Experiencing outdoor spaces and places from within: Adventure therapy and systems psychoanalysis

This paper on Experiencing outdoor spaces and places from within provides an examination of the way in which participation in physically active groups in outdoor settings can be a catalyst for significant personal change. The practice of adventure therapy is used as an extended example of the application of adventurous outdoor group therapeutic processes. However, from a systemic perspective, this presentation is also an attempt to influence a systems psychoanalytic system (the ISPSO) to introduce action based theories and models that have traditionally lain outside the systems psychoanalytic sphere. Thus question are raised about the compatibility between systems psychoanalysis and adventure therapy as well as the extent to which the two fields may enrich each other. Accordingly, there is a focus on the connections between systems-psychoanalytic theory and that of adventure therapy as well as the challenges posed by mobilizing physical group activity with therapeutic intent (Taylor, Segal et al. 2015).