We can identify the start of ecopsychology in 1960, when the psychoanalyst Harold Searles wrote his book “The Nonhuman Environment in Normal Development and Schizophrenia”.

In the preface of his book Searles stipulates the important impact of nature during his proces of growing-up:

For as far back as I can recall, I have felt that life’s meaning resided not only in my relatedness with my mother and father and sister and other persons, but in relatedness with the land itself-the verdant or autumn-tapestried or stark and snow-covered hills, the uncounted lakes, the rivers.

The “non human environment” he identified as profoundly meaningful for any human. The first chapter of the book bears the title”Man’s Kinship with the Nonhuman Environment“

Searles discusses ideas of important thinkers and refers to the ideas of Albert Schweizer, who already predefined ecopsyhcology when he pointed out that man is only ethical when the life of plants and animals is also sacred to him:

And he already mentions Gardening as a activity which brings us back to nature. He then refers to Dr Zilboorg who wrote in his book ‘History of Medical Psychology’ that occupational therapy and landscaping where already introduced as therapeutic actions within psychiatry around 1860!

Related to the modern ‘animal assisted therapy’ the author refers to the book of Dr Marcel Heiman, who published ‘ The relationship between man and dog’ (1956). Heiman called the dog: ‘a factor in the maintenance of psychological equilibrium‘.