Psychology

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Rewilding Mind & Heart
#1

Psychological issues…

These are things I witness, and think about, a LOT (maybe entirely too much) in response to my own experiences of civiliization.

Relevance to Rewilding
A lot of people tend to focus on the sociological and ecological reasons for rewilding. But if you ignore the psychological factors, you get nowhere. Psychology much of the time is about “getting over yourself” and (from a rewilding point of view) how civilization has affected your habits of thought and behavior. It is a vital, emotional, component of the whole rewilding process.

Once you are clued into what psychological pathology means and the myriad of forms it can take, you will see it everywhere in civilization. (The kinds of pathologies vary from culture to culture … in America, I most often witness pathological shopaholism/consumerism, feelings of inadequacy, and willful ignorance - iMO these are all chronic sicknesses! It makes me want to shake people. Luckily, I don’t actually do it!)

Nobody is exempt
The “domestication” or “civilizing” process includes myriad forms of interpersonal abuse and denial of one’s whole self or soul, usually by authority figures (negative “consequences” are invented to punish children who can’t help but be themselves [Jensen, among others, has explored this phenomenon]). Some forms leave physical scars and MANY of them leave psychological scars. The crystallization of psychological scars leaves behavioral blind spots and warped perspectives, much like fun house mirrors, that trap a person into the reverberations of his or her own past. Smashing a psychological mirror can feel scary or even wrong - but it is absolutely essential for free happiness and communion with self and nature.

Dive in
This is a thread for sharing information resources for psychological wellness. It is also a thread for sharing personal experiences (if you be so brave).

#2

http://www.alice-miller.com

This site has a very good explanation of abuse, and how it is related to a vicious, pathological cycle of destruction. It pulls abstract rationalizations for abuse down from the clouds and delivers straight, concrete information that will help you respect your self-integrity and the integrity of others (including non-humans IMO)

#3

My parents couldn’t handle their children making autonomous decisions. Here are some examples:

My dad:
When I was still eating pureed baby food (I can’t even remember this happening; I got this story from hearsay, from my father), I didn’t like peas and I would spit them out. This happened once while my dad was feeding me. He could have easily found a jar of some vegetable that I liked and fed me that instead. He didn’t do that. What he decided to do was to have a little fun and trick me into eating peas by disguising them with applesauce. He told me that it was fun to watch the confused expression on my face as I realized that I was indeed eating peas and not applesauce. He said he got me to eat the whole jar that way.

My dad and I each learned something that day:

He learned that it was easy for him to hold a trusting baby in derision.
I “learned” that those I need to trust most will mock me if I express trust (eat the applesauce).

To this day, I cannot tolerate dishonesty or trickery, and I often second-guess the motives of others. It is a habit that I usually don’t realize I’m doing. I usually have no real rationale or evidence for thinking this way about people. And often when people are taking advantage of me, I do the opposite, and second-guess my feelings about their motives; I rationalize that I can trust them, or that it doesn’t “matter so much” if I’m taken for a ride.

(Note that this one experience is an illustration of my father’s general attitude. This example is one of many of a similar nature.)

My mom:
When I was 3 or 4 she found me masturbating (this one is a conscious memory) and told me with didactic scorn, “WE don’t do that in our family.”

What small child, practically a toddler, can afford to be excluded from her family?

I don’t care to say any more on that topic, just that it has caused me excessive grief.

#4

More resources:

Derrick Jensen (duh) - A Language Older Than Words & The Culture of Make-Believe
Emilie Buchwald, editor - Transforming a Rape Culture (read “Rape Culture” as “Taker Culture” and the rewilding connection is immediately obvious)

#5

I can’t speak for your dad or anything, but well I guess I’ve just grown up to be grateful for any food I get (I remember some hungry days roaming the kitchen rummaging bare cupboards : /) but while I agree with you, the two things I hate most are deception and false premises, however, I actually do admire cunningness (tho I myself can’t lie to save my life, tho I’ve fascinated before that when I have kids I will teach them to be exceptional liars, and then they will become powerful rich people!), and idk, it just seems like a smart thing to do to hide the peas in the apple sauce >> I mean if I had a kid I guess that’s what I would do… so’long as it’s good for them, it’s not like he was hiding poison in the apple sauce Oo.

[quote=“SilverArrow, post:3, topic:572”]My mom:
When I was 3 or 4 she found me masturbating (this one is a conscious memory) and told me with didactic scorn, “WE don’t do that in our family.”[/quote]

I don’t know if it would be any different if you were male or not but, I remember many times my mom would scold me for touching myself when i was younger, tho usually it was ‘do that on your private time’ or something or other, hell I was to young to understand what she was talking about, all big eyed going huh? do what?

edit: I guess not hiding/disguising but, lets saying mixing or making more palatable, I mean, I wouldn’t lie and say ‘there’s no peas in the apple sauce’ but maybe just something like they are good this way? Idk. (I guess that’s how I remember my dad with different food for us.)

