The nature of sanity

Inflicting irreversible damage on the biosphere might seem to be the most obvious kind of craziness. But when we turn to the psychiatric literature of the modern Western world, we find no such category as ecological madness.

The American Psychiatric Association lists more than 300 mental diseases in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Among the largest of DSM categories is sex. In map ping sexual dysfunction, therapists have been absolutely inspired. We have sexual aversion disorder, female sexual arousal disorder, hypoactive sexual desire disorder (male and female), gender identity disorder, transient stress-related cross-dressing behavior, androgen insensitivity syndrome, fetishism, transvestic fetishism, transvestic fetishism with gender dysphoria, voyeurism, frotteurism, pedophilia (six varieties), and paraphiliac telephone scatologia.

Granted, the DSM bears about the same relationship to psychology as a building code bears to architecture. It is nonetheless revealing that the volume contains only one listing remotely connected to nature: seasonal affective disorder, a depressive mood swing occasioned by seasonal changes. Even here, nature comes in second: If the mood swing reflects seasonal unemployment, economics takes precedence as a cause.

Psychotherapists have exhaustively analyzed every form of dysfunctional family and social relations, but "dysfunctional environmental relations" does not exist even as a concept. Since its beginning, mainstream Western psychology has limited the definition of mental health to the interpersonal context of an urban industrial society: marriage, family, work, school, community. All that lies beyond the citified psyche has seemed of no human relevance--or perhaps too frightening to think about. "Nature," Freud dismally concluded, "is eternally remote. She destroys us--coldly, cruelly, relentlessly." Whatever else has been revised and rejected in Freud's theories, this tragic sense of estrangement from nature continues to haunt psychology, making the natural world seem remote and hostile.

Now all is changing. In the past 10 years, a growing number of psychologists have begun to place their theory and practice in an ecological context. Already ecopsychology has yielded insights of great value.

For one thing, it has called into question the standard strategy of scaring, shaming, and blaming that environmentalists have used in addressing the public since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. There is evidence this approach does more harm than good--especially if, as ecopsychologists suggest, some environmentally destructive behavior bears the earmarks of addiction.

Take consumption habits. In ecopsychology workshops, people frequently admit,their need to shop is "crazy." Why do they buy what they do not need? A common answer is: "I shop when I'm depressed. I go to the mall to be among happy people." Buying things is strictly secondary--and in fact does little to relieve the depression.

Some ecopsychologists believe that, as with compulsive gamblers, the depression that drives people to consume stems not from greed but from a sense of emptiness. This void usually traces back to childhood experiences of inadequacy and rejection; it may have much to do with the typically middle-class need for competitive success. The insecurity born of that drive may grow into a hunger for acquisition that cannot be satisfied even when people have consumed so much that they themselves recognize they are behaving irrationally.

If the addiction diagnosis of over consumption is accurate, then guilt-tripping the public is worse than futile. Faced with scolding, addicts often resort to denial--or hostility. That makes them prey for antienvironmentalist groups like the Wise Use Movement, which then persuade an aggravated public to stop paying attention to "grieving greenies" and "ecofascists" who demand too much change too quickly.

As every therapist knows, addictive be-harlot cannot be cured by shame, because addicts are already deeply ashamed. Something affirmative and environmentally benign must be found to fill the inner void. Some ecopsychologists believe the joy and solace of the natural world can itself provide that emotional sustenance. Some, therefore, use wilderness, restoration projects, or gardens as a new "outdoor office."