Healing the soul of the World: Towards Co-Evolutionary Psychotherapy in the Ecological Collapse Era

Abstract

The article explores the transformative and political role of psychotherapy in the anthropocene era, proposing a perspective of co-evolutionary psychotherapy capable of dealing with individual and collective discomfort linked to ecological collapse. Climate trauma, loss of biodiversity and eco-anxiety highlight how contemporary psychological suffering is intrinsically ecological, requesting an approach that exceeds exclusively intrapsychic cure. Through Ecopsycology and Ecopsycotherapy, the natural world becomes co-angery in the therapeutic process, favoring reconnection, resilience and political agency. The Jungian perspective on ecological imagination suggests that archetypes, dreams and natural symbols reflect the relationship between the individual psyche and the soul of the world, while the psychotherapy of Gestalt underlines the importance of the incarnate contact as an ethical practice of reconnection with it, the other and the environment. By integrating these traditions, co-evolutionary psychotherapy is configured as a laboratory in which inner experience, community relationships and ecosystems interact, modeling each other. This paradigm not only promotes psychological well -being, but also supports an ethical and political commitment, opposing the extractive logics and enhancing the shared responsibility towards the natural world. In this vision, taking care of the soul of the world means taking care of the ecological and symbolic dimension of human existence, recognizing the indissoluble link between psyche and environment. The article invites to rethink psychotherapeutic practice as a space for coeximation, in which archetypes, body contact and ecological reconnection generate new forms of meaning, action and resilience in the contemporary crisis.