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Environmental Change and Psychoterratic Syndromes

The Bad, the Good and the Beautiful

Glenn Albrecht PhDProfessor of Sustainability,

Murdoch University,Australia.

For the Alexander von Humboldt Institute, Colombia 2010

Alexander von Humboldt

• On this day in 1801 von Humboldt was in Bogota ... Perhaps discussing botany with Jose Celestino Mutis (1732-1808).

• He left Bogota on Sept 8 to travel overland to Quito and rejoin Captain Baudin.

The Conceptual Landscape• Our appreciation of the foundations of life is

weakening• Dim knowledge of Ecosystem Services• Loss of the sense of value of biological and

cultural diversity– Healthy Earth Healthy People

• Adult Artefact Overload Disorder• An impoverished language?• We need … a Conceptual Landscape Restoration

Project

Bateson on Eco-mental Health

“You decide that you want to get rid of the by-products of human life and that Lake Erie will be a good place to put them. You forget that the eco-mental system called Lake Erie is a part of your wider eco-mental system – and that if Lake Erie is driven insane, its insanity is incorporated in the larger system of your thought and experience.” (Bateson 1973:460)

Eco-Mental Landscapes

Kate Macdowell Solastalgia, 7"x7"x4", hand built porcelain, cone 6 glaze, 2/2010

Deliver us from Insanity!

• The whole of intensive industry, technology and agriculture is now delivering ecosystem and human ill health

• If not the pollution and sterility of soil and water, the pollution of the atmosphere so as to change the climate!

• If the earth is being driven insane, then no wonder by 2020 mental health issues will be second only to heart disease as our major global health system disease burden

New Categories of Environmentally Induced Illness

11. . Psychoterratic illness (psyche = mind; terra = earth; earth-related mental illness), where both nostalgia and solastalgia are examples of people being made 'mentally unhealthy' by the severing of 'healthy' links between themselves and their home/territory; and

2. Somaterratic illness (soma = body) that relate to the body/physiological (including genetic) damage caused by toxic pollution and the loss of ecosystem health in any given context.

See: Albrecht, G, et. al. (2007) Solastalgia: The distress caused by environmental change, Australasian Psychiatry. Vol. 15, Special Supplement, 95-98.

Psychoterratic ConditionsRealm Negative Origin Positive Origin

Educational Nature Deficit Disorder

Louv 2005 Biophilia Fromm 1965 Wilson 1984

Personal and Ecological

EcophobiaEcoanxiety

Various Ecophilia Sobel 1995

Cultural and Political

Ecoparalysis Various Soliphilia Albrecht 2009

Personal and Place

Solastalgia Albrecht 2003 Topophilia Tuan 1974

Home and Place

Nostalgia Hoffer 1688 Endemophilia Albrecht 2010

Psyche Global Dread Albrecht (Jill)2003

Eutierria Albrecht 2010

The Bad!

Nature Deficit Disorder

TV Sunset’ from The Penguin Leunig by Michael Leunig, published by Penguin Group Australia Ltd, 1974.

Ecophobia and Eco-Anxiety

http://www.edvard-munch.com/Paintings/anxiety/scream_3.jpg

Global Dread?

Eco-Paralysis• Often ‘appears’ as

apathy, complacency or disengagement

• An understandable response to complexity, info overload, scale.

http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/peter_robinson/

Eco-anxiety and Eco-paralysis• Uncertainty about the future• Powerlessness (unable to meaningfully mitigate)• Information overload about nasty developments

(warming, sea ice melt, sea level rise, glacier melt, droughts, super storms etc)

• Anxiety and overload lead to eco-paralysis– which often ‘appears’ as apathy or disengagement) and/or eco-denial

and eco- anger• homesickness and melancholia at the loss of solace

in a ‘home’ environment that is being changed in unwelcome ways

Solastalgia

• The pain or sickness caused by the inability to derive solace from the present state of one’s home environment

• It is the lived experience of negatively perceived environmental change to one’s ‘sense of place’ and existential well-being

