Bare Truth about Ecological Psychology

On March 15, 2017, the roundtable “Ecological Psychology: Myth or Reality” took place at the Scientific Library of Astrakhan State University. The event was arranged by faculty and students of our Department of Psychology.

Ecological Psychology is a relatively new trend in the present-day science; it occupies an intermediate position between Ecology and Psychology, which determines its interdisciplinary character and topicality of the issues that it researches – management of human and natural resources. This is what the speech given by Prof. Boris Kaygorodov, Dean of the Department of Psychology of ASU, was about. He also presented the methodological base of research activities that are currently undertaken in this field; he also provided historical facts about the myths that arose due to a wrong understanding of the terminology, as well as about misconceptions and unhappy outcomes that take place when the tools of Psychology fall into unprofessional hands.

To continue Prof. Kaygorodov’s key points, Dr. Elena Borisova from our Chair of General & Cognitive Psychology gave a lecture, too. She told how the principles of Ecological Psychology are introduced in practice; in particular, she told how therapeutic influence by means of fairy tales could prevent ecologically unfriendly consumption of human resources. She pointed out that a person ought to treat himself or herself as the prime and the main source of consumption.

Our students discussed the key points of the two lectures vividly and actively. The young people’s profound interest in this field is quite explainable: Ecological Psychology, therapy with fairy tales, and many other interesting trends are presented rather unclearly in the fundamental training of psychologists. Thus, such extracurricular activities as the held roundtable help young people, for whom Psychology is the field of their professional activities, obtain detailed answers to the questions they are interested in.

The scientific literature presented at the exhibition arranged by the staff of our Scientific Library pursued the same goal.