Abstract
This chapter invites the reader to a phenomenological inquiry into the intimacy—or lack thereof—between human consciousness and nature. Intimacy is taken to be a direct, palpably felt connection between self and other, which ultimately are of one essence. The obstacles and challenges to intimacy with nature for people living in contemporary high-tech urban societies are seen as rooted in the separation of subject and object of consciousness endemic to how human consciousness is wired. The greatly elaborated forms of these obstacles in contemporary consciousness are traced through the phenomena of alienation, sensory shutdown, and hyper-reflexivity.
The ecstasy as well as dread of intimate encounters with nature are explored through vignettes drawn from the authorʼs personal experiences. Natureʼs potential to heal the layers of alienation and self-alienation and to restore our consciousness to relationship and intimacy with other humans and with nature are explored through psychoanalytic thought and practice, in particular, those of Donald W. Winnicott for whom the capacity for relatedness is key to human health and well-being. The analogy between the role of the primary caregiver in the psychological development of infants in Winnicottʼs theory and nature as the healing and nurturing mother is seen as obvious and compelling.
However, going beyond this analogy is required for a deeper dimension of healing. This dimension concerns the alienated and fragmented structures of the self that mirror the economically driven high-tech culture in which both the self and its human caregiver are embedded. The healing of this deeper dimension calls for an encounter with Nature (with capital “N”) which is impartial to human fate and is a container for both life and death. This Nature is an “other” which, unlike a human caregiver, does not mirror back or reinforce the culturally, socially, or linguistically constructed self but allows it to unravel and be metabolized. Elements of Winnicottʼs thought that lend themselves to extending his theory to a relationship and intimacy with such an “other” are examined. Lastly, we explore the experience of unraveling of the psychological self and of coming to the one essence, which is called “Silence.” The barrier of fears and the battles that precede the Silence are explored through wilderness experiences as well as meditative practice.
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Notes
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Human art objects may be a case in point, because they can call us out. But do they call us out in the same way or for the same reasons as nature does? I suspect not, but I confess I do not know this with certainty. The subject of art is complex, and what, if anything, it may share with nature in its power to awaken horizontal depth perception and a sense of intimacy with oneʼs surrounds, I will leave for those who are more knowledgeable about the subject than I to ponder.
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Puhakka, K. (2014). Intimacy, Otherness, and Alienation: The Intertwining of Nature and Consciousness. In: Vakoch, D., Castrillón, F. (eds) Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9619-9_2
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