Dancing at the end of the World? Psychoanalysis, Climate Change and Joy

Organised by:

Hallam Institute of Psychotherapy

Description

This talk, based on a forthcoming article with the Journal of Analytical Psychology (Dodds 2022), attempts to join the dots between psychoanalytic and post-psychoanalytic perspectives in relation to climate change and the ecological crisis and to begin a discussion on the role of joy in sustaining ourselves in the face of the global catastrophe. There is a vital expanding psychoanalytic literature addressing itself to the environmental crisis but a striking absence on joy and what stands in its way. This paper explores what psychoanalysis has to offer in the context of planetary emergency and also asks psychoanalysis to look beyond itself and reimagine what it can be. Joy involves a simultaneous affirmation of both our uniqueness and our togetherness, not only as humans but with all forms of life and the web of life itself. If we were to allow ourselves to actually enjoy our lives, we just might fight harder against our extinction.

JOSEPH DODDS, PhD, is a psychoanalyst with the Czech Psychoanalytical Society (IPA), Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society, psychotherapist (UKCP), Clinical Fellow of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, and lecturer in psychology at the University of New York in Prague. He is author of the book Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos (Routledge, 2011) and numerous other papers, and writes and teaches on psychoanalytic and psychological approaches to art, film, neuroscience, society, ecology, and climate change. He is also an accredited member of the Hallam Institute of Psychotherapy.

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