form, or any part of nature’s biodiversity, we lose coherence, and we lose meaning. Thus, in the same way a movie can pass a certain threshold during the editing process where it no longer contains enough content to hold itself together as a meaningful story, the genocide of indigenous cultures, extinction of species, and loss of natural systems has meant a progressive increase of incoherence. Perceiving the world from this perspective, it no longer sounds like animistic nonsense to hear a shaman declare that it is possible to learn as much communicating with rocks, plants, and animals as it is from talking to humans.

In response to the retelling of the universe story, Richard Westheimer complemented me on a well-conceived argument: “I found quite moving your analysis of the fallout from the age of excess and appreciated your perspective that ‘attitude’ sits at the heart of our current ‘crisis,’ whether one of perception or deception” (June 19, 1996, personal correspondence). Our understanding of the process involved in clearing- up this “crisis of perception” is directly related to the entanglement of thought Westheimer pointed to in his additional comments:

I’m curious about the implication you raise that the eco-crisis is born of conscious agency. For example, you write of humankind “committing systematic acts of genocide, etc.” This implies—without support—that the deeds we perpetuate are ones we intend to have the results we describe. It seems that except in extreme circumstances, our intent is to secure resources for ourselves. The miracle is that so many folks transcend “the selfish gene” (to quote Dawkins) and can act altruistically. Perhaps most folks act unconsciously (even many eco-warriors among us) and that more of the conscious acts are ones of conservation.

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT THAT THE ECO-CRISIS IS BORN OF CONSCIOUS AGENCY

In response to Westheimer’s observation (that the systematic genocide of indigenous cultures lacked support), I would first like to offer the comments of Carl Anthony, president of Earth Island Institute and Director of the Urban Habitat Program in San Francisco, in response to a previous draft of this essay:

Your metaphor of evolution as movie is apt: People of European heritage have often forgotten how much their exploitation of nature rests on a concurrent exploitation of non-European people. The denial of our relationship to nature, and our denial of interdependence with other human communities may be traced to the same root (June 22, 1995, personal correspondence).

Additional support for my discussion of the systematic genocide of indigenous cultures came to my attention thanks to Robert K. Hitchcock. According to Hitchcock’s field research with indigenous populations in the northwestern Kalahari Desert region of southern Africa and his intellectual interests in the Lacondon Maya in Chiapas, Mexico, he has concluded that:

Genocide is neither accidental nor an unintended result of the actions of private companies, developmental agencies, or governments. In virtually every case, genocide is calculated and a generally premeditated set of actions designed to achieve certain goals such as the removal of competitors or the silencing of opponents. . . . Private companies and governments usually state that the deaths of indigenous people were ‘unintended consequences’ of development efforts and that there were no planned efforts to destroy people on the basis of who they are. Indigenous peoples are treated the way they are because, as they put it, they are “not utilizing land productively.” . . . The phenomenon has become so widespread, in fact, that a new term has been developed to describe them: developmental genocide (Hitchcock RK, 1997, “Indigenous peoples, multinational corporations, and human rights,” Indigenous Affairs April/May/June 2: 6–11, bold added).

Developmental genocide is what Krippner refers to as ecopiratism. Krippner’s work has been with pajes or Brazilian shamans. Krippner attended a national meeting with these shaman in April of 1998, assembling to combat ecopiratism, “the theft by the biotechnology industry of Brazilian shamans and their tribal knowledge” (Krippner S, 2000, An indigenous charter from Brazilian shamans, 20th annual meeting of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness). Krippner tells of the atrocities committed by the Coriell Cell Repositories company that has:

. . . gone into Amazonian villages, lured the shamans into the rainforest, and proceeded to draw blood from the village inhabitants. This blood was later sold on the Coriell website to groups interested in using the DNA for their own purposes (e.g., to help soldiers and privately employed workers to withstand equatorial heat (see also Krippner S, 1999, “Protecting indigenous knowledge from ecopiratism,” Shaman’s Drum 52: 8,10–11).

One of the many symptoms pointing to this incoherence, associated with the genocide of cultures, is suggested by Anthony in his essay “Ecopsychology and the Deconstruction of Whiteness”:

. . . the desire of a tiny fraction of middle and upper middle class Europeans to hear the voice of the Earth could be in part a strategy by people in these social classes to amplify their own inner voice at a time when they feel threatened, not only by the destruction of the planet, but also by the legitimate claims of multicultural human communities clamoring to be heard (1995, The Ecopsychology Newsletter 3: 4-5).

Building on this process of reasoning, Anthony goes on to suggest that one means of breaking through this denial would be:

. . . to embrace human diversity. . . . We need to find a way to build a multicultural self that is in harmony with an ecological self.

To my way of thinking, what Anthony is calling for are the skills of the shaman, whereby “one of the primary functions of shamanism” according to Terence McKenna (1988, Vision Plants: Transpersonal Challenge, Sounds True) is the creative synthesis of art: that is, the ability to integrate, join, and create a sense of ecological wholeness. Melissa Nelson has put it this way in her unpublished essay “Ecopsychology, Art, and Sacred Land”:

Art can be a bridge between nature and culture because out of biological diversity comes the multifaceted reality of cultural diversity.

MARK A. SCHROLL, PH.D., eco-philosopher of science, Guest Editor of Anthropology of Consciousness 16(1), 2005, which includes his essay, “Whither Psi and Anthropology?” with Stephan A. Schwartz, is weaving together humanistic–transpersonal psychology with his interests in David Bohm and ecopsychology that he refers to as Gaian Holotropism. rockphd4@yahoo.com

First Cover Story:

Reflections on Ecopsychology
—John Davis