Resumen de los autores
"When your views on the world & your intellect are being challenged & you begin to feel uncomfortable because of a contradiction you've detected that is threatening your current model of the world...pay attention. You are about to learn something" (William H. Drury, 1998, p. 201) This paper is an attempt to bring psychotherapeutic understandings into both disciplines of environmental psychology and psychological well-being to better understand both. My belief is that psychology and psychotherapy, despite having a shared interest in people, generally exist at the opposite ends of a spectrum. Whereas psychology perpetuates a more scientific and therefore a rather generic understanding of the human condition, psychotherapy attempts to deepen the understanding of the psyche at the individual and particular level. Both perspectives, alongside a number of other important and relevant disciplines (Bainbridge & Del Negro, 2020;Bateson & Bateson, 2000), are required to address the problems that we face. Indeed, a reductionist undertaking, in any field, culminates in the creation of specialisms which rather restricts the much needed joined-up thinking required for adequate problem understanding and solving which interdisciplinarity may provide. There is a need for complimentary or co-operative approaches rather than the more competitive tendency which is often encountered within and without academia (Sennett, 2013).The central thesis of this paper is that we foster a complementarity by harnessing an inward, contemplative focus, alongside the research we do, to develop some much-needed self-awareness. By becoming critically reflexive about our own actions and behaviours (Etherington, 2004;Finlay, 2008) we may understand our own contributions to the contemporary issues in psychological and environmental health. There also opportunities to develop an empathic understanding about the possible behavioural motivations of the wider population -we are far more similar than we are different. So alongside taking an authoritative position on the world though our choice of discipline, we also spend some time developing an authoritative understanding of ourselves (Storr, 1999;Whitaker, 1976). I turned to (environmental) psychology after a number of years working outdoors with adolescents and campaigning for various environmental organisations, because I believed idealistically, that the discipline may provide the 'answers' to the many environmental, social and individual problems I'd witnessed. At times the discipline was perceived as a parental figure, one that would come to the rescue of our collective problems and fears. However, as it is often with parents, I learnt to see the imperfections and embraced broader social influences and understandings. It took several years for the uncomfortable realisation that if the purpose of psychology was to improve the lives of people it was a) not working as well as it could and b) if change was to occur, it was not able to do this without recourse to collaboration with other disciplines and alternative theoretical considerations. To give one simplistic example among many, there has been a long history of research (over 60 years) focussed on understanding the negative health implications of tobacco smoking (e.g., Doll & Hill, 1954). Despite this body of research and allied interventions, it is estimated that tobacco will be responsible for 10 million deaths worldwide by 2025 -a doubling of deaths in approximately 20 years (e.g., Proctor, 2004) making it the second leading global death risk factor (Ritchie & Roser, 2013). Moreover, the role of psychological interventions to mitigate this behaviour seems to have had less than optimal effects (e.g., Jackson, Beard, West & Brown, 2021;Schlam & Baker, 2013;Shiffman, 1993). Essentially, the pace of influencing behavioural change in the last 60 years for such an important global health issue has been very slow. In terms of contemporary psychological health and the human contribution to impending environmental crisis -we simply do not have 60 years.People don't typically change in any significant and meaningful ways (or in any great numbers) unless there is a strong personal motivation to do so (e.g., to seek out therapy) or, as it has been pointed out regarding environmental crisis, until it's too late (e.g., SEI, IISD, ODI, E3G, and UNEP, 2021). People will die for their beliefs: Mike Hughes died crash-landing his self-built steam-powered rocket in the USA in an attempt to prove his theory that the Earth was flat (Washington Post, 23 rd February, 2020). The inhabitants of Easter Island, the Rapa Nui, were instrumental in their own demise by stripping bare their island of life sustaining palms. Jared Diamond, wonders, facetiously, what was going through their minds when they cut down the last tree on the island as a defence of their collective actions: "we don't have proof….we need more research" (2004, p. 114). For a more recent example of a similar myopic view, it was revealed that the HSBC plans to phase out coal mining financing by 2040 but only if it is cleared by the shareholders (BBC, March 11 th , 2021) -here be madness.Much of contemporary (and largely cognitive) psychology and the research that supports its contentions are not adequate to the endeavour of understanding (and therefore helping) the human condition (Dalal, 2018;Notterman, 2000;Sampson, 1981;Todres, 2003;Toomela, 2008;Wertz, 1993). We are far more than the information processing model espoused by the cognitive psychological analogy derived from the advance of the computer in the 1950s (Beidel & Turner, 1986;Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986;Hardcastle, 1995). The human 'black-box' processor has far greater complexity and interconnectivity (depth) to it. Knowledge about environmental issues (and indeed mental health), is by itself generally an "insufficient precondition for successful action" (Frick, Kaiser, & Wilson, 2004, p. 1598; see also Hicks & Bord, 2001;Kol