#6

[quote=“Fenriswolfr, post:5, topic:572”]I can’t speak for your dad or anything, but well I guess I’ve just grown up to be grateful for any food I get (I remember some hungry days roaming the kitchen rummaging bare cupboards : /)…

and idk, it just seems like a smart thing to do to hide the peas in the apple sauce >> I mean if I had a kid I guess that’s what I would do… so’long as it’s good for them, it’s not like he was hiding poison in the apple sauce Oo.[/quote]

You are missing the point. I was too young to talk, much less understand which foods were available to me and whether the cupboards were empty or not.

If the ONLY thing my dad had to feed me was peas, even then tricking me into eating them was dishonest and damaging. It’s not my fault that as a baby I didn’t prefer them. I would have eaten them if I had been hungry enough.

The POINT is that my dad betrayed my trust, much to my confusion and feelings of cognitive dissonance, AND he enjoyed it, because it made him feel powerful. It doesn’t fucking matter if it was peas, carrots, or baluga caviar. Look past the material things, because this is really about a human baby’s emotional needs. What it boils down to is that he rejected and denied a very innocuous expression of self-autonomy from his own daughter, at her expense and, as it turns out, for his amusement. And he CHOSE that option.

THAT is poison enough.

Mixing the peas with something to make it more palatable would have been a viable option. Feeding me another vegetable/food would have been viable. If he had nothing else to feed me, then trying again later would also have been viable. But LYING to me … ? Think about it. Because he was my father, I HAD to trust him as a little baby. This is the way that humans, indeed all mammals, have evolved. Babies have to trust their parents to care for them until they can take care of themselves. I had a NEED to trust him and he lied to me.

I am getting the impression that I should make two disclaimers here:

  1. I’m using these singular episodes to describe larger patterns of behavior.
  2. I’m using personal examples to illustrate the ways that psychopathology originates, in the hopes of elucidating how certain interpersonal behavior patterns are destructive and “block” progress to dismantling civilization and even perpetuate a civilized mindset — NOT to draw attention to myself or fish for pity. Once I began to understand my parents’ patterns of behavior, I could start to make some fundamental changes to my own behavior.
#7

ahh sorry seems you got a bit upset about my post Oo, I totally understood what you were saying, as for my post, I guess my disclaimer was that I wasn’t speaking for your dad, I.E. I wasn’t defending him or anything (tho I suppose the poison part came off that way), so my apologies, but yeah I totally saw the power thing >< and as such for his own amusement I find kinda sick : /
I guess I was saying my own story on trust in a different way (mine was more on trusting, like the way my dad did it),
I mean, if I got what I ‘wanted’ for dinner when I was a kid, I woulda been eating bubble gum and ice cream =P

But yeah, I’ve seen some quite irrational behaviours in my parents (and I am sure in myself as well) that most likely stems from modern civilization.

But yeah, I think parents should listen to their children’s needs more as well rather than always doing what they think is ‘best’ or what not, especially if it’s for some irrational/pathological reason.

#8

OK, resources for psychological well-being:
My folks loved me but they did lots of that coercive/control/denial of feelings & needs stuff too–what else did they know, and I guess their life experiences just never hit them over the head with a brick and made them question it.

So I find it super challenging to get those voices (Be good!) out of my head and reinvent the wheel of parenting when I’ve never done it before! I get this daily email (the Daily Groove) fromEnjoyParenting.com that feeds a whole different set of messages into my head–brilliant stuff, just absolutely holds up my heart some days, in lieu of real folks in my daily life showing me the way, since I don’t really have that available (who does, here and now?)

Silver Arrow and Fenris, I totally get what you say about the sicknesses our culture has put in our minds. Insidious.

#9

Well, mainly I am just worried that I’ll be misunderstood. :slight_smile: Sorry if my reaction here was a little overbearing. My writing is kinda intense, even if I’m not so much that way in real life. :slight_smile:

And also, great to meet up with you and TrollSplinter today! Gonna keep an eye out for that nettle from now on…

Yarrow Dreamer: but you do have real folks to show you the way. They are your children. :smiley:

#10

so, so true! thanks for reminding me. :slight_smile:

#11

Resource (book):

My Name is Chellis and I’m In Recovery From Western Civilization
http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no10/books_chellis.htm
by Chellis Glendinning, 1994

(Haven’t read it yet; will post a review when I do)

#12

As I see it now, my childhood was non-stop mindfuck.

