Published: October 2023

Keywords:
Imelda McCarthy, Roger Duncan, Ecopsychology, Ecosystemics, Nature, Liminal Spaces, Hope, Myth, Labyrinth, Ariadne, Female Divinity, Indigenous Wisdom, Spirutualism, Systemic Thinking, Ecological catastrophe, Co-existence.

Imelda McCarthy

Dr Imelda McCarthy works as a systemic therapist/ supervisor in Independent Practice. She also facilitates a weekly Fifth Province Sangha meditation group and Spiritual Direction.

Her work on the Fifth Province has been published and presented internationally in over 20 countries and has been translated into 9 languages. She is one of the co-founders of the Family Therapy Association of Ireland and the first FT training programme in Ireland. She is proud to have been on the editorial boards of Major international systemic therapy journals in Ireland, UK, USA , Greece and Australia. She has co-edited two international books with Carmel Flaskas and Jim Sheehan, ‘Hope and Despair in Narrative and Family Therapy’ (2007) and with Gail Simon, Systemic Therapy as Transformative Practice (2017).

Imelda retired from 30 years teaching in Social Science at University College Dublin where she had initiated their first PhD programme in Families and Systemic Therapies.

Roger Duncan

is a Systemic Family Therapist and author who has been involved in nature-based practice for thirty years and his book “Nature in Mind Systemic Thinking and Imagination in Ecopsychology and Mental Health” was published in 2018. Roger studied biology and trained as a Waldorf teacher, and Wilderness rites of passage guide with The School of Lost Borders in California before becoming a psychotherapist.

He was one of the pioneer tutors of Ruskin Mill Education Trust, developing therapeutic education programs for adolescents with complex and challenging behaviour in the woodlands and wilderness settings and had a leadership role in senior management.

He currently works within the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) in the NHS and in private practice, with individuals, families and organisations. His intention is to find innovative ways to bring experiential encounters with the imaginal world into mainstream culture.

Abstract

Roger and Imelda converse around the meta crises in our world and how we as systemic practitioners might address these. They ask, how do we creatively adapt to situations of impending non-linear collapses over which we have little control? Ideas from Bateson, other systemic thinkers and indigenous wisdoms will be drawn on to illustrate how we might explore liminal spaces to cocreate practices for a very different world. They will also suggest that we have some ideas already in our field that may be of help to us.