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Climate Change: are we psychotherapists bothered? I urge you to read these books; if we are not bothered, we should be. Most of us know that global climate is changing; many believe it is at least partly man-made; most feel helpless about it. These two challenging, hopeful, timely books deal with the crucial issue of our environmental crisis; they both contrast with, and complement each other. Vital Signs has an introduction and twenty chapters by different authors, and Engaging with Climate Change has an introduction and ten chapters by different authors, each followed by commentaries by other authors, and a review barely scratches the surface of these two complex and dense books.
Vital Signs provides psychological responses to the environmental threat, nature and humanity's relationships with nature from Jungian and other psychotherapists and ecopsychologists, including personal, subjective experiences; Engaging with Climate Change contains perspectives about climate change by psychoanalytic writers, sociologists, social policy academics and others, with amplifying or challenging short responses, which makes for a deeper analysis.
Vital signs are medical measures of health and of response to treatment; the book covers a wide and fertile range of ideas and experiences about the health of the planet. The editors introduce the diverse and emerging discipline of ecopsychology, which sees the planet as an eco-system of which humanity is only a part. Given the huge emotional shift needed before change can happen, they wonder if ecopsychology's main role might be to deal with life after a climate holocaust.
Social research provides two useful chapters: Susan Bodnar gives us expressive quotations from interviews to illustrate attitudes to climate change, and Tom Crompton gives an account of ‘intrinsic’ goals (concern for personal growth, affiliation to others) and ‘self-transcendence’ values (concern for others' and nature's welfare), which research links with concern for th