The Political Mind: Cassandra’s Message 2, Nuclear and Climate Catastrophe. John Keene - Human Instinct and the Survival or Destruction of Life on this Planet.

John Keene

Human Instinct and the Survival or Destruction of Life on this Planet.

Cassandra’s Message 2 Nuclear and Climate Catastrophe

"Environmental crisis, climate emergency, pandemics, neofascism, unjust and destabilising inequalities, and the escalating threat of nuclear war pose existential challenges to global civilisation. It seems clear that the gaps between party politics, social movements, and intellectual life have widened, and the political system is not responding adequately. 

We will continue our discussion on these themes following our first ‘Cassandra’s Message’ seminar with a response. To see the recording for part 1, please purchase below.

John Keene

Human Instinct and the Survival or Destruction of Life on this Planet. 

Our basic mammalian/primate instincts privilege tribalism, dominance and the rapid response to immediate well-defined threats. The unique additional capacities of homo sapiens enabled enormous technical prowess but also the capacities to deceive, deny - to believe what we want to believe and disregard the rest. These facilitate the smashing of our planetary life support system at a catastrophic pace and the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe. The challenge as to how we might work around our instinctual predilections needs them to be well understood.

John Keene, on graduating in Philosophy and Psychology in 1971, John worked in child protection and mental health in Enfield in the newly created Social Services department. Post graduate studies introduced him to the Group Relations training programmes at the Tavistock Clinic and the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, and in the second half of the decade he gained more specialized experience on the admission wards at Claybury Hospital, which were run on group based therapeutic community lines, with individual and family work as adjuncts. He completed his psychoanalytic training and the adult psychotherapy training at the Tavistock Clinic in 1986, when he joined the senior staff. In private practice from 1990 he has continued his NHS work as a clinical supervisor in Hertfordshire and as external consultant to Simmonds House Adolescent Unit and the former Northgate Clinics. He became a Training Analyst in 1996 and teaches and supervises across the UK and abroad. 

He is a contributor to and co-editor of Independent Psychoanalysis Today (Williams, Keene and Dermen, Eds. Karnac 2012) His interest in group and institutional processes informed his paper Unconscious Obstacles to caring for the planet; facing up to human nature, given to the IOPA/Science Museum Conference in 2010, published in the book of the conference: Engaging with Climate Change: psychoanalytic and multi- disciplinary perspectives Sally Weintrobe (Ed) 2012. Routledge.

David Morgan Psychoanalyst, is chair and organiser of The Political Mind.