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In this short paper on environmental issues Andrew Samuels presents five areas for consideration by depth psychologists, who, he hopes, will be encouraged to contribute to a discussion on this pressing subject from an analytical perspective.
He begins by commenting on the guilt which environmentalists engender in others when they concentrate on the destructiveness of the average man, thereby evoking a depressed mood in those whom they are addressing, while at the same time ignoring man's positive and protective contributions over past years. He then touches on the economic redistribution of material wealth which could result from attempts to resolve the problems, before going on to remark on the dangers of idealizing nature which when taken to excess could advocate the ‘tearing down of cities … the way of a Khmer Vert’. Hidden authoritarianism, he maintains, could in Jungian terms be the ‘Shadow of the Green movement’—a salutary reminder of the characteristics of some such movements. He concludes his five points by suggesting that a nation could be a more suitable unit on which to focus the efforts of environmentalists, rather than their targeting of global and individual responsibilities.
This is an uncharacteristically brief paper for Andrew Samuels and I am sorry that, for whatever reason, he did not choose to elaborate further on the issues which he presents so lucidly. He writes that he hopes that other analysts will contribute to both ‘external’ and ‘internal’ dialogues and it may be with this in mind that he considers his contribution to be more of a launching pad for an ongoing series of articles. If this is the case he succeeds in stimulating our thoughts in a new and more comprehensive direction. He acknowledges his thinking is informed by ‘economic, political and cultural … considerations’. Such a multi-disciplinary approach is to be welcomed when considering ‘green issues’, which all too often divide us neatly into either the virtuous or the sinful, the vi