From the Back Cover
A significant step in the evolution of ecopsychology has been the field's growing awareness of its long-standing affinity with phenomenology. Now, at a time when the natural world is viewed as somewhere between threatening, threatened, and invisible, an examination of the often implicit bond between these two spheres of inquiry makes increasing sense.
Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment: The Experience of Nature explores the intersection of the two disciplines through a diverse group of ecological thinkers. Emphasizing the directly felt experience of the wild as opposed to overtly scientific approaches, this evocative volume presents fresh perspectives on the intimacy of nature, environmentally-related morals and ethics, and the realities engendered by climate change. With profound vision and lyrical elegance, contributors reveal the transformative power of the natural world and its expansive effects on our senses and consciousness. And perhaps most notably, these chapters challenge us as humans to revise how we understand ourselves in relation to the rest of nature.
Included in the coverage:
- The naturalist's presence: toward a relational phenomenology of attention and meaning.
- Aliveness and transformation in wilderness.
- Apocalyptic imagination and the silence of the elements.
- The who of environmental ethics: phenomenology and the moral self.
- Climate chaos, ecopsychology, and the maturing human being.
- Unhumanizing phenomenology to decode the language of Earth.
Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment: The Experience of Nature will find an engaged audience among ecopsychologists, environmental and conservation psychologists, and other psychologists and psychotherapists interested in environmental issues, as well as phenomenological psychologists. It will also appeal to environmental researchers working with psychological or phenomenological perspectives and philosophers concerned with environmental issues and ethics.
Douglas A. Vakoch, Ph.D.
Douglas A. Vakoch is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies as well as Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute. His books cover fields ranging from psychology and ecocriticism to anthropology and space sciences and include Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective (NASA, 2011); On Orbit and Beyond: Psychological Perspectives on Human Spaceflight (Springer, 2012); Ecofeminism and Rhetoric: Critical Perspectives on Sex, Technology, and Discourse (Berghahn, 2011); Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (Lexington, 2012); Altruism in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Springer, 2013); Extraterrestrial Altruism: Evolution and Ethics in the Cosmos (Springer, 2013); and Astrobiology, History, and Society: Life Beyond Earth and the Impact of Discovery (Springer, 2013). Dr. Vakoch serves as general editor for Lexington Books' Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series and for Springer's Space and Society Series. He also co-edited, with Fernando Castrillon, a special double issue of the peer-reviewed journal ReVision on ecopsychology. Prior to earning a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he received an M.A. in history and philosophy of science from the University of Notre Dame, where he focused on contemporary continental philosophy of psychology. He may be reached at dvakoch@ciis.edu, telephone (415) 575-6244, Department of Clinical Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA; or at dvakoch@seti.org, telephone (650) 960-4514, Center for SETI Research, SETI Institute, 189 Bernardo Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
Fernando Castrillon, Psy.D.
Fernando Castrillon, Psy.D., earned a masters in sociology from theUniversity of California where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and a doctorate in clinical psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and is a licensed clinical psychologist. He is Associate Professor in the Community Mental Health Department at CIIS and is the founding Director of CIIS' The Clinic Without Walls, an innovative psychotherapy clinic serving mostly working poor and immigrant communities who would otherwise not have access to mental health services.
Dr. Castrillon is also a candidate psychoanalyst with the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis in Berkeley, California and has served on the editorial boards of the journals Ecopsychology and Universitas Psychologica, among others. His clinical, teaching and research interests include the production of subjectivity (both human and more-than-human) psychoanalysis, community mental health, ecopsychology, radical social theory, schizoanalysis, cosmology, entheogens, violent political movements, war, terrorism and revolution. With Doug Vakoch, he edited a special double issue of the peer-reviewed journal ReVision, entitled "Ecopsychology." Dr. Castrillon maintains a private psychoanalytic practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. Address: California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission Street, San Francisco, California, 94103. He may be reached at (510) 295-4711 or view his webpage: www.drcastrillon.com.
