British Gestalt Journal Autumn 2022: 31.2

BRITISH
BRITISH
GESTALT JOURNAL
GESTALT
JOURNAL
The Climate Change Special

Guest edited by
Steffi Bednarek
Psychotherapy in a time
Autumn 2022: 31.2 when the familiar is dying
Bayo Akomolafe, PhD,
Steffi Bednarek, Mary-Jayne
Rust, Sally Weintrobe and
Francis Weller
Why aren’t we talking

about climate change?
Trudi Macagnino
Frozen in trauma on a
warming planet
Wendy Greenspun, PhD
Anthropocentrism,
animism and the
Anthropocene
Matthew Adams, PhD
VOLUME
britishgestaltjournal.com Gestalt therapy,

anthropocentrism, and
the family of things
31 NO 2
Rhys Price-Robertson, PhD,

Mark Skelding and
ISSN 0961 - 771X Keith Tudor, PhD
2022
Editor in Chief About British Gestalt Journal
Christine Stevens
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BRITISH
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doi.org/10.53667/OFYO8346
Volume 31.2 3
British Gestalt Journal

Contents
Volume 31.2, Autumn 2022 • The Climate Change Special ISSN 0961-771X
Steffi Bednarek Editorial 6-7
Discussion
Bayo Akomolafe, PhD, Steffi Psychotherapy in a time when the familiar is dying 8-15
Bednarek, Mary-Jayne Rust,
Sally Weintrobe and
Francis Weller
Articles
Trudi Macagnino Why aren’t we talking about climate change? Defences in the therapy room 16-25
Wendy Greenspun, PhD Frozen in trauma on a warming planet: a relational reckoning with 26-33
climate distress
Matthew Adams, PhD Anthropocentrism, animism and the Anthropocene: decentring the human 34-42
in psychology
Rhys Price-Robertson, PhD, Gestalt therapy, anthropocentrism, and the family of things 43-53
Mark Skelding and
Keith Tudor, PhD
Opinion
Shelot Masithi Climate change and thirst 54-55
Peter Philippson Four lectures for the Kyiv Gestalt University in a time of war 56-61
Inna Didkovska When the familiar collapses: living and practising as a psychotherapist 62-66
during a time of war
Notices 67

