THERAPEUTIC LANDSCAPES

The concept of therapeutic landscapes, which deals with the dynamic between wellness and place and how this can be effectively used in healthcare maintenance, was first introduced in the 1990's by Wilbert Gesler, Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Visiting Professor at Queen Mary College, University of London, He first looked at traditional healing landscapes such as Epidauros in Greece, Lourdes in France and Bath in England. Since then the concept has developed. One early critique was that healing places should not be limited to landscapes already believed to have healing qualities. This critique has opened up the subject area in a number of ways with this current collection of 22 papers focusing on many different perspectives. The papers in the first chapter deal with traditional landscapes and review the concept which has its basis in cultural ecology, structuralism and humanism. Part 2 looks at therapeutic geographies for special populations including substance abuse treatment and the UK National Phobics Society. Part 3 focuses on applications in health care sites and includes papers on a mental health facility in London, a hospital waiting room assisted living residences in the US and palliative care in the home. Part 4 addresses contesting landscapes such as gay bathhouses, landscapes in a third world society where poverty and violence are a way of life and a profoundly unhealthy landscape – the Soviet Gulag. And the final chapters in Part 5 looks at therapeutic landscapes from the perspectives of medical anthropology and environmental psychology.

From the perspective of this reviewer, it is the contributions that relate closest to Gesler's original ideas about therapeutic landscapes that are the most interesting and relevant – too many of the chapters stray into too narrow definitions of medical contexts. While these are valid in themselves they strain the overriding concept behind this anthology. It appears that the general idea of therapeutic landscapes is moving in the direction of such broad inclusiveness, but in fact takes us away from the possible healing potential of natural landscapes and somewhat muddies the whole issue. If anything, this book inadvertently points the need for more research into this core aspect.