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Paul Hoggett, Emeritus Professor of Social Research, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and one of the founders of the Climate Psychology Alliance, is the author of numerous books and articles on our collective predicament. Here, he presents a timely and convincing analysis of the confluence of ecological breakdown and the new authoritarian politics, drawing on psychoanalytic, political and sociological thinking as well as on a wide range of other sources.
Hoggett's reflections are interspersed with photographs, many of them his own, and “excursions”, evoking his relationship with the landscapes he most loves in the UK. This makes for a humane and engaging read, which both reflects and fosters the capacity to engage deeply with this painful material. Exploring subjects which so often induce nihilism, overwhelm and avoidance, Hoggett finds ways of “staying with the trouble” (p. 130), exploring how we might chart a course through the losses which undoubtedly lie ahead.
Hoggett's central premise is that western modernity has formed a notion of the self which is defined by a three-fold separation: from external nature, from our own creaturely nature and from other selves. This modern self is beset by a longing for perfection, haunted by the notion that we should both have the Ideal (life, body, job, car, home, family, death) and be the Ideal (parent, lover, professional, etc.). In the grip of these twin delusions, the modern western self is forced to repudiate constraint, limit and loss. This generates states of omnipotence, omniscience, invulnerability, hubris, exceptionalism and entitlement. Thus, defended against the realities of human mortality and interconnectedness, we are fragile, isolated and hypervigilant:
[I]f I cannot be the Ideal … then I am nothing, and feel shame; … if I cannot have the Ideal then I have been wronged, [I am] a victim of injustice, and this arouses a resentful and angry righteousness in me. (p. 33)
Drawing on the concept of ressentiment as develope