Beyond the reality principle - ecological conception of sanity

Sierra, March-April, 1993 by Theodore Roszak

In seeking to combat the environmental illiteracy of their colleagues, ecopsychologists are up against formidable odds. The orthodox conception of sanity goes beyond psychology; it is embedded in assumptions borrowed from the natural sciences. Where, then, might an ecologically based psychiatry look to find its scientific grounding?

In one way or another all ecopsychologists draw upon some version of the controversial Gaia hypothesis. Developed by English biochemist James Lovelock and American microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the late 1970s, the Gaia hypothesis began its career as a purely technical, biochemical explanation for the long-term stability of the planetary atmosphere. Lovelock and Margulis postulated that the biomass itself may play an active role in preserving the conditions that guarantee the survival of life on Earth. Here is how Margulis summarizes the hypothesis:

Gaia, the superorganismic system of all life on earth, hypothetically maintains the composition of the air and the temperature of the planet's surface, regulating conditions for the continuance of life .... On earth the environment has been made and monitored by life as much as life has been made and influenced by the environment.

If Lovelock and Margulis had given their theory a conventional scientific name (like Biocybernetic Universal System Tendency, or BUST, as Lovelock once facetiously suggested), it might have passed quietly into the professional literature as a mildly interesting bit of speculation. But Lovelock wanted something more colorful. Struck by the fact that the biomass, in its long-term self-regulation, exhibits "the behavior of a single organism, even a living creature," he called the hypothesis "Gaia," after the ancient Greek earth mother. The name at once touched the idea with magic; it took on an astonishing popular appeal that was far beyond anything Lovelock and Margulis intended. Their brainchild proved to be especially attractive to the Deep Ecologists. Deep Ecology, the biocentric wing of the environmental movement, seeks to replace our anthropocentric worldview with an ethic based upon the sort ofanimistic communion with nature that can (with enough poetic license) be read into the Gaia hypothesis. Some ecofeminists have gone even farther. For them, Gaia represents scientific validation for a semi-legendary "goddess culture" where, once upon a time, men and women lived in respectful partnership and the more ecologically sensitive qualities were paramount.

In its search for a theoretical foundation, ecopsychology need not go so far. It might simply see Gaia as a dramatic image of ecological independence that may well extend beyond the planet. The cosmology of the late 20th century has come to see the universe as an evolving hierarchy of physical and biological systems that reach back to the initial conditions that followed the Big Bang. With that perception, we reverse Freud's worldview and all the psychology based upon it. In place of the inevitable heat death, we have the astonishing ordered complexity of natural systems holding out indefinitely against entropic exhaustion. In place of cosmic alienation, we have life and mind as fully at home in the universe as any of the countless systems from which they evolve. More hypothetically we have the possibility that the self-regulating biosphere continues in some sense to "speak" through the human unconscious, making its voice heard even within the framework of modern urban culture.