Over the last few weeks, I’ve been navigating the themes of Ecopsychology and Compassion, in two different training programmes, both of which are of unrivalled quality and relevance to the times we live in.
As I observe the decomposition of the state of modernity, which I discussed in my last article, I find in this colourful and intricate tapestry the courage, elasticity and compassion to move through the internal-external worlds with coherence and integrity. Without denying or romanticising the harshness of what we live through, but maintaining the focus and presence that sustain this readiness to be useful, to help, to do what is needed (which is not always the most comfortable).
In a world where more and more people are looking for what is “ready”, quick, light and appears – the gift, the glamour, the trophy and the applause, the readiness to be useful and to do what is needed requires courage and stamina. Humility and community.
In one of these recent sessions, in the context of Ecopsychology and specifically on Community and Indigenous Psychology, we were invited to reflect on “how plural and intercultural notions of psychology, which are based on the recognition of the more than human context as being in dialogue with human well-being, confront or expand the notion of Western universalising and individual psychology”. As this is a topic that touches me greatly and is one of my great concerns, in this article I share a summary of my perspective, which I also shared with the group.
The concept of abundance has been distorted and this feeling that “I (the individual) deserve it, I am entitled to it, without taking into account the vast collective and systemic web of which I am a part” has become normalised.
It’s important to put this into context first:
“COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY is an inter- and transdisciplinary application in the participatory, affective and engaging approach with communities.
INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGY is based… (on) understanding each culture from its own frame of reference, including its own ecological, historical, philosophical and religious or spiritual context.
(And yet) psychological principles cannot be assumed to be universally similar (…).
Worldviews generated from colonised spaces have been excluded from the dominant Eurocentric and American discourse of Community Psychology. We can observe two modes of colonisation: “one is physical, territorial appropriation, and the second is so-called coloniality, which seeks to install and control thought.”
These are indigenous psychological experiences that imply a paradigm shift, opening up space for cultural, social and psychological data without the shackles of conceptual frameworks imported from elsewhere.
These approaches speak of Community Intervention, including competences in transdisciplinary, horizontal practices, immersed in diversity and of a participatory nature. Based on trust, reciprocity, co-operation and collaboration.” (Introduction to Ecopsychology Course, Sofia Batalha, School of Transpersonal Development).
INDIVIDUAL/Universalising/Western PSYCHOLOGY – for all its value and importance, depending on the context, in many situations fails to respond to the complex challenges we face. On the other hand, with its entry into the organisational and spiritual world, in recent decades there has been an appropriation and misrepresentation of indigenous and ancestral wisdom, which has become a veritable Personal Development industry, centred on the middle/upper class, the deification of the Individual and transcendence, and it is from this perspective that I will approach this “Individual Psychology”.
And let’s remember the question “How do plural and intercultural notions of psychology, which are based on the recognition of the more-than-human context as being in dialogue with human well-being, confront or expand the notion of Western universalising and individual psychology?”
Let’s start here: the Psyche is More Than Human. Imagine the arrogance of thinking that the psyche is only human. The stories that could illustrate my answer don’t have room to be shared here, first of all for ethical reasons. But I would say that what I find most shocking is the way in which individual/universalising/Western psychology, focused on separation and domination (anthropocentric and individualistic), continues to encourage and reward a narrative highly based on the “Hero/Heroine Journey” (and self-agency), which leads to a “place” of conquest, merit, victory; penalising and/or marginalising anyone who doesn’t fit into this narrative, as well as all those affected, harmed and usurped by it.
On the other hand, it hyper-responsibilises, pathologises and blames individual beings for vast, systemic issues that cannot be “solved” or “cured” individually.
Ultimately, I believe that this individual and universalising psychology, which is highly dogmatic and exclusionary, continues to encourage the duality between good and evil, right and wrong, “heaven” and “hell”, reward and punishment.

Uembje Lagoon, Bilene Beach
When I hear my peers encouraging strategies for co-creating abundance (and self-agency) that clearly impact on the deprivation and/or marginalisation of other beings (Humans and more than Humans) in places we don’t see (or want to see), it’s quite challenging.
The concept of abundance has been distorted and this feeling that, “I (the Individual) deserve, I am entitled,” has become normalised, without taking into account the vast collective and systemic web of which I am a part. Without realising that abundance is balance and not excess. And that my excess is guaranteed to cause lack/damage somewhere.
In my specific case, when I receive many people from the northern hemisphere in the southern hemisphere, and they are confronted with the practical issues of these imbalances (abandoned children, undignified labour, bodies made sick by the extractive industry of our beloved minerals, seafood and other “treasures”), the confrontation and the pain that this causes can generate both the opportunity for reflection and the escape and projection of this onto an “other”/the “bad”. A real resistance to accepting our entanglement and giving up our “acquired rights/luxuries”.
It’s not always fun to see the expertise of the urban VUCAS crumbling outside the family arenas, and the self-confidence of the Co-creators – I Want, I Can and I Can, being put to the test in a territory where the More than Human (and Human too) can push us to the limit, often somatically (because we are really invited to leave the mental and remember sensory and mammalian channels, of dialogue, of relationship, of reciprocity).
And here, compassion is vital to support vulnerability. For ourselves and for those we often have to support, outside of consulting rooms and incense-scented retreats and other things…. that also come from the south.
After all, we are only being reminded of (and confronted with) the clear disrespect, distortion and extortion of the Places we perpetuate, monopolising them in our image and to satisfy our needs. Not the needs of the Place.
We continue to make our elite bubbles, disrespecting and devastating the Places. And to which “we” go on holiday, on retreat, without realising the suffering, extraction, behind our well-being, “healing”, everyday life.
The film Catembe, filmed in 1964, was shown again in Lisbon this month, highly censored and rarely shown, even after 25 April. I didn’t live through that time, but watching the film, I clearly recognise the characters, the patterns of relationships/universalisation and exclusion today.
And I feel that “practising” a community psychology, from the Place, where the relationship is valued over the “Entity/Self”, where the plural, diverse, multiple is heard, respected, honoured, is a daily challenge and one of my great concerns. But in order to be useful to the Place, to the world and to the greater good, we have to do what we (feel we) need to do.