![\"ecologicalunconscious\"](\"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2010\/07\/ecologicalunconscious.jpg\")
<\/a>By DANIEL B. SMITH<\/div>\nThe terms in which ecopsychology pursues this admittedly ambitious goal are steeped in the field\u2019s countercultural beginnings. Ecopsychology\u00a0emerged in the early 1960s, just as the modern environmental movement was gathering strength, when a group of Boston-area graduate students gathered to discuss what they saw as the isolation and malaise infecting modern life. It had another brief period of efflorescence, particularly on the West Coast and among practitioners of alternative therapies, in the early \u201990s, when Theodore Roszak, a professor of history (he coined the word \u201ccounterculture\u201d) published a manifesto, \u201cThe Voice of the Earth,\u201d in which he criticized modern psychology for neglecting the primal bond between man and nature. \u201cMainstream Western psychology has limited the definition of mental health to the interpersonal context of an urban-industrial society,\u201d he later wrote. \u201cAll that lies beyond the citified psyche has seemed of no human relevance \u2014 or perhaps too frightening to think about.\u201d Ecopsychology\u2019s eclectic following, which includes therapists, researchers, ecologists and activists, still reflects these earlier foundations. So does its rhetoric. Practitioners are as apt, if not more apt, to cite Native American folk tales as they are empirical data to make their points.<\/p>\n