Self and Society Volume 43 Issue 2 – Association for Humanistic Psychology in Britain

The following lists the contents of Self and Society, Volume 43 Issue 2.
Each article can be downloaded as a PDF, but only if you are logged in as an AHP subscriber.
The table of contents for this issue can be downloaded as a PDF file.

Editorial:
Authors: House, Kalisch
Download the PDF

FEATURES:
Theme Introduction
Author: Totton
Download the PDF

Transpersonal patterns in the Natural Change Project
Author: Key
Download the PDF
Abstract:

This article describes a process of psychological change experienced by participants in the Natural Change Project. The project is based on a programme of wilderness experiences, therapeutic group work, creative process and one-to-one support. It is designed to catalyse and support leadership towards a more ecologically sustainable future among people with social and political influence. This research shows that such a programme can lead to a profound shift in sense of self, from one focused on ego identity to one that is transpersonal and ecological.

What impact does working outdoors have on the therapeutic relationship? An interview with ecotherapist David Key
Author: Harris
Download the PDF

Trees of knowledge, death and possible life: ancestral warnings of ecosystemic holocaust, its psycho-spiritual causes, and clues to resolution
Author: Maiteny
Download the PDF
Abstract:

Linking to the second-generation holocaust experience of the author, this article suggests that the human species has warned itself for millennia that we would eventually generate the current ecosystemic holocaust from consuming and assimilating planet Earth to ourselves. It explains the contradictory engine of this as rooted in an instinctive orientation towards growth and self-interest, in pursuit of well-being, satisfaction and meaningful life. The article explains the psycho-cultural reasons why, in the human species, this natural orientation ends up inverting ecological necessities, with catastrophic consequences. A traditional word for this dynamic is ‘idolatry’, self-worship. We have continued on this route, unwilling to hear ancestral warnings, in spite of our ability to do otherwise – to know that we are participants in a bigger contextual ecosystem on which we depend, to live meaningful lives by discerning our roles within this context, and behaving accordingly. So doing, we continue to destroy the bigger Body of which we are members, and on which we inescapably depend. The spiritual-religious traditions explain the causes and consequences of these two basic orientations to life – consumptive and contextualizing. The first points to the ‘klippotic’ ‘tree of death’, the second to the harmony of parts and the ‘Tree of Life’. The route to both is via the ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’, and whether life or death results depends upon how we choose to interpret our knowledge, and for what purpose, through our individual and collective free will. Ecological language and imagery were not available millennia ago, but other language was used to describe the functional versus dysfunctional psyche–ecology relationship, and to give clues to the psycho-spiritual evolution necessary for our species to discern our ‘membership role’ within the ecosystem, and to align our lives accordingly. It was also abused and distorted for idolatrous purposes. The article ends with contemporary examples of the two orientations, and a challenge to the reader.

We the human animals: exploring an embodied, relational and wild approach to therapy
Author: Priestman
Download the PDF
Abstract:

In this article I ask the question: what does an embodied, relational and wild therapeutic approach look like? In answering, I look at my own annual withdrawal from my garden, and link it with humanity’s historical withdrawal from an intimate, sensual relationship with the other-than-human and more-than-human, highlighting the privileging in our culture of rational and intellectual modes of consciousness, and the denigration of the instinctual and the wild. I offer the concept of trance states as a way to conceptualize working relationally with wildness in the client–therapist dyad. Wild Mind is introduced as a way to listen to the wider, wild intelligence which is a part of us, and of which we are a part.

POEMS:
Breathing earth
Author: Millar
Download the PDF

Circles
Author: Nangle
Download the PDF

ARTICLE:
On supervision in the helping professions – and ‘leather and sandals’: an interview with Robin Shohet
Download the PDF

CONFERENCE REVIEW ARTICLE:
Jungian Analysis and Humanistic Psychotherapy: Critical Connections – Past, Present and Future, Saturday 25 October, London
Author: House
Download the PDF

THE AHP CHAIR'S PAGE:
The AHP Chair's Page
Author: Scurfield
Download the PDF

NEWS INTERCHANGE:
News Interchange
Author: Lykou
Download the PDF

STUART'S POLITICAL DIARY:
Stuart's political diary
Author: Morgan-Ayrs
Download the PDF