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Allowing things to come undone. Tolerating uncertainty. Facing unthinkable trauma. Moving beyond binary thinking. This is the work of psychoanalysis. A method for our times! These times lean darkly toward further suffering; but also toward the possibility of expanded relationality and reciprocity - with nonclinical professionals, with dissociated peoples already suffering deeply from crises of exploitation and environmental degradation, and with the more than human world. What is our purpose as psychoanalysts in this time of crisis? Let us first avoid the binary
of choosing between clinical work that involves healing interpersonal trauma or clinical work that consists in healing the trauma of a broken relationship with the environment. These are interwoven, and both emerge if we can tolerate them. We are well-versed in healing the former. But of course, to help others with environmental trauma, we need first face it ourselves, as we are also embedded in it. And the initial challenge is, do we want to know?
Do we want to know about the acidifying oceans, the great loss of arable topsoil worldwide, the devastating deforestation in the Amazon and elsewhere, the 6th mass extinction event we are living through, the geo-political machinations designed to confuse, to deny, to silence, and to disavow? There are volumes written about all of this, difficult to read alone. I needed a Bionian container, what I’ve come to call a climate buddy, to read these books with, a colleague who was strong enough to help me through the grief, guilt, anger, sadness, and fear that this knowing unearthed. I had been knowing the facts but dissociating my feelings, especially my grief about the world that children are now living in. My analytic climate buddy helped me open space for tears by not dissociating their own distress about this crisis and encouraging me to write whatever was on my mind about it. I wrote a speech that I imagined President Obama giving to the American people. Obama to