Literary Hub published an essay by James Reich in which he discussed his orientation as novelist and ecopsychologist, and addressed the connection of psyche and place in several books, notably Albert Camus’ L’Étranger. The introduction is reproduced below, and the full article can be found HERE.
“In addition to my work as a novelist, my field is ecopsychology. Ecopsychology is concerned with the repression of what biologist E. O. Wilson termed biophilia, or our innate affinity with our biosphere, with nature. I work with specific attention to the formations of psyche/place, the repression of this relationship with(in) nature, and its irruptions into consciousness in literature and culture in general. Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a spectacular example of such repression and its dynamics. Alienation from nature, extinction of species, loss of biosphere, and the mourning of biophilia leaves all of its characters pathological. It is the absence of biophilia that betrays an android. The abjection of nature and its uncanny turn or return present an existential crisis.
In an ecopsychological analysis, it is not quite ‘alone’ that Meursault kills the Arab in Albert Camus’ L’Étranger. The borrowed revolver is fired in conspiracy with the cosmic landscape of the Algerian beach, at the insistence of the sun…”
