The Call of the Wild: Lessons from Natural History

Abstract

It will be evident to counselling psychologists that evolutionary psychology seems to be commanding attention recently (see The Psychologist, 14 (8)). This literature argues that therapeutic psychology gains valuable insights by locating emotion, consciousness, meaning and the like in an evolutionary context (Bailey & Wood, 1998; DelMonte, 2001; Gilbert, 1998a; Silverstein, 1998). It is also argued that it may be helpful to recognise that some of our evolved talents and abilities have not had the chance to ‘catch up’ with cultural change (de Waal, 2001; Dixon, 1998; Gilbert, 1998b). This paper is related to this literature to the extent to which some people remain attuned to our proposed origins, i.e. living in the wild.