BRITISH
G E S TA LT
JOURNAL
Editorial
This special edition on climate change focuses on singular voice, whereby I don’t just mean my singular
the role of psychotherapy in a time when the familiar voice but the singular voice of Gestalt psychotherapy
is dying. This includes an enquiry into the notion of as a modality. The climate crisis pays no heed to
health and healing itself and considers the possibility the boundaries that we have learnt to draw around
that our culture may require healing along with us, and ourselves and our disciplines. Whilst the exploration of
cannot be distinguished apart. separability has led to great insights within individual
disciplines, one might argue that the idea of separability
The consumptive culture of the Global North has is in line with the wider atomistic and industrial
destabilised global climate patterns, transgressed mindset at the heart of the Anthropocene.
various planetary boundaries and created the risk of
an unintended anthropogenic emergency at global Whilst I can see that there is benefit in zooming in
scale. Interlocking crises create chaotic, ungovernable on specific lenses through which we view life, Alfred
situations, where change in one area of the system Korzybski’s work warns how easy it is to forget that
has ramifications throughout in unpredictable ways. the map is not the territory. The territory we deal with
Familiar structures are stuck in dysfunctional feedback is life and life neither follows Gestalt principles nor
loops and many solutions we come up with reproduce psychoanalytic or transactional perspectives. When we
the industrialised outlook and become part of over-focus on what separates us and what makes our
the problem. disciplines unique, we risk losing sight of all the things
that connect us. Of course we need maps to orient
Responses that match the magnitude of the crisis ourselves, but complex systems are trans-contextual
require complex, inter-related, systemic and decolonial and therefore need trans-contextual approaches. That’s
approaches that involve a critical questioning of the why I extended a call for contributions to the profession
ontological and epistemological underpinnings of as a whole. Further dialogue with fields beyond the
the hegemonic psychological lens that we have been discipline of psychotherapy is required.
educated in.
I started this journey with an invitation for a group
In this time of reconfiguration, it is important to conversation and was excited that four psychotherapists
remember that systems theory encourages us not (Bayo Akomolafe, Mary-Jayne Rust, Sally Weintrobe
to abandon old modes of thought in favour of the and Francis Weller) whose work is influential in the
novel, but to add context and to stay with the chaos field of climate psychology accepted straight away.
of complexity. After all, it is at the edge of chaos that We met on Zoom and sat in silence around the central
complex systems are at their most creative. question. Eventually themes emerged from these
But what adaptations are needed, when the system that silences. The recording of this conversation formed
we currently adapt to is not sustainable? the call for the submission of articles for this special
edition. Many colleagues added their voice and I am
Our professional journals have an important role to play pleased to say that in May 2023 Confer and Karnac
in fostering the evolution of our theories and practice Books will be publishing further edited responses under
at this consequential time in human history. Journals the title: Climate, Psychology and Change: Psychotherapy
don’t just set the bar for the quality of the debate, they in a time when the familiar is dying.
also have a key role to play in deciding what paradigms
the professional discourse stays within. The transcript of the original discussion opens this
special edition. It is followed by four peer reviewed
As guest editor for a special edition on climate change, articles and three opinion pieces.
I did not want to embark on this project from a
British Gestalt Journal • Volume 31.2 5
Trudi Macagnino’s article presents her research The contribution of the young climate activist Shelot
findings from narrative interviews, which explore why Masithi highlights that the concern about future
climate change is still rarely figural in the therapeutic traumas is a concern of the privileged. Masithi’s article
encounter. Her research shows that both therapist and describes her experience of living with water scarcity
client are frequently defended against overwhelming and brings awareness to the fact that Western notions
feelings and that therapists need to have worked of healing take little notice of the wisdom of other
through their own anxieties regarding climate change cultures, such as the South African philosophy of
in order to work effectively and safely with clients Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a reminder that a person becomes
around this issue. a person through the community of beings and that
nobody gets to be a moral being separate from
Wendy Greenspun offers a fascinating case study that their community.
provides insight into her work with Mr. R, who suffers
from climate distress. As Trudi Macagnino’s research The last two articles deal with war and social collapse;
shows, it would have been easy for the therapist to themes that are relevant in any crisis situation, present
indirectly shift the focus to a more comfortable terrain. or future. In the melting pot of the global meta-crisis
Greenspun movingly discusses how challenging it was (which includes increased polarisation, destabilisation
for her to ‘stay with the trouble’ and to allow herself to of democracy and a rise of authoritarianism), it is no
be exposed to the existential threat that affected both longer clear how best to prepare for the challenges that
her and Mr. R. come towards us. Which Ukrainian therapist would
have thought that they would soon need to cope
Matthew Adams then takes the discussion into with war?
the radical relationality and animist epistemology
that expands the notion of healing into the realm of Peter Philippson was meant to give a series of
reciprocity, cooperation and interdependence between webinars for the Kyiv Gestalt University, when Russia
humans and other-than-human beings. He draws invaded Ukraine and a war broke out in February. Peter
on examples of research, professional practice and was asked to go ahead with the webinars and found
everyday life that question anthropocentrism and himself speaking to colleagues who had also become
explore how human health is entangled with other- soldiers, refugees or volunteers in a war zone. More
than-humans. than 600 Ukranians joined these webinars and the
content is presented here in edited form.
Rhys Price-Robertson, Mark Skelding and Keith
Tudor continue the exploration of anthropocentrism Inna Didkovska, the Director of the Kyiv Gestalt
from a Gestalt perspective and draw our attention University then shares her direct experience of being
to the entanglements of Gestalt therapy with the exposed to the trauma of war herself, whilst teaching,
anthropocentric worldview. They then demonstrate supervising and counselling clients and trainees who
how Gestalt concepts can facilitate the change from a experience active war. Her article is a reflection on the
human-centred to an ecocentric perspective and offer existential nature of meaning-making. She asks which
reflections on the clinical implications of an expanded means of support are left in field conditions that strip
notion of self; one that sees humans as one member of a people of their usual pillars of support. Inna’s writing
vast family of beings. highlights that there is power in facing difficult truths. I
would like to thank her for this contribution whilst she
The causes and impacts of the climate crisis are faced such challenging circumstances herself.
distributed differently depending on where we live
and where we sit in the capitalist and colonial power My gratitude also goes out to the contributors and peer
structure. News reports mostly focus on the negative reviewers. This was a truly international and multi-
effects on the Global North and place more value on modality collaboration. Many thanks to the BGJ for the
white lives and culture than Black and Brown lives opportunity to have editorial freedom in delivering
and culture. Those of us who live in the Global North this special edition. And special thanks to Bridie
have the luxury of being worried about our children Squires, the Production Manager. Together we made a
and grandchildren’s future, whilst climate change has great team.
already affected vast amounts of people in the
Global South. Steffi Bednarek
Guest Editor

