By John Turtz, Ph.D.  

At the time of this writing (late July, 2022), our planet is on fire—literally. We are living on a scorched Earth of our own making. Headline after headline reports the disastrous impact of global warming: from fires, heat waves, drought and extreme weather events to glacial melting and rising sea levels.

At a relatively young age, I became extremely worried about what our species was doing to our planet. In my twenties, one of my dilemmas was whether to pursue psychology or environmental work. I decided to go with my passion—psychology—but I have always felt a sense of guilt for my inaction with regard to environmental issues.

Though I could not have articulated it as a child, I believe I have had a deep reverence for the Earth from early on in life. My father loved the outdoors and had a spirit of adventure, which he imparted to me. As a teenager and young adult, I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in a number of outdoor adventures, from canoeing in northern Minnesota (where I developed an intimate knowledge of the Minnesota state bird—the mosquito) to mountaineering in the North Cascades of Washington. From these early adventures, I learned to experience the sublime before I even knew the meaning of the word “sublime.”  And I learned the importance to human beings of a connection with the natural world. The ending of a poem by Mary Oliver (1986) entitled, “Wild Geese” beautifully illustrates our inextricable connection with the natural world:

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

In his book The Nonhuman Environment: In Normal Development and in Schizophrenia, published in 1960, the psychoanalyst Harold Searles wrote about this connection with the natural world as well as the absence of attention given to this in psychoanalysis, stating: “This disregard of the significance of the nonhuman environment to psychology and psychiatry has persisted despite the accumulation and abundant data, provided by numerous varied scientific disciplines, which show us beyond doubt that man is not an alien in his nonhuman environment but in kinship with it” (Searles, 1960, p. 5). Searles (1960), differentiating his concept of field from the renowned psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan’s concept of the interpersonal field, also wrote: “By contrast, I am emphasizing in this volume that the significant field, the field which psychiatry needs to consider, is a much more inclusive one, containing, in addition to the world of culture and of people, the nonhuman environment” (Searles, 1960, p.23). In addition, Searles, in 1972, demonstrated how far ahead of his times he was when, in his paper, “Unconscious Processes in Relation to the Environmental Crisis,” he asserted: “Even beyond the threat of nuclear warfare, I think, the ecological crisis is the greatest threat mankind collectively has ever faced.”  

Daniel Gaztambide, in his book, A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology, stated: “Patients and therapists do not exist in a vacuum, but function and relate within a broader sociopolitical world. By extension, psychoanalytic clinicians must be trained to think with their heart in the therapeutic relationship, and their feet marching in the streets advocating for social justice and equity” (Gaztambide, 2019, p. 202). The relationship between a psychoanalyst and a patient has always been considered to be the most private of relationships, but it is now more important than ever for psychoanalysts to move beyond the consulting room and deal with the larger sociopolitical issues. These large-scale issues, which are, of course, the context in which patients develop their symptoms, conflicts, and problems, range from social justice to the rise in authoritarianism to the climate crisis. Psychoanalysis can (and, from my perspective, must) play a crucial role with regard to these larger social concerns, and this essay will focus on the role psychoanalysis can play with regard to the existential threat of our climate emergency.  

What is the role of psychoanalysis with regard to the climate crisis?  Psychoanalysis can be of crucial import to the climate emergency on several levels:  

• First of all, psychoanalysis needs to reengage with its history. More specifically, it needs to continue to further develop what Searles began to explore many years ago—the importance of our relationship and kinship to the nonhuman environment. We need to investigate this relationship, at both conscious and unconscious levels, and also need to focus on healing our ruptured relationship with the nonhuman world.
  
  
• As Amber Trotter (2020) has demonstrated, psychoanalysis is an ethical discipline, and the ethics that embody psychoanalysis tend to be subversive to the cultural values and norms in contemporary America. Psychoanalysis has recently gone through what has been called the “ethical turn” in that it has, in the spirit of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, focused more and more on the Other, whether the Other be a suffering human being or a suffering planet. This can help to counter the anti-environmental values of individual egoism and consumerism so central to Western culture as well as the Western value placed upon dominance over the natural world. And, as the psychoanalyst Donna Orange (2017) has so elegantly expressed, the climate crisis and social injustice are not two separate issues, but rather are one single, inextricably connected issue. Our long history of colonialism, slavery and racism is intricately connected with the climate crisis and is at the root of climate injustice. It is no accident that the most affected by the climate emergency are those from the Global South, not from those countries that are most responsible for the crisis. The subversive aspects of psychoanalysis and its emphasis on unconscious experience can help us in:
  
