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Environmental science illustrates the fragility of ecosystems and the complex interdependence between different species, their immediate environment and the wider world. Consider the snowshoe hare, indigenous to northwestern United States and Canada, as an example. They have evolved to adapt to a snowy environment—fur turns white in winter and brown in spring, blending in with trees and soil. This camouflage, triggered by changing seasonal length of days, allows hares to avoid predators.
Global climate changes, however, have diminished snowfall in the hare's habitat. A recent decoupling of temperature from length of days has resulted in increasing number of hares remaining white a month after the snow has melted—easier game for predators. One predator, the Canada lynx, is so specialized that its diet consists almost entirely of hares. Normally, declining hare populations lead to declines in predator populations. Then hare numbers rebound. However, it is not clear if the surviving snowshoe hare populations will adapt as rapidly as changing environmental conditions. If not, it is possible that both hare and lynx populations will continue to decrease and perhaps become extinct (Huang, 2009).
Extreme specialization, an inability to sufficiently adapt to changing environmental circumstances, possible extinction: all came to mind as I read Paul E. Stepansky's Psychoanalysis at the Margins. Stepansky, the managing editor of The Analytic Press from 1984 to 2006, is a Yale-trained historian of ideas. Like environmental scientists currently documenting the decline of endangered species, Stepansky documents psychoanalysis'