Negative and Positive Earth Emotions

The Psychoterratic (Earth Emotions) Typology. See the Earth Emotions Glossary for more information about terms created by Glenn Albrecht.

Unsafe Psychoterratic Spaces

"The combined collapse of biophysical, cultural, and economic systems will have profound implications for the human psyche. Indeed, the pressure already put on our ecology and the climate has exerted stress on many people worldwide as climate chaos, extreme weather, radically altered landscapes, and various forms of pollution hit hard. Within a period of earth …

Psychoterratic and Somaterratic health and dis-ease.

Despite the importance of connections between environmental health and human health (physical and mental) in many cultures, we have very few concepts in English that address environmentally-induced mental distress and physical illness. In order to rectify that deficiency, I have created two new diagnostic categories: psychoterratic and somaterratic health and illness. These make the connection …

Global Dread

The experiences of angst, dread, nausea and despair are commonly associated with the writings of the existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard wrote The Concept of Dread in 1844, but it was published in English in 1944. Kierkegaard’s dread was prompted by the tension created in human affairs by “original sin”, as explained within a …

Endemophilia

The particular love of that which is locally and regionally distinctive as felt by the people of that place. Endemophilia is derived from the English word, ‘endemic’, is based on the French word, endémique and has the Greek roots, endēmia (a dwelling in) and endemos (native in the people) and philia (love of). The positive psychoterratic emotion of endemophilia can be …

Mermerosity and The New Mourning

I suggest that the ‘new mourning’ contains the emergent elements of detailed knowledge of causality, anthropogenic culpability and enhanced empathy for the non-human (Albrecht 2016-7). The etymological origins of the word ‘mourning’ come from the Greek language, mermeros related to ‘a state of being worried’ and its meaning is associated with being troubled and to …

Topoaversion

(topos = place), (aversion = 1590–1600;   Latin āversiōn-  (stem of āversiō ), equivalent to āvers ( us ) turned away ( see averse) + -iōn- -ion) [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aversion] The feeling that you do not wish to return to a place that you once loved and enjoyed when you know that it has been irrevocably changed …