This paper addresses how and why the human species considers itself separate from ecosystems, and what needs to shift in our thinking so that we can be part of, rather than split off from, the more-than-human world. Four clinical vignettes — including the famous case of Joanna Macy, whose therapist interpreted her outrage over old-growth forest destruction as displaced sexual anxiety — illustrate the interplay between 'eco' and 'psycho' in the clinical context. Drawing on Hawkins and Ryde's Ecological Awareness Cycle, Mowat argues that psychotherapy training urgently needs to incorporate ecosystemic thinking, framing the climate and ecological crisis as a social justice and diversity issue requiring inclusion in UKCP Standards of Education and Training.
How Integrative Psychotherapy Can Address the Anthropocene Crisis
This paper addresses how and why the human species considers itself separate from ecosystems, and what needs to shift in our thinking so that we can be part of, rather than split off from, the more-than-human world. Four clinical vignettes — including the famous case of Joanna Macy, whose therapist interpreted her outrage over old-growth forest destruction as displaced sexual anxiety — illustrate the interplay between 'eco' and 'psycho' in the clinical context. Drawing on Hawkins and Ryde's Ecological Awareness Cycle, Mowat argues that psychotherapy training urgently needs to incorporate ecosystemic thinking, framing the climate and ecological crisis as a social justice and diversity issue requiring inclusion in UKCP Standards of Education and Training.
Brigitta Mowat
I'm an integrative psychotherapist in private practice. I have been seeing clients for 23 years. I'm currently a joint head of the first year of the Masters Programme at the Minster Center where I teach and offer training supervision. I am deeply engaged with the Climate and Ecological Emergency CEE. In 2022 I published some research which explored how counsellors and psychotherapists think and feel about the CEE and how, or whether, their clients bring their concerns about the CEE. I designed and currently facilitate a training weekend at the Minster Centre for trainee counsellors and psychotherapists on eco-anxiety and environmental trauma. I'm deeply invested in decolonising counselling and psychotherapy training at the Minster Centre. I believe that Western history of colonialism and neo-colonialism, and our collective and unconscious compliancy with capitalism and neoliberalism have created the CEE.
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