An ecopsychology that integrates our totemic selves—our kinship with a more than human world—with our technological selves.

We need nature for our physical and psychological well-being. Our actions reflect this when we turn to beloved pets for companionship, vacation in spots of natural splendor, or spend hours working in the garden. Yet we are also a technological species and have been since we fashioned tools out of stone. Thus one of this century's central challenges is to embrace our kinship with a more-than-human world—"our totemic self"—and integrate that kinship with our scientific culture and technological selves.

This book takes on that challenge and proposes a reenvisioned ecopsychology. Contributors consider such topics as the innate tendency for people to bond with local place; a meaningful nature language; the epidemiological evidence for the health benefits of nature interaction; the theory and practice of ecotherapy; Gaia theory; ecovillages; the neuroscience of perceiving natural beauty; and sacred geography. Taken together, the essays offer a vision for human flourishing and for a more grounded and realistic environmental psychology.

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Patricia H. Hasbach is a licensed clinical psychotherapist in private practice in Eugene, Oregon, and a faculty member in the Department of Counseling Psychology at Lewis & Clark College, where she is codirector of the Ecopsychology Certificate Program. Hasbach and Peter H. Kahn, Jr., are coeditors of Ecopsychology: Science, Totems, and the Technological Species (MIT Press, 2012).

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