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Total time: Approximately 6 hours. It can be viewed over multiple sessions.
Tickets are for RECORDING ACCESS ONLY as this event has already taken place. You will receive your individual access details in the Eventbrite confirmation email.
What can psychoanalysis offer to the on-going discussion about the state of the planet?
The Freud Museum held a conference on Ecological Madness in 1992 which was one of the first conferences to bring a psychoanalytic perspective to this global issue. Twenty-eight years later “ecological madness” has become a “climate emergency” and the impact on mental health is a major concern.
We are revisiting this pressing subject by inviting psychoanalysts, activists, authors and young poets to explore the psychological impact of the climate emergency in the consulting room and beyond. Many of us may feel helpless, anxious, guilty, angry, melancholic, and even fatigued from the constant flow of information; more and more people are said to be suffering from “climate anxiety”. In many parts of the world populations are not only suffering anxiety about the future but from the traumatic impact of environmental catastrophes in the present.
How we process our emotional responses is an important step to understanding the crisis and acting in a determined, effective and creative way. Can psychoanalysis help save the planet?
Day 1, held on 23 May 2020:
- Welcome by Jamie Ruers from the Freud Museum
- Sally Weintrobe: ‘Working Through Our Feelings about the Climate Crisis’
- Joseph Dodds: Elemental Catastrophe – Ecopsychoanalysis, climate change and the viral uncanny of Covid-19
- Renée Lertzman: From Paralysis to Reparation: Accessing our Capacity to Care
- Plenary
Day 2, held on 30 May 2020:
- Welcome
- David Morgan: Climate Change, Cognitive Dissonance, Human Hope and the Death Instinct
- Winners of the Young Poets’ challenge on climate anxiety
- Anouchka Grose: To Breed or Not To Breed
- Plenary & closing remarks
We are also offering a limited number of bursary access places for £10 for those under financial hardship. Apply for a bursary place here and we will aim to get back to you within 48 hours.