6 Steffi Bednarek et al. • Psychotherapy in a time when the familiar is dying
Psychotherapy in a time when the familiar is dying

Bayo Akomolafe, PhD, Steffi Bednarek, Mary-Jayne Rust, Sally Weintrobe
and Francis Weller
A discussion hosted and edited by Steffi Bednarek
This is a transcribed dialogue that took place on 14th January 2022 between five psychotherapists from
different continents, modalities, backgrounds and perspectives, all of whom brought a wealth of experience
to the commons of the profession. In a deliberate departure from the singular voice, this was an invitation
to come together across disciplines and to co-generate entangled and inter-connected meaning. The primary
aim was a cross-fertilisation, a building of bridges across modalities, allowing multiple perspectives to co-
exist in a kaleidoscope of conversation.
Even though most members of the discussion group ordinarily have large public speaking engagements,
this conversation was private. We gathered in an incubation space around one single question: the role of
psychotherapy in a time when the familiar is dying. Nobody led the conversation, there was no prodding or
probing. We sat with this single question and paid attention to what emerged between the silences.
The conversation was recorded without expectation for it to serve anything other than our coming together.
After the conversation took place, all participants had time to reflect and feel into the space that was
co-created. Clusters of meaning had emerged organically. All agreed for the conversation to be edited and
transcribed and to form a provocation paper for this special edition on climate change. The hope was for
the conversation to ripple out and for colleagues from all modalities to join the discussion by submitting
their own responses to the central question. The systems-thinker Fridtjof Capra stresses that complex
systems can’t be wilfully directed in linear ways, they can only be disturbed. As such, this slow dialogue is
an invitation to bring regenerative disturbance to the commons of our profession at the most critical time
for our entire species.
The edited video recording can be viewed at britishgestaltjournal.com
Discussion can catch a scent of what soul is trying to say to us in

