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In 1972, the american psychoanalyst Harold Searles published an article in the Psychoanalytic Review titled “Unconscious Processes in Relation to the Environmental Crisis.” He cited a broad base of evidence for this crisis: the pollution of lakes, rivers, and oceans; the circulation of pesticides through the food chain; the leakage of radioactive waste; rapid overpopulation. “My hypothesis,” he wrote, “is that man is hampered in his meeting of this environmental crisis by a severe and pervasive apathy which is based largely upon feelings and attitudes of which he is unconscious.” Searles called on fellow analysts to “make some real contribution, along with our brothers in other fields of science, toward meeting the ecological crisis” (Searles, 1972, p. 361). Four decades later, they have begun to heed his call.
Engaging with Climate Change is the result of an interdisciplinary conference at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London in 2010, organized by the British psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe. The 22 authors have varied backgrounds: psychoanalysis, climate science, environmental policy and communications, sociology, economics, and environmental philosophy and ethics. The book's organization lends itself well to such a cross-disciplinary exchange, with most chapters followed by one or more commentaries from other authors. Because this format also leads to a fair amount of repetition, I will forego a chapter-by-chapter description and summarize the book's most important and original conclusions.
The book sets out from the premise that public inaction on global warming requires explanation. Commentators frequently note the “gap” that exists between scientific knowledge and public opinion, as well as between opinion and action. The problem can no longer be attributed to an “information deficit” or a lack of scientific consensus. Might it reflect instead unconscious psychological dynamics? In other words, what lessons might psychoanalysis hold for the current impasse on