  
• • Better understanding our unconscious resistance to addressing and facing the climate crisis.
  • Being a subversive voice in questioning Western values that underpin and reinforce the climate emergency and climate injustice.
  • Better dealing with collective trauma and mourning (around climate change and our history of social injustice), an essential part of what human beings will increasingly need to do in dealing with the climate crisis.
    
    
• Psychoanalysis has always paid attention to the unconscious power of the group. Group dynamics play a crucial and often unconscious role in shaping people’s views of the climate crisis and climate injustice. In these times of extreme social polarization and intense loyalty to the group, psychoanalysis needs to play an important role in bringing these unconscious factors to light.
  
  
• Psychoanalysis has recently been more and more influenced by complexity theory, which is the study of nonlinear dynamic systems, open systems that exhibit disorder. One very important idea stemming from complexity theory is that change in a nonlinear dynamic system cannot be predicted, but it can be abrupt. Change is often thought to be gradual, and very abrupt changes are often thought to be insubstantial. But complexity demonstrates that substantial and genuine change can in fact be very abrupt. And, since change in nonlinear dynamic systems cannot be predicted, this leads to a greater capacity to carry and hold onto the hope that at some point in time we will reach a tipping point and change will occur. Holding onto hope will play a vital role in counteracting climate despair and inaction in the future.
  
  
• On the individual level in the consulting room, psychoanalytic treatment can help people question cultural norms, deal with their mourning and their anxiety over the climate crisis, deal with their defensive patterns used to avoid climate anxiety, and turn anxiety into action.
  
  

The psychoanalyst Susan Kassouf (2022) explores the need to move away from denial and, rather than avoiding catastrophic thinking, actually move toward cultivating catastrophic thinking, but in a constructive manner, not in a manner which leads to despair and resignation. On a more personal note, a few years ago I participated on a committee at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis that developed a conference on psychoanalysis and climate change. This helped me move from avoidance to a greater degree of genuinely facing the climate crisis. I recently began serving on the Outreach and Advocacy Committee—a joint project of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance and the Climate Psychology Alliance–North America. I personally have found that confronting the climate emergency in a context of a cohesive group sharing a great deal of camaraderie has paradoxically decreased my levels of anxiety, despair, and hopelessness while at the same time increasing my sense of vitality. Rather remarkably, just a small amount of taking action and participating in some form of climate activism can help restore a sense of connection with others and with the nonhuman world, and it can also lead to a renewed sense of aliveness, even in the face of an existential crisis.

References:

Gaztambide, D. J. (2019). A people’s history of psychoanalysis: From Freud to liberation psychology. Lexington Books: Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London.

Kassouf, S. (2022). Thinking catastrophic thoughts: A traumatized sensibility on a hotter planet. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 82: 60-79.

Oliver, M. (1986). Dream work. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press.

Orange, D. (2017). Climate crisis, psychoanalysis, and radical ethics. London and New York: Routledge.

Searles, H. F. (1960). The nonhuman environment: In normal development and in schizophrenia. Madison, Connecticut: International Universities Press, Inc.

Searles, H. F. (1972). Unconscious processes in relation to the environmental crisis. Psychoanalytic Review, 59: 361-374.

Trotter, A. M. (2020). Psychoanalysis as a subversive phenomenon: Social change, virtue ethics, and analytic theory. Lexington Books: Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London.

John Turtz, Ph.D is Co-director of the Psychoanalytic Training Program at the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and is former Co-director of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. He is in private practice in Manhattan and Larchmont, NY.

Click here to order a copy of: Enriching Psychoanalysis: Integrating Concepts from Contemporary Science and Philosophy, Edited by John Turtz and Gerald J. Gargiulo

If you enjoyed this post, we recommend:

A Journey into Climate Change Awareness by Wendy Greenspun, Ph.D.

It Takes Two to Tango and a Third to Facilitate Change: Toward an Integration of Systems Theory and Psychoanalysis in Couples Therapy by John Turtz, Ph.D.