Human-Horse Interactions in Hippovention: Ecopsychological Approach to Psyche Development

Hippovention, as a direction of psychotherapeutic and personality-developing “Human–Horse” interaction, has been extensively developing in Russia in recent years. In foreign countries many different models (Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy, Equine-Assisted Counseling, Equine-Assisted Growth and Learning, etc.), based on different theoretical approaches, represent similar practices. The systematization of these models allows us to correlate them with certain functional tasks of hippovention as an integral system: psychotherapeutic, correctional and consultative, socio-psychological, educational and pedagogical. However, at the methodological level a contradiction is revealed. The practical implementation of most of these tasks is built in the epistemological paradigm, when a horse for a person acts as an object of his actions, or when a person “subjectifies” a horse (endows it with “human” personal qualities). At the same time, there is a position that horses are inherently endowed with agency in behavior and relationships, which corresponds to the ontological paradigm of analysis of interactions in the “Human–Horse” system. The solution to this contradiction, in our opinion, is possible from the standpoint of the Ecopsychological approach to psyche development (V.I. Panov) and the Ecopsychological Typology of Agent-Environment Interactions created in this approach. This approach is based on the idea of the creative nature of the psyche as a form of being, which finds its manifestation in the psychological capabilities of both humans and horses to act as agents of their own being and agents of social interactions. The analysis of the psychotherapeutic and developmental potential of Hippovention techniques in the context of the Basic Types of Ecopsychological Interactions “Human–Horse” (“Object-Object”, “Agent-Object”, “Object-Agent”, “Agent-isolated”, “Agent-joint” and “Agent-generating”) was carried out. It is concluded that the methodology of the Ecopsychological approach to the psyche development makes it possible to consider hippovention as a system of social interactions built on a single theoretical basis and allowing us to solve various psychotherapeutic and developmental tasks in the context of the “Human–Horse” relationship.