Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos: Complexity Theory, Deleuze,Guattari and Psychoanalysis for a Climate in Crisis

257 Pages·2011·1.92 MB·English

by  Joseph Dodds

Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the
Edge of Chaos
Thisbookarguesthatpsychoanalysishasauniqueroletoplayintheclimate
change debatethrough its placing emphasis on the unconscious dimensions
of our mental and social lives. Exploring contributions from Freudian,
Kleinian, Object Relations, Self Psychology, Jungian, and Lacanian tradi-
tions, the book discusses how psychoanalysis can help to unmask the
anxieties,deficits,conflicts,phantasiesanddefencescrucialinunderstanding
the human dimension of the ecological crisis.
Yetdespitebeingessentialtostudyingenvironmentalismanditsdiscontents,
psychoanalysis still remains largely a ‘psychology without ecology’. The
philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, combined with new developments in
the sciences of complexity, help us to build upon the best of these perspec-
tives,providingaframeworkabletointegrateGuattari’s‘threeecologies’of
mind, nature and society. This book thus constitutes a timely attempt to
contribute towards a critical dialogue between psychoanalysis and ecology.
Further topics of discussion include:
• ecopsychology and the greening of psychotherapy
• our ambivalent relationship to nature and the non-human
• complexity theory in psychoanalysis and ecology
• defence mechanisms against eco-anxiety and eco-grief
• Deleuze|Guattari and the three ecologies
• becoming-animal in horror and eco-apocalypse in science fiction films
• nonlinear ecopsychoanalysis.
In our era of anxiety, denial, paranoia, apathy, guilt, hope, and despair in
the face of climate change, this book offers a fresh and insightful psycho-
analytic perspective on the ecological crisis. As such this book will be of
great interest to all those in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology,
philosophy, and ecology, as well as all who are concerned with the global
environmental challenges affecting our planet’s future.
Joseph Dodds lectures in various courses in psychology and psychoanalysis
attheUniversity ofNewYork inPragueand atCharles University’s CIEE
Study Center. He is a candidate member of the Czech Psychoanalytical
Society(IPA)andworksasapsychotherapistatTerapie.Infoandinprivate
practice.
Psychoanalysis and Ecology at
the Edge of Chaos
Complexity Theory, Deleuze|Guattari and
Psychoanalysis for a Climate in Crisis
Joseph Dodds
Foreword by Martin Jordan
Firstpublished2011
byRoutledge
27ChurchRoad,Hove,EastSussexBN32FA
SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada
byRoutledge
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(cid:216)2011JosephDodds
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BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
Libraryof CongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Dodds,Joseph,1978-
Psychoanalysisandecologyattheedgeofchaos:complexitytheory,
deleuze|guattariandpsychoanalysisforaclimateincrisis/JosephDodds.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-0-415-66611-4(hardback) – ISBN978-0-415-66612-1(pbk.) –
ISBN(invalid)978-0-203-00000-0(ebk.)1.Climaticchanges–Psychological
aspects.2.Environmentalpsychology.3.Psychoanalysis.I.Title.
BF353.5.C55D632011
150.19'5–dc22
2011008853
ISBN:978-0-415-66611-4(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-415-66612-1(pbk)
ISBN:978-0-203-15766-4(ebk)
TypesetinTimesbyGarfieldMorgan,Swansea,WestGlamorgan
PaperbackcoverdesignbyAndrewWard
PrintedandboundinGreatBritainbyTJInternational,Padstow,Cornwall
Contents
List of figures and illustrations ix
Filmography x
Preface xi
Foreword by Martin Jordan xiii
PART I
Climate change: A psychological problem 1
1 Climate crisis: Psychoanalysis and the ecology of ideas 3
The planetary crisis 3
Psychological approaches to environmental problems 6
Why psychoanalysis? 12
2 Theoretical crisis: Complexity as meta-theory 14
Alpha function and the failure of theory 14
The nonlinear revolution 16
