Landmarks in Psychoanalytic Thinking on Climate Change and Environmental Breakdown

An Introduction to the Reviews of the First Two Psychoanalytic Books on the Climate Crisis: Works by Joseph Dodds and Sally Weintrobe

The recognition of the climate and ecological crisis has been a long and uneven process. The first compelling warnings were voiced in the 1960s, yet it was only half a century later that the crisis entered the public consciousness in earnest. As the degradation of the biosphere became increasingly visible and its consequences more tangible, newspapers and other media could no longer treat the issue as peripheral.

The psychoanalytic community underwent a comparable evolution. Harold Searles's pioneering reflections in the 60s on the relationship between human beings and the natural world belong to the first wave of ecological thinking in psychoanalysis. Although largely overlooked at the time, his work was rediscovered decades later and came to be recognised as remarkably prescient. Another forty years would pass before a second generation of psychoanalysts began to grapple seriously with the psychic dimensions of the climate and ecological crisis.

Two publications marked this intellectual turning point. The first, an edited volume by J. Dodds, appeared in 2011. In it, he argues that the climate crisis is as much a psychological issue as it is an economic, political, or philosophical one. The second, published the following year, adopted a broad interdisciplinary perspective and was edited by Sally Weintrobe, whose work has since become a landmark in psychoanalytic thinking on climate change and environmental breakdown.

The two reviews presented here examine these pioneering and almost contemporaneous contributions:

• Maria Tamboukou reviews Joseph Dodds's Making Connections: Psychoanalysis, Ecology and Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophies. https://www.journals.ac.za/pins/article/view/7145
• Deborah Cohen reviews Sally Weintrobe's edited volume Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives: Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Vol 49, No 4
  
  

Introduction to the Review of Cosimo Schinaia's Book

Cosimo Schinaia is one of the leading contemporary psychoanalysts exploring the psychological and unconscious dimensions of the climate and ecological crisis. In 2020, he published an interdisciplinary work in Italian that was translated into English two years later under the title Psychoanalysis and Ecology: The Unconscious and the Environment. Bringing psychoanalysis into dialogue with ecology, philosophy, and the environmental humanities, the book offers an original reflection on the intimate relationship between the human psyche and the living world.

The review of Cosimo Schinaia's book, written by Simonetta Diena, published in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA), is presented here (subscripton required).