Experience, environment, and human potentials

My main goal in this book has been to present certain proposals for the enhancement of human experience and to link these proposals as firmly as possible to theory and research in psychology and the social sciences. Most centrally, I have tried to convey a sense of hope and of real possi bility for a more fulfilling, more cooperative, and more ecologically sound way of life. At times such a quest can be depressing because of the sharp contrast between things as they might be and things as they are. But despite the critical tone of many of my analyses, my underlying message is that we human beings genuinely do have potentials for enhancing our experience and environment.

In addition, this is a textbook in environmental psychology dealing with an extensive range of topics in this field (here defined as the study of interrelations between psychological and environmental variables). However, this book also takes a broadly humanistic, cognitive, and so cial-action approach to issues that clearly transcend the boundaries of any single academic discipline. Included, for example, are discussions of the desirability of suggested basic changes in our operative values and in major sociocultural institutions. In keeping with my own background and orientation, the central points of departure derive from environ mental, social, and cognitive psychology; but the issues, arguments, theories, and findings presented draw on numerous disciplines and should also be of interest outside of psychology. I hope that this book will prove of value to students, teachers, and practitioners in environmental education, environmental studies, futuristics, utopian thinking, social change, behavioral geography, environmental design, social policy, and any other field that touches directly on questions involving our major social and environmental problems and what we can do both to alleviate them and to build a more humane, ecologically viable future.