Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0075417X.2023.2179098
A. Navridi, L. Anagnostaki
ABSTRACT The objective of the paper is to explore countertransference in qualitative research. Specifically, through the examination of a study which explored the experiences of mental health professionals working with refugee and immigrant families with infants and young children, the paper aims to demonstrate how the monitoring of countertransference can be transformed into a useful research tool. Countertransference movements are examined on multiple levels, in the mental health worker-immigrant/refugee dyad, in the researcher-participant dyad, and at the institutional level. The importance of thinking about a whole research process in terms of the process of countertransference is discussed.
{"title":"Making use of countertransference in qualitative research: exploring the experiences of mental health professionals working with refugee and immigrant families","authors":"A. Navridi, L. Anagnostaki","doi":"10.1080/0075417X.2023.2179098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417X.2023.2179098","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The objective of the paper is to explore countertransference in qualitative research. Specifically, through the examination of a study which explored the experiences of mental health professionals working with refugee and immigrant families with infants and young children, the paper aims to demonstrate how the monitoring of countertransference can be transformed into a useful research tool. Countertransference movements are examined on multiple levels, in the mental health worker-immigrant/refugee dyad, in the researcher-participant dyad, and at the institutional level. The importance of thinking about a whole research process in terms of the process of countertransference is discussed.","PeriodicalId":43581,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45348720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0075417x.2023.2171474
Michela Biseo
ABSTRACT This paper is an account of Psychoanalytic Parent Infant Psychotherapy (PPIP) by a white therapist with a mixed heritage family during the coronavirus pandemic. It describes changes to the distant relationship between a mother and her infant son who appears at first to be developing an avoidant, dissociated defensive strategy to ward off painful projections from his traumatised parent. Necessary modifications in treatment due to working remotely contributed to several technical adjustments made. The paper attempts to consider the inclusion of race as a fully integrated aspect of working in a transcultural field, taking into account the ‘ghosts in society’. The specific trauma of racist abuse, with an emphasis on colourism that can be experienced by mixed heritage families is discussed. The key to the improved relationship between child and mother by the end of the Parent Infant Psychotherapy is postulated to have come from reflection on the therapist’s countertransference in regard to racism, that then enabled both therapist and patient/s to recognise and begin to work through experiences, thoughts and fantasies about belonging, heritage and racism.
{"title":"Mixed heritage, mixed feelings: psychoanalytic parent infant psychotherapy during the coronavirus pandemic","authors":"Michela Biseo","doi":"10.1080/0075417x.2023.2171474","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417x.2023.2171474","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper is an account of Psychoanalytic Parent Infant Psychotherapy (PPIP) by a white therapist with a mixed heritage family during the coronavirus pandemic. It describes changes to the distant relationship between a mother and her infant son who appears at first to be developing an avoidant, dissociated defensive strategy to ward off painful projections from his traumatised parent. Necessary modifications in treatment due to working remotely contributed to several technical adjustments made. The paper attempts to consider the inclusion of race as a fully integrated aspect of working in a transcultural field, taking into account the ‘ghosts in society’. The specific trauma of racist abuse, with an emphasis on colourism that can be experienced by mixed heritage families is discussed. The key to the improved relationship between child and mother by the end of the Parent Infant Psychotherapy is postulated to have come from reflection on the therapist’s countertransference in regard to racism, that then enabled both therapist and patient/s to recognise and begin to work through experiences, thoughts and fantasies about belonging, heritage and racism.","PeriodicalId":43581,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41740680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0075417X.2023.2175229
Andrew C. Briggs
Judith Edwards’ article in the December issue of this journal surely comes as a breath of fresh air for all psychoanalytic practitioners working with children and families, and wondering how to accommodate thinking about the father. It is a rare contribution to the sparse psychoanalytic literature on the role of the father, and she takes a refreshingly open position, using existing ideas and presenting new ones. She opens by saying – ‘No answers are to be found here, merely more questions, and each reader will hopefully find their own questions and answers. New doors may be opened’ (Edwards, 2022, p. 362). In conclusion she says – ‘With Bion in mind, the conclusion is to come to your own specific conclusions, to work with specific cases’ (Edwards, 2022, p. 375). This brief reply, although making a point, seeks to keep the questions rolling. It is derived from my own work with children and families for whom the role of the father was unoccupied. That is to say, the biological male present at conception was either emotionally or physically absent, and the role of father remained vacant because no parent, of either gender or sex, single or couple, was able to fulfil it. This was partly because the parents I saw struggled to offer paternal function, the development of which was something I could help them with. However, I will argue here that there are some important aspects of the role of the father that only the biological father can fulfil. When this absence in role was also a feature in the lives of some of the adopted and fostered children I have seen, the impact of this non-occupancy was more complex. Whilst Judith deliberately does not present her ideas as ones to be grappled with academically, nevertheless, my clinical experience has led me to organise my reply around two ideas that appear to contradict one another. The first involves her response to a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest in which the spirit Ariel tells Prince Ferdinand of the drowning of his father in near five fathoms of water. Ariel concludes that ‘Nothing of him that doth fade’. From this, Judith derives ‘how the memory of our own fathers lies deep within our minds, and our very bones, affecting the way we parent’ (Edwards, 2022, p. 363). The second idea involves her comment that ‘fathers, whether present or absent, and of either sex, are indeed important in the life of every child, in order to be the third point of the oedipal triangle’ (Edwards, 2022, p. 375). Whether Ariel, Prince Ferdinand, or ourselves, in my opinion Judith’s quote is
{"title":"Response piece to an article in issue 48.3 of this Journal by Judith Edwards: ‘The elusive pursuit of good enough fatherhood, and the single parent family as a modern phenomenon’","authors":"Andrew C. Briggs","doi":"10.1080/0075417X.2023.2175229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417X.2023.2175229","url":null,"abstract":"Judith Edwards’ article in the December issue of this journal surely comes as a breath of fresh air for all psychoanalytic practitioners working with children and families, and wondering how to accommodate thinking about the father. It is a rare contribution to the sparse psychoanalytic literature on the role of the father, and she takes a refreshingly open position, using existing ideas and presenting new ones. She opens by saying – ‘No answers are to be found here, merely more questions, and each reader will hopefully find their own questions and answers. New doors may be opened’ (Edwards, 2022, p. 362). In conclusion she says – ‘With Bion in mind, the conclusion is to come to your own specific conclusions, to work with specific cases’ (Edwards, 2022, p. 375). This brief reply, although making a point, seeks to keep the questions rolling. It is derived from my own work with children and families for whom the role of the father was unoccupied. That is to say, the biological male present at conception was either emotionally or physically absent, and the role of father remained vacant because no parent, of either gender or sex, single or couple, was able to fulfil it. This was partly because the parents I saw struggled to offer paternal function, the development of which was something I could help them with. However, I will argue here that there are some important aspects of the role of the father that only the biological father can fulfil. When this absence in role was also a feature in the lives of some of the adopted and fostered children I have seen, the impact of this non-occupancy was more complex. Whilst Judith deliberately does not present her ideas as ones to be grappled with academically, nevertheless, my clinical experience has led me to organise my reply around two ideas that appear to contradict one another. The first involves her response to a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest in which the spirit Ariel tells Prince Ferdinand of the drowning of his father in near five fathoms of water. Ariel concludes that ‘Nothing of him that doth fade’. From this, Judith derives ‘how the memory of our own fathers lies deep within our minds, and our very bones, affecting the way we parent’ (Edwards, 2022, p. 363). The second idea involves her comment that ‘fathers, whether present or absent, and of either sex, are indeed important in the life of every child, in order to be the third point of the oedipal triangle’ (Edwards, 2022, p. 375). Whether Ariel, Prince Ferdinand, or ourselves, in my opinion Judith’s quote is","PeriodicalId":43581,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49117366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0075417x.2023.2180810
Kate Purdy
