Captain Jacques Cousteau and The Waking Up Syndrome

? 2024 Linda Buzzell

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The Sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

~ Jacques Cousteau

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In the 1970s the pioneering ocean explorer Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a primetime TV star, a familiar hawk-nosed figure with his red toque and pipe. The co-developer of the Aqua-Lung had opened up the mysterious deep water world to millions, producing and starring in the popular ABC primetime television series called “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.” Many of today’s environmentalists and marine biologists were inspired by his work.

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I was lucky enough to work for him. The Los Angeles based television company Thalassa Inc., run by JYC (pronounced “jheek” in the French way) and his younger son Philippe Cousteau, hired me as Director of Research and program development. Previously I had worked as Director of Research for Wolper Productions, the documentary film company that had produced his earlier TV episodes, so that was a plus. And I understood French, as I was born in Montreal, Quebec. I did the background research for Thalassa’s four episodes on the Antarctic with lots of cautionary tales and sent the divers off with a huge 3-ring binder of material dubbed the “papier Linda” by the crew. In a fax - exciting new tech! - sent to his ship the Calypso, JYC urged the crew to “voir papier Linda” (read Linda’s research binder). Not sure how effective that admonition was - the ship had to be rescued by the Chilean navy when it ran into trouble in the powerful waves of the Southern Ocean!

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My film editor husband and I were both working for Thalassa when we learned that JYC had had a “waking up” epiphany that deeply moved us both. He had been diving in the Mediterranean for decades thanks to the diving regulator technology he had co-pioneered during World War II. He announced to his son Philippe with great emotion that he now saw that the Mediterranean sea was dying and that henceforth he would no longer produce mere adventure-oriented shows but would focus the episodes on raising environmental awareness of the ocean’s fragile health. He was really angry and dealt with that by committing his resources towards promoting change. In 1973 he founded the nonprofit Cousteau Society to educate members and the world at large about the ocean’s fragile health; and he wrote passionate letters to the US Congress demanding they “harness radically new sources of energy” and work on “environmental protection.” Few listened.

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Sadly, in spite of all his good work and the popular primetime TV shows, it’s only very recently that more people on the water planet have become aware of the oceans’ fragile health.

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So what does this have to do with my current involvement with psychotherapy, ecopsychology, ecotherapy and climate psychology? At the same time I worked for the Cousteaus, I was also studying family systems psychotherapy in a pioneering program that proposed a radical expansion of individualistic psychology to include a systemic understanding of and approach to interpersonal relationships. I became a licensed psychotherapist with a specialty in family systems.

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It seems obvious in retrospect that I should have connected the dots between therapy and environmental issues at this time. But I couldn’t yet see the connection between our environment and mental health. It certainly wasn’t discussed in my psychology or psychotherapy studies and training. I was just excited that psychotherapy was broadening its individualistic focus to include a systems understanding of human family and group dynamics, and didn’t yet realize that systems theory would also demand that we include the wider spectrum of human-nature relationships in our therapeutic endeavors.

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So I began my psychotherapy practice but it wasn’t until I read the 1995 Sierra Club Books anthology Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind by Theodore Roszak, Mary Gomes and Allen Kanner years later that the penny finally dropped. Of course our relationship with the rest of nature was as essential for mental health as our relationships with fellow humans! Why hadn’t I seen this before? Why hadn’t I fully absorbed what Cousteau was telling us?

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My colleague Craig Chalquist and I co-edited a follow-up to that Sierra Club Books anthology in 2009 called Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind that included an article by Sarah Anne Edwards and me on “The Waking Up Syndrome,” where we tracked the various stages of awakening to the enormity of the environmental disaster we’re all now experiencing.

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In retrospect I can see that the first person I knew who had actually experienced that Waking Up Syndrome was my old boss Captain Cousteau. The devastation he saw in the depths of the Mediterranean woke him up in a shocking way. His response was truly inspirational. Yes, he was angry – deeply angry. But he found a way forward in his decision to devote his talents and resources to remedying the situation. From then on, his shows still had plenty of adventure but always included environmental messages. And his Cousteau Society educated many more people.

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Positive action is not the only possible response to waking up to the enormity of our disastrous predicament, of course. Many of us struggle with various forms and stages of the Waking Up Syndrome. Climate psychology is now a recognized area of psychology and ecopsychology. Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects and groups like the Good Grief Network are now available to help us process our eco-grief, anger, despair and anxiety while also finding the strength to feel gratitude and joy for the beauty that remains. And hopefully we will also be inspired like Captain Cousteau to add whatever gifts and resources we have to the urgent efforts to heal the earth and waters of our beloved planet.

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Resources

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The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undersea_World_of_Jacques_Cousteau

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