“Anima Mundi” Environments and Psyche: Their Unity and Close Connection with Change

The focus of the presentation is to support a phenomenological attitude that overcomes Cartesian dualisms and promotes the dialectic between the assumption of responsibility towards the drama of climate change and a sense of belonging to the “Anima Mundi”. A brief introduction to the idea of “Anima Mundi” [the soul of the world] as formulated in classical philosophy, the Neo-Platonic Renaissance, and more recently explored in Hillman’s Jungian perspective is presented. Comments on the contributions of psychoanalysis to the themes of the relationship with the non-human environment (Searles), the climate crisis (Orange) and the recent formulation—oriented to self-psychology—of the permeability of the self to the more-than-human (Kassouf). In the current historical-cultural context, the specific responsibility of mental health professionals is to highlight how people’s “well-being” cannot be based only on economic and materialistic aspects. The “beyond” we are looking for is to restore a sense of unity with environment and nature (Anima Mundi) and to delve deeper into the meaning of what we are experiencing in order to restore a sense of agency, motivation and creativity towards a profoundly transformative perspective that holds together complexity and vitality in the clinical encounter.