Of course I grew up in the Politically Correct 90’s, where physical abuse was replaced with emotional and verbal abuse…

That judges school in its own context, but the amount of time I was forced to spend there at the expense of nature exposure… I feel robbed, spiritually castrated…

I come to this site to try to get a sense of who I could have been had my childhood not been so structured.

I would use stockholm syndrome to describe how I internalized the chronic abuse of my captors (parents included)… By first grade I was addicted to authority figure praise and had no sense of self esteem among my peers…

And to skip over many years, by college I was a psychotic wreck AND THEN got all fucked up on anti depressants. Because despite being subconsciously angry at authority figures, I was broken and ran to that secretive priesthood that was supposed to fix my brain: medshrinks. A very evil good feeling, a false euphoria, followed by a painful drawn out crash.

Under the influence of those drugs, I was an obtuse toe stomper who made a lot of enemies and alienated lots of friends without knowing it… and got committed to a major that I could not keep up with once my legal speed (effexor to be exact) backfired.

And my fucking parents and counselors and professors were under the sway of “get your diploma and everything will be all right OR ELSE” so I was pressured financially and emotionally to stay in school… Until I reached my biological and spirtual limits and said FUCK YOU I QUIT 36 credits shy of a diploma.

Luckily I quit before I had taken out any loans.
And I have been going through med free therapy right now, and recovered.

I am getting ready to move out of the house (the same one I “grew up” in) despite a good deal on rent.

I am a long term memory guy, and the memories of how my parents (and their wetiko infected collaborators at school, sport, and work) conditioned me is too much. Plus, I am 24, but my dad cajoles me into “getting with the program” and being a successful producer/consumer unit that he can have a proper trophy son. Just like he did when I was seventeen and resisting the pressure to go to college right away after high school.

My dad represents an anti role model for me: whenever I recognize a part of my brain that works like his does (and there are many) i hate myself and hate him.

AND he won’t let me plant any food in the yard! Despite living out in the country where we could get away with an un-mowed yard.

It sickens me how much “successful” people obsess over appearances. This affected me on an interpersonal level: always worrying about my reputation to the point that I had no sense of self.

I fantasise about revenge all the time. I feel boxed in not only by personal foes, but impersonal ones too, like how its hard to find land to squat on or nature to commune with and not have to pay for it with slave’s wages.

I would love to a Henry David Thoreau style retreat, but that option is denied except in my imagination.

I am an agnostic who is awaiting advice from Gaia, about how to channel my rage in an effective way…

My mind is way too broken to make the coherent, long term effort required to constructively live with nature.

But it is fully loaded to destroy those forces that make rewilding difficult for those fortunate souls who are not as saturated with wetiko as I am.

But I do enjoy taking baby steps in a positive direction. I just got hired to work at the food coop, and am considering applying to work on a nearby organic farm.

And I rented a Wendell Berry book from the library, and invited my parents to read it and so gain a deeper understanding of my paradigms and spiritual premises that cause me to be so withdrawn from the world, economically and spiritually, to their dismay.

I am considering a geographical move if none of this works out… I hear Seattle and Portland are good places to find allies and teachers for this wierd drive I have to be a human.

#13

I’ve read a bit in psychology, particularly the writings of Carl Jung and James Hillman. I love Jung, but I’m not sure he has much to offer us in terms of rewilding. James Hillman, though, I think is great. One of the things that he helped me understand with psychology is that it’s a mistake to talk about psychology, the study of the psyche or soul, in terms of psychopathologies, at least insofar as they are construed as being negative symptoms that require some kind of cure. He calls many psychopathologies mere character traits, or at the least character building scars, and thinks psychology has misplaced its emphasis on trying to identify all the things “wrong” with us (the DSM IV is gigantic and a joke).

He also makes mention of the fact that the focus of psychology has for too long focused on the individual and trying to fix him or her. If a person is depressed, the response is to try to fix somethin with that person. But, he says, maybe there’s good reason to be depressed. Cubicles, toxified water, and processed food are all good reasons to be depressed. These are not good things, and it’s hardly our fault for being depressed (Derrick Jensen I know has mentioned how despair in our situation is a normal thing, and a fully appropriate response for this situation).