these times about what we have forgotten, what we've
Steffi: Thank you for accepting this invitation to join neglected and what we need to tend. It is good to be
me in an incubation space around the central question here with you.
of the role of psychotherapy in a time when the familiar
is dying. Can we start by exploring what themes are Steffi: This morning I went for a walk in a linear
with you as we come together in this conversation? mindset. When I looked up, the sheer beauty around
me was so breathtaking that it jolted me out of my
Sally: I just want to thank you, Steffi, for getting us thoughts. Sometimes I find it difficult to open myself
together. It's a very nice invitation and it sets up some to beauty. How can I contain so much beauty? Who and
expectation and hope of a real intermingling. what can I hold onto in order to also feel the beauty in
this time of uncertainty and trouble? This question is
Bayo: I'm also grateful to be here. I feel like starting
very much with me.
with what grounds me these days, and that is my
family, my people, the community here in Chennai Mary-Jayne: So much is with me when you talk about
(India) and the promise of doing something entirely those things, Steffi. When I really woke up in my body
incomprehensible in these times. So, it's good to be here to the ecological crisis, I felt very passionately about
with you, my odd kin. our relationship with the other-than-human world.
Being immersed in the field of eco-psychology, I was
Francis: I've spent the last forty years trying to see
running courses on the west coast of Scotland with an
what trails soul is laying down in our individual,
outdoor educator. One of the things that was central
communal, cultural and planetary lives. Seeing if I
was how easily people could recover their deep love for your grandmother or your grandfather? What if that's a
the other-than-human world. plant trying to speak with you?’ This was really jarring
for me. It was disturbing.
What is with me is a need to rethink child development,
which is so much framed in terms of human Steffi, you spoke about beauty when you started to
relationships. The whole of the psychotherapy world speak, and this idea of engorgement comes to mind,
is. How do we reframe that in terms of including our where the membranes can no longer take the weight of
relationship with the other-than-human world and how its content. In the same light, I think the disciplinarity
that sits in our inner worlds, too? of my training and my degrees and the things that I was
educated to think of as ‘reality’ are now hollowing out.
Sally: My journey was profoundly influenced by Rachel And in their place I'm listening to tortois and rock and
Carson's Silent Spring. It shocked me out of myself and grandmothers and shamans and a very conspiratorial
put me in touch with my deeper feelings for the non- notion of affect: that feelings are not domiciled in easily,
human world. I also began scanning for the presence convenient, consumerist boxes inside Mary-Jayne or
in the landscape of these new ‘mega-farms’ that so inside Francis, but that affect is environmental; that
ill-treat animals. I would be looking out for large to feel is to be enlisted in territorial movements. This
warehouses in the countryside and wondering what was changes the context and now I am in the face of the
inside them. That has never left me. animal or the inscrutably invisible. That is where I feel a
I have grandchildren. One of them, aged seven, said to different response is warranted. Worship, maybe.
me recently that there isn't a word that can describe Sally: I've practised as a psychoanalyst for decades.
humans and other animals together, so she’s going to I certainly think that there has been a great under-
say ‘rabbit-person’, or ‘cow-person’ and ‘human-person’. attention paid to external reality. I don't think it's
Children are fabulously sophisticated. Not only are they necessarily in the bones of psychoanalysis and its
not so damaged in their relationship to the non-human theory that it needs to be like that. After all, it's a
world, they are also not so racially fractured or class theory that is meant to be addressing external and
fractured. They are already quite savvy about the way internal reality and how they shape each other, but it's
their parents are caught up in the dominant culture. as if it got taken over.
Those are strands that I’ve carried with me. Whilst my training did not pay much attention to the
external world, I was fortunate enough that my analyst
Psychotherapy training and dominant was touched by the beauty of the world, which was a
assumptions passed down through institutes blessing to me.
Mary-Jayne: I would say that there was nothing in my My struggle is that I’ve got a great deal of value from
training at all about our relationship with the other- my training and so how do I hold those tensions? One
than-human world. needs a discipline and a base of study. One needs not
just to be wild about what one thinks. What my training
Bayo: The university system at the Neuropsychiatric
gave me is a way of looking at things long enough so
Hospital in Eastern Nigeria, where I received a
that you suddenly realise how much you don't know,
BSc, MSc, and PhD in Psychology, and trained as a
and you get lost, and you really study. We have so much
psychotherapist, was connected with the church. I
theoretical work to do. We need to learn how to apply
didn't need a degree to notice that there was something
that in different contexts and that's what I've been
irresistibly theological about the practice of therapy
trying to do in my work.
that situated and reinforced the gilded interiority of the
human subject. Everything else was easily dismissible, I would say that trainees need to ask their institutions
discardable, pathologisable, invisibilised. And I was to address these issues as part of their training and
scared to go to the places of African Traditional make a fuss about it. It's really important. All of us
Systems that were now rebranded as ‘demonic’. must try to get our institutions to address these issues,
responding to the urgency of our time.
For my research, I went with my DSM brain to the
shamans and the priests, and I listened to them as they Francis: I was licensed way too young. At 27 years old,
turned my thinking upside down. They asked: ‘Why I was given permission to sit with people and work with
would you think of – what I would term “auditory their psyches. But I was smart enough to know I didn't
hallucination” – as something to be fixed? What if that's know anything. So I found this ‘old’ man, he must have

