Mural outside of the Fundación Pachamama (FP) office in Quito, Ecuador
I was introduced to the emerging field of ecopsychology in the 1980’s by Joanna Macy and Sarah Conn. In the intervening decades, as the extent of ecological destruction and global climate change have become apparent, human psychology and ecopsychology can no longer be pursued independently of one another. In building the doctoral specialization at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, and Ecopsychology, we have endeavored to hold individual, community, and ecological well-being in interdependent relationship with one another. I am grateful to my former students, Craig Chalquist and Gay Bradshaw, for deepening my understanding through their work of terrapsychology and trans-species communication and psychology respectively.
Bradshaw, G.A., Watkins, M. (2006). Transpecies psychology: Theory and praxis. Spring 75, Psyche and Nature, 69-94.
Watkins, M. (2013). Accompaniment: Psychosocial, trans-species, and earth-based.
Mary Watkins and Gay Bradshaw, Eco-Accompaniment, Interview by Carol Koziol, founder, Canadian Ecopsychology Network, 2019