• Feelings of powerlessness and a loss of hope about the future

Glenn Albrecht Murdoch University 2010

Glenn Albrecht PhD 2010

Agents of transformation

The Hunter Valley: Before and After

Images by Allan Chawner 2008

Solastalgia• But I lost a lot of weight. I’d wake

up in the middle of the night with my stomach like that (note: clenched fist), and think, what am I going to do? We’re losing money, they won’t listen to me, what do I do? Do I go broke? I can’t sell to anybody, nobody wants to buy it because it’s right next to the mine. What do I do? And I was a real mess. (Dora)

Bengalla Open Cut; Image by Allan Chawner 2008

Solastalgia““It is very depressing, it brings you It is very depressing, it brings you

down. Even down. Even (Indigenous) (Indigenous) people people that don’t have the traditional that don’t have the traditional ties to the area, … it still brings ties to the area, … it still brings them downthem down. I. Itt i is pathetic just to s pathetic just to drive along, they cannot stand drive along, they cannot stand that drive. We take different that drive. We take different routes to travel down south just routes to travel down south just so we don’t have to see all the so we don’t have to see all the holes, all the dirt … because it holes, all the dirt … because it makes you wild.”makes you wild.”

(Indigenous interviewee)(Indigenous interviewee)

Drought Transcripts

““Well I guess we’re coming into our fifth year of the Well I guess we’re coming into our fifth year of the drought….B [daughter-in-law] and ... our gardens drought….B [daughter-in-law] and ... our gardens have had to die because our house dam has been have had to die because our house dam has been dry … so it’s very depressing for a woman because a dry … so it’s very depressing for a woman because a garden is an oasis out here with this dust … you garden is an oasis out here with this dust … you know, to come home to a nice green lawn is just … know, to come home to a nice green lawn is just … that’s all gone, so you’ve got dust at your back that’s all gone, so you’ve got dust at your back door.”door.”

The Hunter Valley Driven Insane?

Cycles of Distress

The Good!

Biophilia and Topophilia

Biophilia - Topophilia

Biophilia: Love of life and affinity with living things (Fromm and Wilson)

Topophilia: Love of landscape and place (Tuan)

Solastalgia Soliphilia

Soliphilia

• In order to negate all the ‘algias’ or forces that cause solastalgia, sickness and extinction we require a positive love of place, expressed as a culture, politics and an ethos or way of life.

Soliphilia

• Soliphilia is the love of the totality of our place relationships and a willingness to accept, in solidarity and affiliation with others, the political responsibility for the earth, our home.

• Soliphilia goes beyond the left-right politics of control and ownership and provides a universal motivation to achieve sustainability through new ways of symbiotic living that are life-affirming.

Endemophilia

• The English word, ‘endemic’, is based on the French word, endémique and has the Greek roots, endēmia (a dwelling in) and endēmos (native in the people).

• Endemophilia captures the particular love of the locally and regionally distinctive in place and is a counter to the alienation and isolation covered by nostalgia when a ‘local’ person is separated from their home environment.

Endemophilia

• To have an emplaced love of home and its unique qualities and characteristics is a precondition for having a negative experience when absent from home.

• In order to experience homesickness, you must have already experienced ‘homewellness’ or endemophilia.

Outstations

The Beautiful!

Eutierria

• Defined as a positive feeling of oneness with the earth and its life forces (eu=good, tierra= earth, ia= suffix for member of a group of {positive psychoterratic} conditions).

• When the human-nature relationship is spontaneous and mutually enriching (symbiotic) we experience a state of ‘eutierria’

• That ‘oceanic feeling’• Soliphilia and eutierria together will deliver

sustainability

Alexander von Humboldt

“Nature can be so soothing to the tormented mind, a blue sky, the glittering surface of lake water, the green foliage of trees may be your solace. In such company it is even possible to forget the reality of one’s personal existence. It lends wings to our feelings and thoughts.” (1829: Letter to brother)

Eutierria

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