Josh Cohen’s wonderful book, ‘How to Live. What to do. How great novels help us change’, is a book to be slowly read and treasured. To me, a life-long reader and student of fiction, it is an entrancing read. It combines my two loves, literature and psychoanalysis (if I can grandly describe them as that, despite inevitably only having scraped the surface of both); and it reminds me why I came so naturally to psychotherapy after studying literature at university, both as an undergraduate and postgraduate student, and after working for many years as an English teacher. The title of his book, Cohen explains, comes from a Wallace Stevens poem, which does not clearly tell us anything at all about how to be, or what to do. The title is such a marvellous and humorous understatement of what it is to be alive: time propels us helplessly forward, while we try to make sense of the world. The title seems to refer both to the existential question ‘why am I here?’, but also to the everyday struggles we experience. Analysing what the poem does do, Cohen explores this idea in his introduction – could there be something which would fully answer this question? Cohen describes the prescriptions (what to do) which might be offered by the self-help genre, as ‘go[ing] awry’, and instead observes:
{"title":"How to live. What to do. How great novels help us change","authors":"Kate Purdy","doi":"10.1080/0075417x.2023.2180810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417x.2023.2180810","url":null,"abstract":"Josh Cohen’s wonderful book, ‘How to Live. What to do. How great novels help us change’, is a book to be slowly read and treasured. To me, a life-long reader and student of fiction, it is an entrancing read. It combines my two loves, literature and psychoanalysis (if I can grandly describe them as that, despite inevitably only having scraped the surface of both); and it reminds me why I came so naturally to psychotherapy after studying literature at university, both as an undergraduate and postgraduate student, and after working for many years as an English teacher. The title of his book, Cohen explains, comes from a Wallace Stevens poem, which does not clearly tell us anything at all about how to be, or what to do. The title is such a marvellous and humorous understatement of what it is to be alive: time propels us helplessly forward, while we try to make sense of the world. The title seems to refer both to the existential question ‘why am I here?’, but also to the everyday struggles we experience. Analysing what the poem does do, Cohen explores this idea in his introduction – could there be something which would fully answer this question? Cohen describes the prescriptions (what to do) which might be offered by the self-help genre, as ‘go[ing] awry’, and instead observes:","PeriodicalId":43581,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47318362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0075417x.2023.2167103
L. Alexander, Sian Barnett, Verity J. Wilkinson
ABSTRACT This paper describes how, in the wake of a spate of fatal knife crime in one London borough, the council, Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) got together to think about how to improve outcomes for their young people. Starting with schools and pupil referral units, the CAMHS and educational psychology service were commissioned to work with whole staff groups, from senior leadership to lunchtime monitors and playground staff, to embed trauma informed policy and practice. The aim was to spread understanding about complex developmental trauma; what it is, how it affects the behaviour and experience of children and families, and how to work with it. Given how widespread trauma is, the objective was also to think about what might need to change in the environment and ethos of the borough’s schools as a result. Following the project’s initial success, its scope and remit were expanded to support services on a policy level, while also working with their staff to think about the impact of trauma, and how best to support children and families who have been affected by it. As well as teaching about trauma, the project is primarily an experiential one. This paper explores the impact on staff who were involved in the project; what came out of it for them personally in terms of changes to their thinking and outlook, and what they saw as the changes for the children and families they worked with.
{"title":"Working with trauma; finding new ports of entry","authors":"L. Alexander, Sian Barnett, Verity J. Wilkinson","doi":"10.1080/0075417x.2023.2167103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417x.2023.2167103","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper describes how, in the wake of a spate of fatal knife crime in one London borough, the council, Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) got together to think about how to improve outcomes for their young people. Starting with schools and pupil referral units, the CAMHS and educational psychology service were commissioned to work with whole staff groups, from senior leadership to lunchtime monitors and playground staff, to embed trauma informed policy and practice. The aim was to spread understanding about complex developmental trauma; what it is, how it affects the behaviour and experience of children and families, and how to work with it. Given how widespread trauma is, the objective was also to think about what might need to change in the environment and ethos of the borough’s schools as a result. Following the project’s initial success, its scope and remit were expanded to support services on a policy level, while also working with their staff to think about the impact of trauma, and how best to support children and families who have been affected by it. As well as teaching about trauma, the project is primarily an experiential one. This paper explores the impact on staff who were involved in the project; what came out of it for them personally in terms of changes to their thinking and outlook, and what they saw as the changes for the children and families they worked with.","PeriodicalId":43581,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41393537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0075417X.2023.2175228
Rachel Acheson
health and wellbeing. This paper summarises literature across relevant disciplines to provide a comprehensive narrative review of the multiple pathways through which climate change interacts with mental health and wellbeing. Climate change acts as a risk amplifier by disrupting the conditions known to support good mental health, including socioeconomic, cultural and environmental conditions, and living and working conditions. The disruptive influence of rising global temperatures and extreme weather events, such as experiencing a heatwave or water insecurity,
{"title":"Research digest: mental health implications of climate change for children and young people","authors":"Rachel Acheson","doi":"10.1080/0075417X.2023.2175228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417X.2023.2175228","url":null,"abstract":"health and wellbeing. This paper summarises literature across relevant disciplines to provide a comprehensive narrative review of the multiple pathways through which climate change interacts with mental health and wellbeing. Climate change acts as a risk amplifier by disrupting the conditions known to support good mental health, including socioeconomic, cultural and environmental conditions, and living and working conditions. The disruptive influence of rising global temperatures and extreme weather events, such as experiencing a heatwave or water insecurity,","PeriodicalId":43581,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43789884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0075417X.2023.2182339
Nikolaos Tzikas, Victoria Nicolodi
ABSTRACT In this paper, the authors try to understand the concepts of tribe and tribalism and their effect on our professional identities as child psychotherapists. Firstly, we will define these concepts and retrospectively go through the history and way that child psychotherapy developed and became a profession in its own right. Hearing about the trauma of war and the schisms within the profession between the different groups/tribes (Kleinians and Post Kleinians, Independents and Anna Freudians) motivated us to explore the defensive mechanisms that still keep us, as a profession, apart and divided. We have employed in this paper psychoanalytic and group analytic thinking, as well as some anthropological and neuroscientific perspectives, which all offer us some in-depth ideas about the processes involved and the ways that the different groups of thought within the profession are still kept apart. We will also look beyond these tribal states of mind, suggesting ways of collaborating and debating, to further enrich our theories and clinical practice.
{"title":"Weaving between and beyond tribal states of mind: revisiting our identity as child psychotherapists","authors":"Nikolaos Tzikas, Victoria Nicolodi","doi":"10.1080/0075417X.2023.2182339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417X.2023.2182339","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper, the authors try to understand the concepts of tribe and tribalism and their effect on our professional identities as child psychotherapists. Firstly, we will define these concepts and retrospectively go through the history and way that child psychotherapy developed and became a profession in its own right. Hearing about the trauma of war and the schisms within the profession between the different groups/tribes (Kleinians and Post Kleinians, Independents and Anna Freudians) motivated us to explore the defensive mechanisms that still keep us, as a profession, apart and divided. We have employed in this paper psychoanalytic and group analytic thinking, as well as some anthropological and neuroscientific perspectives, which all offer us some in-depth ideas about the processes involved and the ways that the different groups of thought within the profession are still kept apart. We will also look beyond these tribal states of mind, suggesting ways of collaborating and debating, to further enrich our theories and clinical practice.","PeriodicalId":43581,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44282480","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0075417x.2022.2160478
Rachel Acheson, Maria Papadima
ABSTRACT In the news, there is frequent mention of adolescents’ mental health nowadays being ‘in crisis’. This paper offers the perspective of two psychotherapists working in a crisis service, trying to engage adolescents and their families in therapeutic work. There is an argument for a combined developmental, psychoanalytic and systemic approach to understand and work with the perceived mental health crisis in adolescence. This paper explores the desire of some adolescents today to have a mental health diagnosis and use specific, psychiatric-oriented language to frame and understand their distress. A cultural and theoretical exploration of this phenomenon is offered, viewing it as an expression of adolescents’ need for establishing their identity within peer groups, online and offline. The paper underlines the necessity for an approach where the whole network around the adolescent – the school, the parents, the therapist – work together to address the occurring crisis. The crisis this paper refers to is conceptualised as one involving developmental adolescent turmoil, expressed through mental health language.
