ABSTRACT
Among many themes in the ecological worldview literature, there are two that the author found to have great potential to provide new insights into the psychology of sustainability leadership. These are the distinction between anthropocentric and ecocentric worldviews and the ecological self. A person with an anthropocentric worldview has a more instrumental view of nature. The depth of the anthropocentric worldviews is expressed by Swiss archetypal psychologist James Hillman, who lamented that the entire field of Western psychology itself has become so lost on the inner perspectives of human beings that it seems to have forgotten that we are embedded in the natural world. An ecocentric worldview expresses a belief that human beings are dependent on, and literally embedded in, the Earth's ecosystem. An ecocentric thinker sees the Earth's biosphere at the centre, with Homo sapiens as one of many thousands of species that are dependent on the Earth's living systems for survival.
