Deep Donkey and Dadirri: asking Creatura out to play

This article is based on the premise that we are currently awakening to the full systemic impact of the emerging global ecological crisis which is already having a devastating effect on the ecosystems of the earth and also a highly destructive impact on psychological well-being. The ecological crisis has coincided with the painful awakening to the social and environmental destruction that has resulted from the legacy of a colonial world view of nature and culture. These events now demand a radical and deep adaption of our view of nature and culture. It is becoming clear that we are facing not only an ecological break down and a narrative collapse, but also a breakdown in how to make sense of what we are facing. This article explores how systemic psychotherapy and Gregory Bateson’s work on the gnostic ideas of pleroma and creatura, can provide a framework to support the Decolonial Turn but also an EcoSystemic Return. This article uses the children’s game of Donkey and the Indigenous Australian practice of Dadirri to playfully explore how we might overcome Bateson’s notion of epistemological error when engaging with systemic practice, Indigenous nature practice and quantum physics. The article suggests an imaginary game of Deep Donkey to overcome the destructive legacy of Cartesian dualism at the core of western culture and to begin to open western imagination to an intra-subjective dialogue with nature. I suggest the game of Deep Donkey could a helpful practice in realigning western thinking with sophisticated and long subjugated Indigenous ecological and cultural wisdom.

Rewilding systemic practice

This paper is written in the context of the current ecological crisis affecting physical and mental health, social, economic, and political contexts, at local and global levels which calls for the disruption of old ways of thinking, living and moving towards the future through collective action. One way of responding as a systemic and family psychotherapist, has been my experience of rewilding my systemic practice with individuals, couples, and families in the UK since taking therapy outdoors. I will offer some examples of ecotherapy as part of my own personal and professional journey in “coming home” through nature, becoming an outdoor designer of therapeutic space and a minimalist wild therapist. I invite us all to re-think and re-create a therapeutic space which, by its very essence, is wild, meaning boundaryless, infinitely spacious and unpredictable. It can open up opportunities for creativity, for using metaphors to explore meanings beyond words. Nature becomes not only the context in which I practice but my co-therapist or even the primary therapist. Together we can enrich the therapeutic process through moments of magic and facilitate change using a wild reflecting team. In my experience of ecotherapy, voices from the wild carry unique messages, for example, birdsong can provide unexpected voices, useful interruptions or disruptions that can enrich the therapeutic process. Such a wild reflecting team can also be a daring metaphor to welcome the unexpected and unfamiliar into our systemic practices and relationships, to include new emerging and marginalised perspectives which may bring us all more in touch with our wildness, lost indigenous ways of relating and shape our futures through collective action.

Where did the Eco go in Systemic Practice?

In this paper, I argue that, although the systemic therapy community adopted some of Gregory Bateson’s ideas, we neglected his ecological concerns, and his thinking about epistemology and ontology might have shaped our practice even more than the comparatively few concepts we took. With rising concerns about the impact of humans upon the environment in the era in which we live, described as the Anthropocene, along with the posthuman turn, perhaps now is the time for us to look both backwards and forwards to deepen our understanding of Bateson’s message; to acknowledge the continuing importance of his thinking and influence upon the posthumanities.

Theorising Urban Spaces in Yvonne Vera’s Butterfly Burning (1998) and Without a Name (1994)

The study focuses on Yvonne Vera's Without a Name (1994) and Butterfly Burning (1998) and reveals that the re-organisation of the African landscape by the white colonisers had disastrous effects on the environment and this in turn affected the lives of the colonised in irrevocable ways. The study also contends that humanity cannot survive without the environment in whatever situation as it is embedded in the human psyche and influences human behaviours and experiences as revealed in Vera (1994) and (1998). Both novels look at city environments, the cities being colonial constructs that were meant to obliterate the “African” environment. The study is desktop qualitative research employing content analysis in the interpretation and analysis of the chosen texts (novels). The analysis was supported by evidence from other critical works (secondary sources) by various authors/critics. The theory which informs this study is Ecocriticism, basing on Glotfelty's (1996) definition of the term that it is the study of the relationship between literature and the environment. In the same vein, as illustrated in the study, Buell (2005) and Heise (2006) contend that that all literature is environmental, hence this study of the depiction of cityscapes in Vera's works. The study concludes that the re-organisation of the African environment by the colonisers had far-reaching results on both the landscape and the human psyche. It is, therefore, recommended that more studies analysing the impact of the re-organisation of the environment be done so as to map a strategic way in order to undo, rectify and reverse the negativity implanted and nurtured by the colonial environmental systemic practice and agenda.