ABSTRACT

Theodore Roszak popularized the word ecopsychology and contributed to defining its basic terms of reference as an: emerging synthesis of ecology and psychology, the skillful application of ecological insights to the practice of Psychotherapy and a study of emotional bond with the earth and the search for an environmentally based standard of mental health. In 1971 a group of Italian psychiatrists and psychotherapists from the city of Milan began to take seriously the implications of Bateson's ideas and challenged the "medical model" of psychiatry. An exploration of nature informed by a combination of Bateson's creatural perspective and Corbin's description of the imaginal world might give us a way of engaging the world that could be used for the development of the clinical practice of ecopsychology. Using the metaphorical language of Alchemy and Gnostic psychology, Romanyshyn has developed a process that he calls "alchemical hermeneutics.