Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

by Weintrobe; Sally

• ISBN13: 9780415667623
• ISBN10: 0415667623
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2012-11-06
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

How can we help and support people to face climate change? Engaging with Climate Changeis the first book of its kind to explore in depth what climate change actually means to people. It is the first to bring members of a wide range of different disciplines in the social sciences together in discussion and to introduce a psychoanalytic perspective. The important insights that result have real implications for policy, particularly with regard to how to relate to people when discussing the issue. Topics covered include: · what lies beneath the current widespread denial of climate change · how do we manage our feelings about climate change · our great difficulty in acknowledging our true dependence on nature · conflicts in our sense of identity · the effects of living within cultures that have perverse aspects · the need to mourn before we can engage in a positive way with the new conditions we find ourselves in Through understanding these issues and adopting policies that recognize their implications humanity can hope to develop a response to climate change of the nature and scale necessary. Aimed at the general reader as well as psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and climate scientists, this book will deepen our understanding of the human response to climate change.

Author Biography

Sally Weintrobe, a practising psychoanalyst, is a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London. She sees a psychoanalytic perspective as a vital part of understanding how to engage people about the seriousness of climate change and how to understand current levels of denial. She has written and lectured widely on these subjects and on our relationship with nature. Her commitment to fostering interdisciplinary exchange with other human scientists about engaging with climate change has led to this remarkable book.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. xiv
Contributors	p. xv
Foreword	p. xix
Preface	p. xxii
Introduction	p. 1
What history can teach us about climate change denial	p. 16
The difficult problem of anxiety in thinking about climate change	p. 33
Discussion: The environmental neurosis of modern man: the illusion of autonomy and the real dependence denied	p. 48
Discussion	p. 52
Climate change in a perverse culture	p. 56
Discussion	p. 72
Discussion	p. 80
Reply	p. 84
Great expectations: the psychodynamics of ecological debt	p. 87
Discussion	p. 103
Discussion	p. 109
Reply	p. 114
The myth of apathy: psychoanalytic explorations of environmental subjectivity	p. 117
Discussion: Not I	p. 134
Discussion: How sustainable change agents can adopt psychoanalytic perspectives on climate change	p. 138
Unconscious obstacles to caring for the planet: facing up to human nature	p. 144
Discussion	p. 160
Discussion: Goods and bads	p. 165
How is climate change an issue for psychoanalysis?	p. 170
Discussion	p. 186
Discussion	p. 190
Reply	p. 196
On the love of nature and on human nature: restoring split internal landscapes	p. 199
Discussion: Nature, consumption and human flourishing	p. 214
Discussion: On love of nature and the nature of love	p. 221
Climate change, uncertainty and risk	p. 227
Index	p. 241
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