With Climate in Mind Psychoanalysts on Climate Breakdown

Acknowledgements

List of Contributors

Introduction

Sally Weintrobe and Lynne Zeavin                                                        

Part I: Mainly Clinical

1. Keeping the Ecological Catastrophe in Mind

Delaram Habibi-Kohlen                                                                                    

2. Coming Alive in Relation to the Natural World: A Clinical Account                       
Lynne Zeavin

3. The Colossal Divide: Transference-Countertransference Crossfire
Karyn Todes                                                                                                    

4. The Psychoanalyst’s Awareness of Climate Trauma in the Clinical Situation
Sally Weintrobe                                                                       

5. Reflections on Plastic in the Sea and Other Transformations: A Significant Dream

Alfredo Lombardozzi                                                                                       

6. Do Humans Really Want to Survive?

Don Moss                                                                                                                    

Part II: Mainly Theory

7. Unconscious Processes in Relation to the Environmental Crisis
Harold Searles                                                                                                 

8. What is Psychoanalytical Enlightenment Today? A Culture of Care as a Response to the Individual’s Violability in the Face of the Climate Crisis

Christine Bauriedl-Schmidt, Markus Fellner, Monika Krimmer, and
Hans-Jürgen Wirth                                                                                           

9. Living in Climate Crisis: A Postcolonial Psychoanalytical Viewpoint

Maria Luiza Gastal                                                                                           

10. Stretching Horizons: Tightening Links Between Human and Non-human to Stay in the World

Maria Luisa Gastal                                                                               

11. Necropolitics

Lynne Zeavin                                                                                                    \

Part III: Mainly Nature

12. Trees and Other Psychoanalytic Matters

Lindsay L. Clarkson                                                                                         

13. On Healing Split Internal Landscapes

Sally Weintrobe                                                                                   

14. I Am the River...

Pushpa Misra                                                                                       

15. Out of Paradise: The Future of an Ecological Disillusionment

Luc Magnenat                                                                                      

Part IV: Research

16. Development, Ambivalence, and Containment: Through the Himalayan Lens

Pushpa Misra and Jhelum Podder

Biography

Sally Weintrobe is Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and has chaired the IPA Climate Committee. She won the IPA’s 2021 Community Award for her work on climate. Engaging with Climate Change (Routledge), which she edited, was short-listed in 2014 for the Gradiva Award for its contribution to psychoanalysis.  

Lynne Zeavin is Training and Supervising Analyst of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and an associate editor of JAPA, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Among her publications, she co-edited, with Don Moss, Hating, Abhorring and Wishing to Destroy (Routledge).

“An eminently important book that illustrates the expanded scope of psychoanalytic thought and action when nature is recognised as a primary psychic object alongside the primary parental objects of humans. With an integrative concept of climate in mind, we psychoanalysts can no longer keep separated the intimate familial climate from the physical climate and the wider social climate.  This has fundamental consequences for the form and content of psychoanalytic interpretations: the examination of the unconscious and conscious meaning of all climatic themes requires our attention, including the concern for the preservation of nature and its representation in the individual psyche.  This stirring, lucid, and evocative book emphasises the social responsibility of psychoanalysis, and that deserves many readers because it convincingly conveys the urgency of psychoanalytically contributing to the transformation of the currently widespread culture of uncare into a more lively culture of care.” Dr. med. Heribert Blass, President International Psychoanalytical Association

 

“At last, as this volume reveals, psychoanalysts across the globe are waking up to the promptings of nature and climate. Not just an ethical imperative, its contributors also demonstrate how this shifting orientation enriches psychoanalytic theory and practice, not least by deepening our understanding of key aspects of the human condition such as omnipotence, splitting, suffering, love and reparation.” Professor Emeritus Paul Hoggett, Co-Founder Climate Psychology Alliance

 

“As a scientist and ecologist watching what is happening to our natural environments, I have always wondered why so many humans show such little respect for Nature. I am now beginning to understand why. This collection of essays provides vital insights and clarifications into the core causes of human behavior with regards to Nature and the Earth.  The contributors provide an impressive array of perspectives to expand our comprehension, and hopefully to provide remedies, to the growing disjunct in the 21st Century between our human interior world and the external reality of Nature, climate, and planet. It is a must read for psychoanalysts, scientists, and even the general public, who are struggling to understand this disjunction.” W. John Kress, Ph.D., Distinguished Scientist and Curator Emeritus, National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution