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Join us for three papers from esteemed psychoanalysts and critical thinkers, Susie Orbach, Sally Weintrobe and Paul Hoggett, followed by a panel discussion chaired by Professor Emeritus of Political Psychology at Bournemouth University, Barry Richards and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Maureen Boerma.
Global polling shows that concern about the climate emergency is widening, but still only small minorities see it as a top priority issue in everyday politics. In the past decade there has developed a substantial psychoanalytically-based literature on the psychology of climate change, much of it focussing on the psychodynamics of denial, inaction and indifference. Can understanding the anxieties, defences and guilt of climate psychology shape efforts to mobilise wider support for urgent political action?
Might scholarly and clinically-informed understandings develop more influence on strategies to shape local, national and international policies, and corporate practices? Three leading thinkers in this field present their views on what we know about resistances to taking action, and on the prospects for more psychologically-informed and effective approaches to overcoming those resistances.
Paul Hoggett is psychoanalytic psychotherapist and Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at UWE, Bristol. He was co-founder of the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA) and was its first chair in 2012. With CPA colleagues he has recently published Climate Psychology: On Indifference to Disaster (Palgrave, 2019) and Climate Psychology: A Matter of Life and Death (Phoenix, 2022).
Susie Orbach FRSL is a Fellow of The Freud Museum having served on the board for many years. She is a psychoanalyst with a practice seeing individuals and couples. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including some on Climate sorrows and anxieties.
Sally Weintrobe, psychoanalyst, chairs the Climate Committee of the International Psychoanalytical Association, and is a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance. She has written and talked widely on climate and the environment. Her books on climate are: edited (2012) Engaging with Climate Change (Routledge and New Library of Psychoanalysis), authored (2021) Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare (Bloomsbury), and co-authored (2022) Climate Psychology: A Matter of Life and Death (Phoenix Press).
Maureen Boerma, MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics, is a former director of training at Tavistock Relations, London where she also worked as a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist, supervisor, clinical seminar leader and tutor. She has a background in sexual and reproductive health and in community mediation.
Barry Richards is Professor of Political Psychology at Bournemouth University, a former editor at Free Associations, and a key originator of the Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere conferences in the 1980s. His many books include The Psychology of Politics (2019), What Holds Us Together: Popular Culture and Social Cohesion (2017), Emotional Governance: Politics, and Media and Terror (2007).
The purpose of this conference is to raise funds for the Freud Museum London, which receives no regular public income.