3 Ecology at the edge of chaos 18
Complexity theory and ecosystemic collapse 18
Positive feedback and climate change 20
PART II
The phantasy of ecology: Psychoanalysis of
climate change 25
4 Classical psychoanalysis 27
Environmentalism and its discontents 27
Freud, civilization, nature and the dialectic of the Enlightenment 31
vi Contents
Eros and Thanatos 35
The rise of the eco-disaster film 37
5 Eco-anxiety and defence 41
Into the climate kettle 41
Media as symptom and the role of humour 44
Conflict or deficit: Death anxiety or failed risk-thermostat? 46
Defence mechanisms in the face of eco-anxiety 48
How to confront our defences 55
6 Object relations theory: A more ecological approach to mind 57
‘Mother nature’ and the Earth-breast 57
The holding environment and the non-human world 59
Oedipal and phallic levels and the tyrannical green superego 61
Consumerism, addiction and the fragile self 62
The paranoid-schizoid position 65
The depressive position 68
Environmental despair and the techno-god 69
Transience, anticipatory mourning, and reparation 72
PART III
The ecology of phantasy 75
7 Ecopsychology and the greening of psychotherapy 77
Biophilia and biophobia 77
Liberating the ecological unconscious 80
The ecological self 82
Developmental ecopsychology and climate change 84
Ecopsychology and health 88
Ecotherapy 91
Idealizing the indigenous and the ‘non-Western’ 97
Working through environmental despair 99
8 Ecology without nature: Postmodern ecopsychoanalysis 102
Ecology: The new opium of the masses? 102
Ecology without Nature 105
Ecocritique: Deconstructing the ecological imaginary 106
Dark ecology 108
Deleuze|Guattari: Towards a geophilosophy of nature 109
Psychoanalysis with schizoanalysis 111
Contents vii
9 Becoming-animal and horror 115
Horror and the primal uncanny of nature 115
Bakhtin, the grave-womb, and the grotesque body of comedy 119
The becoming-animal of the werewolf 123
Deleuze and horror 125
The strange ecology of the rhizome 132
10 The zoological imagination 137
Psychoanalysis and the phobic animal object 137
Wolves, rats and horses: Totemism and Oedipus 139
The zoological imagination and the multiplicity of the pack 142
Art and nature 145
PART IV
Nonlinear ecopsychoanalysis 147
11 Entering the nonlinear world 149
Fractals and phase space 149
Introducing the swarm 152
Self organization (SO) and stigmergy 153
Decentralized control 155
(Radical) emergence, complexity, and nonlinear dynamics 157
Chaos 159
Swarm intelligence: Nomadic war machines 162
Pathologies of the swarm: The collapse of civilizations 163
12 Psychoanalysis, ecology and complexity 166
The emergent ego 166
Self-organized criticality 168
Coevolution and the fitness landscape 169
The edge of chaos in the psychoanalytic process 171
Attractors 173
Nonlinear subjectivity and intersubjectivity 175
Group dynamics at the edge of chaos 176
Repression and guilt in the social phantasy ecosystem 179
13 Deleuze|Guattari and the ecology of mind 183
Intensive science and geophilosophy 183
Nonlinear temporalities 186
Assemblage theory 187
Meshworks and strata 189
viii Contents
Body without organs 191
Memetics and the ecology of mind 192
Partial objects, larval subjects, and the ecological self 194
14 Ecopsychoanalysis and the future of the three ecologies 198
Dreaming at the precipice 198
References 202
Index 226
Figures and illustrations
Figures
1 Decomposition of annual changes in the UK’s carbon
footprint for the 1992–2004 period in millions of tonnes
of CO per year 6
2
2 CO and mass extinction of species through time 23
2
3 Climate ‘scepticism’ on the rise? 29
4 Klein’s developmental positions and Bion’s basic assumption
theory of groups (fight-flight, dependency, pairing) 66
Illustrations
1 Drawing by the ‘Wolf-Man’ (Sergei Konstantinovitch
Pankejeff 1886–1979) 138
2 The Mandelbrot set. Successive zooms up to 60,000,000,000
times magnification 151
All reasonable efforts have been made to contact copyright holders, but in
some cases this may not have been possible. Any omissions brought to the
attention of Routledge will be remedied in future editions