{"title":"The search for identity: working therapeutically with adolescents in crisis","authors":"Rachel Acheson, Maria Papadima","doi":"10.1080/0075417x.2022.2160478","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417x.2022.2160478","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the news, there is frequent mention of adolescents’ mental health nowadays being ‘in crisis’. This paper offers the perspective of two psychotherapists working in a crisis service, trying to engage adolescents and their families in therapeutic work. There is an argument for a combined developmental, psychoanalytic and systemic approach to understand and work with the perceived mental health crisis in adolescence. This paper explores the desire of some adolescents today to have a mental health diagnosis and use specific, psychiatric-oriented language to frame and understand their distress. A cultural and theoretical exploration of this phenomenon is offered, viewing it as an expression of adolescents’ need for establishing their identity within peer groups, online and offline. The paper underlines the necessity for an approach where the whole network around the adolescent – the school, the parents, the therapist – work together to address the occurring crisis. The crisis this paper refers to is conceptualised as one involving developmental adolescent turmoil, expressed through mental health language.","PeriodicalId":43581,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47488907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0075417x.2023.2182340
Tara Pepper Goldsmith, James M. FitzGerald, Fraser Arends, Pamela Peters
{"title":"Commentary on the paper by Marcus Evans: ‘Assessment and treatment of a gender-dysphoric person with a traumatic history’","authors":"Tara Pepper Goldsmith, James M. FitzGerald, Fraser Arends, Pamela Peters","doi":"10.1080/0075417x.2023.2182340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417x.2023.2182340","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43581,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135754986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0075417x.2023.2182817
J. Herrmann
For over a decade, the psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe has been speaking, writing, and organising forums about the climate emergency (e.g., Weintrobe, 2013, 2015). Her commitment to helping people face the alarming reality about the state of the planet reflects her impassioned love of the earth, its myriad life forms, and the inanimate world from which all life has emerged, over aeons of time. Weintrobe draws on her psychoanalytic knowledge in order to deepen our understanding of the sources of resistance to evidence about climate change. Her mastery of a huge range of subjects is extraordinary. She marshals arguments from many disciplines: these include, most centrally, political and economic theory (neoliberalism), but also geology, sociology, ecology, and evolutionary theory. The book furnishes the reader ready access to a vast and interdisciplinary range of material, and provides helpful references for all aspects of the problem. But its principle aim is to help us manage our resistance, as individuals, as social groups, and professionally as psychoanalytic workers, in recognising our deadly and death-denying complicity, which minimises the overwhelming evidence that we are living in an age of climate breakdown. Weintrobe refers to our complicity, with denial as ‘the climate bubble’, and develops the notion of Exceptionalism (cf. exceptionalism), a rigid psychological mindset which is largely responsible for the climate crisis. To help us with this work, which requires a receptivity to potentially overwhelming information, Weintrobe skilfully uses very short chapters, unadorned language, and apt and interesting, often witty, examples. She makes a potentially difficult and complex argument interesting and easy to follow, and does this for the one central motivation that drives the book: to help us emerge from the climate bubble. I am grateful for her amazing grasp of how economic forces have led us by the nose into the slumber of ‘buy buy buy’, of how our desires have been fired by large corporations, and of how our ignorance of the social injustice this depends on has been so successfully camouflaged. Weintrobe does not diminish our complicity with the injustice of the global north’s dominance over the developing world, as she writes:
{"title":"Psychological roots of the climate crisis: neoliberal exceptionalism and the culture of uncare","authors":"J. Herrmann","doi":"10.1080/0075417x.2023.2182817","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417x.2023.2182817","url":null,"abstract":"For over a decade, the psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe has been speaking, writing, and organising forums about the climate emergency (e.g., Weintrobe, 2013, 2015). Her commitment to helping people face the alarming reality about the state of the planet reflects her impassioned love of the earth, its myriad life forms, and the inanimate world from which all life has emerged, over aeons of time. Weintrobe draws on her psychoanalytic knowledge in order to deepen our understanding of the sources of resistance to evidence about climate change. Her mastery of a huge range of subjects is extraordinary. She marshals arguments from many disciplines: these include, most centrally, political and economic theory (neoliberalism), but also geology, sociology, ecology, and evolutionary theory. The book furnishes the reader ready access to a vast and interdisciplinary range of material, and provides helpful references for all aspects of the problem. But its principle aim is to help us manage our resistance, as individuals, as social groups, and professionally as psychoanalytic workers, in recognising our deadly and death-denying complicity, which minimises the overwhelming evidence that we are living in an age of climate breakdown. Weintrobe refers to our complicity, with denial as ‘the climate bubble’, and develops the notion of Exceptionalism (cf. exceptionalism), a rigid psychological mindset which is largely responsible for the climate crisis. To help us with this work, which requires a receptivity to potentially overwhelming information, Weintrobe skilfully uses very short chapters, unadorned language, and apt and interesting, often witty, examples. She makes a potentially difficult and complex argument interesting and easy to follow, and does this for the one central motivation that drives the book: to help us emerge from the climate bubble. I am grateful for her amazing grasp of how economic forces have led us by the nose into the slumber of ‘buy buy buy’, of how our desires have been fired by large corporations, and of how our ignorance of the social injustice this depends on has been so successfully camouflaged. Weintrobe does not diminish our complicity with the injustice of the global north’s dominance over the developing world, as she writes:","PeriodicalId":43581,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48157191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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