Jesus Garcia
“We forget that we are mammals, and that we are humans”
-Influenced by thinkers and intellectuals like Piotr Kropotkin, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse or Theodore Roszak, Xavier Serrano that decided to route their lifes to the prevention of emotional distress. He realized the personal analysis and formation like reichian psychotherapist in Italy and France with specialists like Piero Borrelli and Federico Navarro, both formed by Ola Raknes, collaborator of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Willhelm Reich. The ecology of human systems systematizes its thirty years of experience in the camp of psychotherapy and the preventive social action: pregnancy assessment and births, breeding, childhood and teenage preventive education, sexuality and human relationships.
-How would you define the Ecology of Human Systems?
It is a new discipline that shows ways of accompaniment, preventive intervention, conflict resolution and resource management in essential human systems -family and school- and complementary ones -institutions, media, centers for minors, institutions-. Its objective is to facilitate maturation processes healthy psycho-affective, self-regulated and, therefore, eco-logical, establishing social spaces where relationships and human values, ecological awareness and planetary identity are recovered.
-How do the ideas that are already familiar to us in relation to ecology. interdependence, environmental influence, environmental problems…?
Precisely, this is one of the challenges of Human Systems Ecology, to apply the laws of living to the development of human systems that I define as “vital” years that she got into the habit of focusing on her breathing every time she changes activities. «Before I walk out the door, I breathe,» Suzanne Powell says graphically. Or she tells herself on the street, in the midst of people and traffic, or on the subway:
«I breathe calmly and enter a different state.» A state of full connection with the most important thing we possess: the present moment. For Suzanne Powell, living fully means living with the consciousness of a child: «What can a child do better than an adult?» she asks. And she herself answers:
To be in the present.
present. The eternal present of the here and now. Be aware of all the signs that life offers you. And conscious breathing is the great tool. With it, I reconnect with innocence; at least for a while.”
- Breathing can also be useful in controlling our impulses. If we see, for example, that our boss is coming toward us in anger, conscious breathing helps us to choose how we want to react: by not getting into a rage, or by avoiding engaging in a kind of ping-pong to see who is right. In the East they use the expression: «Before speaking, turn your tongue seven times», which means that it is better to take our time, breathe with awareness, to know that the things we’re gonna say can hurt someone.
And what exactly does this extreme crisis consist of?
We have lived several decades in narcissistic and omnipotent social systems. This was reflected in exaggerated consumption, in having things to compensate for the existential emptiness, the lack of contact with what we have. We are not only alive and with our real affective and sexual needs, apart from the disastrous consequences that this had on a planetary level and the lucrative power that all this had for a few. This is why our current crisis is narcissistic and, as such, we find it difficult to admit it and to look for new ways for assuming that nothing can be as it was before, that we cannot go on living like this. This is very difficult because the way in which we have been the developed world is limiting us to this necessary change. But we all have a share of responsibility and we must assume it, because this can be the beginning of change.
Do you believe, then, that there is an open door to hope?
It is not easy, but it is possible. One of the keys is within our reach: to take responsibility and change our way of relating to each other and of educating, recovering our ecological conscience.
We must put an end to sexual and affective repression, to achievement objectives, to the logic of duty, of competitiveness, of di-sociational knowledge, and modify it for the logic of complexity, creativity, functional and supportive teamwork, and to facilitate the development of a more sustainable society. Emotional and vital motivations respecting rhythms and individualities along the lines of thinkers such as Wilhelm Reich, Fritjof Capra, Humberto Maturana or Edgar Morin.
Is the key, therefore, in upbringing and education?
We must radically answer an essential question: What do we educate or raise us for? To form fanatical and disciplined soldiers, psychopaths who kill and die for a flag or a religion? Do we educate to form resigned beings, victimists, mystics, consumer slaves, pretending to compensate for the lack of a sense of responsibility?
A MULTIDISCIPLINARY LABOR
Wilhelm Reich delved deeper into the causes of human suffering, which led him to act at two levels
-which are taken up by today’s Human Systems Ecology: the clinical level and the preventive level.
the clinical level and the preventive level. two levels
-which are taken up by the current Human Systems Ecology: the clinical level and the preventive level.
the clinical level and the preventive level. Thus, these professionals develop a preventive psychosocial work from interdisciplinary teams. Composed of obstetricians, physicians, psychologists, midwives, psychotherapists, educators….
Among their activities are the accompaniment during pregnancy, assistance in ecological childbirth and accompaniment in the family system during the maturation process of the child.
They also participate in alternative school spaces, conduct workshops with adolescents in high schools… They also provide information and training spaces for professionals of all nationalities.
