Ecopsychoanalysis and climate psychology

ABSTRACT

Climate change and the ecological crisis in general are increasingly recognized as perhaps the single biggest threat to have faced our species, but existing approaches largely constitute an 'ecology without psychology'. This chapters gives an overview of the development of ecopsychoanalysis, a new transdisciplinary approach to thinking about the relationship between psychoanalysis, ecology, 'the natural' and the problem of climate change, as well as viral pandemics such as COVID-19. It draws on a range of Felds including, psychoanalysis, psychology, ecology, philosophy, science, complexity theory, aesthetics and the humanities. To do this, it is important to identify the different developmental lines and research traditions out of which ecopsychoanalysis is emerging. These include psychoanalysis first and foremost, but also ecopsychology and ecological thinking more generally;cybernetics and systems theory beginning with Gregory Bateson;complexity theory and nonlinear dynamics;philosophical approaches to nature from deep ecology to post-nature and the new materialisms;postmodern and posthuman understandings of animality, human and nonhuman;the work of the Climate Psychology Alliance;and the geophilosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)