Engaging with Climate Change

Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Sally Weintrobe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136206832
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

How can we help and support people to face climate change?

Engaging with Climate Change is one of the first books to explore in depth what climate change actually means to people. It brings 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
• our conflicting identifications
• 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 recognise 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.

Index

• abortion and climate change denial 7, 16, 76
• actants 192
• actor network theorists 191
• Adam, Daviad 169
• ADD see attention deficit disorder
• Adorno, T. W. 196
• Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, The 24
• advertising 10, 12, 14, 41, 43, 121, 188, 205, 215, 223, 224,
• ageing, intolerance of 81
• AGW seeAnthropogenic Global Warming
• Agyeman, J. 57
• Ajzen, I. 142
• albedo effects 231
• Albrecht, G. 217
• Alexander, J. 3, 5, 186–9, 196–9
• Alexander, R. 66
• Allan, R. P. 233
• Allemansratt 140
• Alley, R. B. 234
• ambivalence 9, 118, 128, 130, 201, 207
  • inability to tolerate 127
  • psychoanalytic concept of 120
• American Geological Union 228
• American Meteorological Society 228
• Report on Climate Change ref0167American Psychological Association 2009, 99
• Amin, S. 61
• Amnesty International 75
• ‘analytic attitude’ and environmental activism 119
• Anan, K. 61
• Anderson, K. 2
• Anderson, R. 125
• animals, feelings of, empathic projective imagination about 207
• Annan, J. D. 231
• annihilation anxiety 41, 42
• Antarctic ice sheets 236
• anthropocentric and rationalist world-view 176
• anthropocentrism: dangers of 224
  • vs. ecocentrism 216
• anthropogenic climate change 53, 56
• anthropogenic global warming (AGW) 1, 227, 230, 234
• anticipatory mourning 124, 125
• anti-denialism 84
• anti-mind xiv, 10
• Antinov, J. 229
• anti-relativism 22
• anti-science 22, 76, 77
• anti-Semitism 20, 23 see also Weimar Republic, Germany
• antisocial behaviour in corporate life 58
• anxiety(ies) 9: annihilation 41, 42
  • catastrophic 54
  • at centre of facing reality 34
  • about climate change 12, 33–46, 49
  • defences against 34, 36–40
  • depressive 34–6, 38, 40–2, 49, 106
  • infantile 104, 105, 107
  • irrationality as coping mechanism for 9
  • paranoid-schizoid 34–6, 49, 171
  • primary 106
  • primiti...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• What history can teach us about climate change denial
• The difficult problem of anxiety in thinking about climate change
• Discussion The difficult problem of anxiety in thinking about climate change
• Discussion The difficult problem of anxiety in thinking about climate change
• Climate change in a perverse culture
• Discussion Climate change in a perverse culture
• Discussion Climate change in a perverse culture
• Reply Climate change in a perverse culture
• Great expectations The psychodynamics of ecological debt
• Discussion Great expectations: the psychodynamics of ecological debt
• Discussion Great expectations: the psychodynamics of ecological debt
• Reply Great expectations: the psychodynamics of ecological debt
• The myth of apathy Psychoanalytic explorations of environmental subjectivity
• Discussion The myth of apathy: psychoanalytic explorations of environmental subjectivity
• Discussion The myth of apathy: psychoanalytic explorations of environmental subjectivity
• Unconscious obstacles to caring for the planet Facing up to human nature
• Discussion Unconscious obstacles to caring for the planet: facing up to human nature
• Discussion Unconscious obstacles to caring for the planet: facing up to human nature
• How is climate change an issue for psychoanalysis?
• Discussion How is climate change an issue for psychoanalysis?
• Discussion How is climate change an issue for psychoanalysis?
• Reply How is climate change an issue for psychoanalysis?
• On the love of nature and on human nature Restoring split internal landscapes
• Discussion On the love of nature and on human nature: restoring split internal landscapes
• Discussion On the love of nature and on human nature: restoring split internal landscapes
• Climate change, uncertainty and risk
• Index