Wilderness and Ecopsychology : From Anthropocentrism to Ecological Awareness (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies)

Offering a radical interdisciplinary exploration of human-wilderness relationships during our current climate crisis, and drawing on psychoanalytic insight, political critique, and ecological wisdom, this volume diagnoses the profound alienation endemic to late capitalist modernity while delineating pathways toward regenerative forms of being. The book begins by deconstructing wilderness as both geographical reality and psychological construct, tracing its evolution from Enlightenment instrumentality through Romantic idealisation to contemporary relational understandings. In doing so, it examines how dominant narratives illuminate our ambivalent encounter with wilderness as both threat and salvation. The book then moves on to explore concrete alternatives to extractive agriculture, positioning reciprocal land stewardship and agroecological practices as embodiments of interspecies ethics. The culminating vision articulates a ‘wild psychology’ that advocates for collective liberation through practices of deep attention, material engagement, and transformative empathy offering not solutions but threshold experiences for reimagining human-earth relationships beyond the ruins of modernity. Wilderness and Ecopsychology is a valuable resource for scholars, students, and practitioners in environmental humanities, critical psychology, ecotherapy, and posthumanist therapeutic approaches seeking to understand psychological distress as inherently ecological and political. It is also designed to aid therapeutic practitioners, health professionals and clinicians in thinking more radically about human and planetary health, and to encourage them to incorporate ecological thinking and nature-based/wilderness experience into their clinical practice.