Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Description

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. Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Contributors Foreword Preface 1 Introduction 2 What history can teach us about climate change denial 3 The difficult problem of anxiety in thinking about climate change Discussion The environmental neurosis of modern man: the illusion of autonomy and the real dependence denied Discussion 4 Climate change in a perverse culture Discussion Discussion Reply 5 Great expectations: the psychodynamics of ecological debt Discussion Discussion Reply 6 The myth of apathy: psychoanalytic explorations of environmental subjectivity Discussion Not I Discussion How sustainable change agents can adopt psychoanalytic perspectives on climate change 7 Unconscious obstacles to caring for the planet: facing up to human nature Discussion Discussion Goods and bads 8 How is climate change an issue for psychoanalysis? Discussion Discussion Reply 9 On the love of nature and on human nature: restoring split internal landscapes Discussion Nature, consumption and human flourishing Discussion On love of nature and the nature of love 10 Climate change, uncertainty and risk Index