The fact of climate change has been increasingly evident over the past decade. In recent years we have seen massive fires in Australia, the American West, and the Arctic, endangering the lives of people and animals, and causing damage to many, many acres of land and property. There has been flooding, and the increasing intensity of hurricanes and tornadoes in other parts of the world. Yet, there are many people, ordinary citizens, as well as people in positions of power and influence over public policy, who deny the reality of climate change. The prevalence of such denial and disavowal of what should be self-evident leads us to want to apply a psychoanalytic lens to the question of climate change. Fortunately, there is interest among psychoanalysts on this topic, and literature is developing on this subject. We will use this course to explore some of the explanations for the difficulty of accepting the reality of climate change.

Objectives: after taking this class participants will be able to delineate:

1) Several defenses employed to avoid accepting the reality of climate change.

2) Aspects of anxiety relative to climate change.

3) Several psychological aspects of ecological debt.

4) Several aspects of how climate change is an issue for psychoanalysis.

5) Several aspects of the question about the role of apathy in the failure to deal with climate change.

6) Several aspects of denialism.

Three citations:

Bellamy, A. (2019) Trauma, fragmentation, and narrative: Sandor Ferenczi’s relevance for psychoanalytical perspectives on our response to climate change and environmental destruction. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytical Studies, 16:100-108.

Covington, C. (2014) Thinking about climate change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives by Sally Weintrobe Routledge, London, 2012 New Library of Psychoanalysis; 255 pp. in International Journal of Psychoanalysis 95(1): 176-180

Haseley, D. (2019) Climate change: Clinical considerations. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytical Studies, 16:109-115.

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