The Political Mind: Cassandra’s Message! Nuclear Threat and Climate Catastrophe. The Endgame?

Freud watching the rise of fascism in the 1930’s and the inevitability of another World War wrote in a discussion with Einstein ‘Why War?’ that it was due to man’s “instinct for hatred and destruction”, co-existing with the instinct “to preserve and unite”,

We are currently once again in an endgame seemingly dominated by self-destruction this time through climate catastrophe or the threat of nuclear war. Why do our elected leaders turn a blind eye and why do we accept it?

Join us for a discussion. 

Harriet Wolfe, President IPA Psychoanalyst US

Jill Gentile, Psychoanalyst US 

Charles B Strozier, Psychoanalyst US 

David Morgan, Psychoanalyst UK

Sally Weintrobe, Psychoanalyst UK

Phil Stokoe, Psychoanalyst UK

Prof Andrew Gaines, Ecologist Aus

Charles B Strozier

“The psychological impact of the twin apocalyptic threats of nuclear destruction and the slower burn of global warming, radically change our relation to death. 

As humans, we are the only animals with a foreknowledge of our own death; there are plenty of continuities between humans and the higher primates, but that is not one of them. 

I think the human foreknowledge of death is the psychological foundation for culture, and certainly for all our notions of religion and spirituality. We find meaning in the symbolic immortality of what we leave (children, work, impact on community, etc) because we trust the human project continues. 

The ultimate and the proximate are intimately linked. Nuclear destruction and the potential dying of life on the planet because of its warming makes death itself meaningless. 

In religious narratives, especially the Christian, there is renewal, death brings life and endings bring a new beginning. The apocalypse we face is pointless. We can’t know there will be such an end to the human project, and we all hope to avert it, but the threat itself changes our trust in the future because we know it is possible, not just imaginable. 

That particularly affects young people, who must have hope to build their lives, but that vague sense of meaninglessness infuses everything in our lives. This new awareness, incidentally, begins on August 6, 1945. Before that, humans required God to carry out the apocalypse. We don’t need God anymore to bring about the end. We have that ultimate power in our hands. And that also changes us psychologically."

Sally Weintrobe

Disavowal: Sally Weintrobe and the Psychoanalysis of Climate Change Denial

Hanna Segal 

“When the world within us is destroyed, when it is dead and loveless, when our loved ones are in fragments, and we ourselves in helpless despair - it is then that we must recreate our world anew, reassemble the pieces, infuse life into dead fragments, recreate life.”

Please note: This lecture will be recorded. The recording will be sent out on Monday 10th October and available for 1 week to all registered participants. This is to allow international attendees to enjoy the event at a more appropriate time in their time zone. After this time, the recording will no longer be available.