A reflexive view on the discipline of psychology implies that the discipline’s models and theories not only describe or predict but also shape human subjectivities and actions. In today’s situation, where human activities drive an immense loss of biodiversity and natural areas, it is thus crucial to challenge the ways psychology theorize humans’ relations to nature and other species. Within ecopsychology, a key assumption is that humans are alienated from nature, leading to both individual suffering and environmental destruction. Similarly, preventive psychology’s models typically include natural conditions such as access to green spaces and clean air and water. Thus, both ecopsychology and preventive psychology illustrate how nature is indeed integrated into psychological models of human development and quality of life. However, building on the critical assumption that theories shape our subjectivities, it is still necessary to investigate how the more dominant mainstream theories may be developed to re-theorize our relations with nature and other species. In this paper, I argue that Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory is a good candidate for such a theory. The aim is to illustrate how this theory may be developed by integrating geosystems across the theory’s microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, and macrosystems. For such re-theorizing to be successful in shaping subjectivities where humans are less alienated from nature and nature is understood as something more than a provider of ecosystem services, I argue that the scientific language of disciplinary psychology is insufficient. Instead, the transformative potential of re-theorizing will be more successful if it is inspired by how relations between humans, nature, and other species are explored through the language of contemporary poetry.

This presentation contrasts the counseling discipline's philosophical roots, which fundamentally originate from the work of Carl Rogers, with the pathology-focused paradigms prevalent in allied psy-disciplines. The counseling framework shifts the focus from "disorder" to the individual's inherent capability, driven by the Actualizing Tendency—an innate force toward growth.

This philosophy yields two key outcomes: a strength-based approach, mobilizing client resources rather than pathologizing distress, and a commitment to wellness. While practical necessities like insurance reimbursement often force compliance with the DSM hegemony, counseling's core ideal provides a vital counterbalance. It critiques the trend of over-pathologizing complex human experiences (e.g., framing sorrow as clinical depression), championing instead a de-pathologized view of human existence and defending the natural range of emotional responses.

Affective History is a method I developed over many years. It denotes the tracing of the embodied relations and affects which allow us to understand a path to the present, not as disciplining or discursive practices but the tiny affects through which the present is formed. Not so much intergenerational transmission as deeply felt histories that can be gleaned from listening and systematic engagement with entangled narratives.

I have added to this method in many research projects, but for the present paper I consider aspects of class differences in the present conjuncture by tracing the affective histories of participants in a longitudinal study of British women divided by class, first seen as 4 year olds born in 1972/3 and most recently as 52/3 year old women interviewed in 2025. I am asking how we might utilise affective history to understand the historical production of the felt affects that are significant in the production of the deeply divided present. Using case studies, I consider aspects of family and community complexities through which class divides morph through the generations In relation of changing politics and policies in which patterns of intergenerational inequality and inherited wealth resist most liberal and neoliberal attempts to erode class differences.