Another really fascinating move he makes in his book, The Soul’s Code is to offer a different way of reading our life stories. Modern psychology, particularly starting with Freud, has taught us to read our lives from birth to the present for all the traumas we suffered. We read our lives thinking about how and where things were inflicted on us to make us the damaged people we are today. Hillman offers an inversion of this, inviting us to read our life stories backwards not for the traumas but for the things that indicated and hinted at the persons we are becoming. This way of reading could provide insight on what gifts we now have to offer the world. I don’t think this reading is meant to be mutually exclusive with also acknowledging the wrongs this culture and others have inflicted upon us, but it provides a necessary antidote to always looking back and trying to “fix” ourselves.

He brings up an example of a famous matador, who, as a child clung tightly to his mother’s apron. A Freudian might read this as having mother issues of one sort of another. Hillman reads this as the child showing initial hesitation at pursuing his destiny – to be one of the most fearsome matadors in history.

#14

really?? that’s odd, seems like there are some strong parallels between rewilding and Jung’s Individuation. (in terms of both processes recognizing meaningful subjective experiences on a road to becoming human).

AMEN BROTHER!! ;D

yeah, that stuff gets old…

yeah, there’s a lot to recommend using this approach, if it hadn’t spontaneously occurred to me at 15, in all seriousness, i would’ve just went through w/ the razor.

#15

I’ve been looking for a Graduate program lately and stumbled across a couple of fields. One, Ecopsychology, explores the connection between the mind and the natural world. Another, environmental psychology, explores the coneection between the mind and its physical environment. For some weird reason they are considered separate. Both are kind of experimental, but seem interesting especially in light of the idea of “Wilderness Therapy” taking off.

#16

Hmm, well I’ve just finished an undergraduate major in psychology so I’ve read more than Jung, if that counts. Jungs individuation is a call to nature, I feel for myself and others like me. Similarly, Freud was more critical of civilisation than people give him credit for.

I would have to say that from we’re I’m sitting the biggest problem with psychology is that it has become institutionalised. By that I mean in order to be taken seriously as an experimental science, it’s had to become more positivistic, so positivistic in fact that its largely inaccessible to ordinary people and difficult to approach even after spending 3 years studying it. In fact, its more positivistic than your average natural science, like Physics, which quite happily claims truth through mathematical proofs that are not directly linked to empirical observations.

That said, within it, people within psychology recognise that its more than just pathology and that the DSM is flawed. What needs blame, I feel, is that psychology as a profession is institutionalised within society as this creates accreditation policy that focuses too much on psychopathology.

However, I have also reaped benefits from pharmacology. If a person, like me, was lucky enough to see a competent psychiatrist, get all the proper tests done, who was studious enough to match the right medication at the right dose monitored and taken for the right amount of time, which is very rare, they may, like me, be able to use that as a hand up long enough to survive and find the innards to become oneself.

That’s what happened with me, it lifted me up long enough to be bothered exploring my angst. I’ve come to the conclusion through all this and my studies that civilisation is to blame, especially hierarchy. Its the cause of thre trauma that led to my pain, its the cause of everything else that made that pain harder to bear, and rejecting it in spirit has caused my spirit to become free. However, I think if I wasn’t treated I wouldn’t be here, let alone writing this.

Of course, there is still alot of exploring to do. What you folks are saying resonates with me a lot. Especially desiring approval from authority figures. This bothers me, as I do not like authority. I put it down to being rejected by my parents, being raised in catholic education, and losing so many jobs. All this spells 'being liked by authority figures = survivial".

Time to rewild. Pardon the rant.

#17

Feral: I know I’ve already mentioned it about 4 trillion times, but if you are interested in ecopsychology, try Chellis Glendinning’s book (the title is in one of my earlier posts in this thread).

I volunteer at Left Bank Books and the woman I work with is currently working on a Masters specializing in ecopsychology; for what it’s worth, she says Chellis is indispensible.

#18

anyone seen this?

Century of the Self

here is part one of four:

(the other three parts are available off of the same link)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2637635365191428174

#19

As I was falling asleep, somewhere from the depths came a startling idea, and I feel that it’s worth sharing:

We have been taught self-denial. We have been taught to do what is unhealthy for us. It’s behavior we have to unlearn if we want to rewild. No amount of work to build a rewilded community and a rewilded way of life, no amount of sacrifice to the cause, no amount of believing in the affirmation of life, will be of any use if you don’t also affirm, rather than deny, your own life and health, and understand that you deserve to live with life, that there is nothing in your very nature that you need to doubt or deny.

Peace I’m outtie. :stuck_out_tongue:

#20

“The Machine in Our Heads” by Glenn Parton.
http://www.primitivism.com/machine-heads.htm

I read this yesterday in the anthology “Against Civilization.” I feel these things all the time, but this guy says it more eloquently than I ever could. I loved it. I cried. It was intensely validating and therapeutic.