Instead, in and through existence one enters community. The realization that one is part of a community fosters a sense of responsibility. And the possibility of psychological healing and connection can begin to involve more than an individual encounter in a counseling office. It can be practice with nature, practice with art, practice with music, practice with spiritual discipline. And particularly practice as service.
Psychological exploration becomes an outward expression as well as an inward one.
There are courses being taught in Universities across the country, degrees now given and books written about the possibility of connecting ecology with psychology. Such a connection is a way of broadening both fields into interaction with one another. One of the basic assertions of ecopsychology is that ecology needs psychology and psychology needs ecology.