been sixty, his name was Clark Berry, a Individual and collective trauma inherent in
Jungian psychotherapist. the field
The first time I sat down with Clark, he reached over Francis: I was sitting in a class for one of my CU units
and he patted this big rock that he had by his chair. He and it was all about these internal practices to regulate
said ‘This is my clock, I operate at a geologic speed, and trauma. That is wonderful stuff, but as I was sitting
if you're going to work with the soul, you need to learn there, I was thinking about the thousands of years
this rhythm, because this is how the soul moves’. Then where it was the community and nature that were the
he pointed to his clock and said, ‘It hates this’. That regulating mechanisms to address issues of trauma,
was the single most important piece of training about injury and wound. Ritual was the primary means by
sitting with people; how do you teach them to which we sutured the tears in the psyche. So maybe
slow down? we need both. I'm not saying either/or, I'm just saying,
what would happen if psychology began to remember
Bayo: What you say about slowing down is so very vital
its roots?
to me that I want to dance on the streets. I often say:
‘The times are urgent, let us slow down!’ Slowing down, Steffi: I wonder whether there's a third that needs to
for me, is a reframing of our crisis, a reframing of the emerge, between looking back and staying within the
climate chaos, of the pandemic, even of racial matters. existing lens. Jurgen Kremer talks about the fact that
It's a reframe of continuity. we all have roots somewhere, but for white Europeans
the route back to these roots needs to go through
When people hear me say that, they imagine that I'm
trauma, through the trouble that our ancestors have
asking them to take a break, to do more yoga or to go
caused and experienced. There is no way that doesn’t
on a vacation. That's not the ontology that I speak from.
lead through this still largely unprocessed
The ontology that inspires that saying is one
collective trauma.
of crossroads.
We may meet a time where something new is asked
The Yoruba people in Western Nigeria travelled
for that lies in the field between the polarities we
across the Atlantic and infected those slave-holding
operate within. Between the polarity of individual and
communities and became the Afro-Asian vibrant
collective there may be an emergent third. We may need
communities that we all know and love today. They
to remember, attend to what we know, look at the bigger
speak about Orita. Orita is the crossroads. The
picture and maybe nothing is quite enough, nothing
crossroad is the place where bodies are refused their
quite fits.
coherence. Basically, in an entangling and entangled
world, the self cannot be coherent, the self is always Sally, you talked about your granddaughter, saying we
diasporic, is always spread out, is always travelling, haven't got a word for the in-between, the connection
always emerging, always becoming. To situate oneself between humans and animals. Maybe it is the
at the crossroads is to refuse the salvific impulses unexplored spaces between what we know that need
of our discipline; the efforts to save, which is often a more attention.
colonial attempt to reinforce continuity, to reinforce
the ‘normal’. Mary-Jayne: This reminds me of a major trauma,
which was about my dog who I had known from when
I feel that this is the time for the incomprehensible, I was three. She very sadly drowned in the well in our
and this is sprouting in ways we don't have language garden when I was twelve. It was hugely traumatic for
for. So, the crossroads is an invitation to notice the me, as you can imagine. I never mentioned it in any of
others in the room. That is the reframe that connects my years of analysis. It just got completely overlooked.
climate change, eco-psychology, feminist insights, this During all my years of therapy, I told my story of human
pandemic and its epidemiological reconfigurations. It relationships but I hadn't told my Earth story. So, I felt I
just turns it on its head and invites us to notice. had to go back and expand my story about relationships
and include the rest of life.
We're now in alien territory and we must now frame
our politics and our therapeutic gestures in a way that Steffi: That seems so important. I was born in East
brings us to these others, these more-than-human others Germany, and part of my personal story is hugely
that have always been the condition for our thriving. political. There were political prisoners in my family,
What might that look like? That is the question that I'm people were spied on very openly and the whole
sitting with. political system put its imprint on me. In my early
twenties I worked for the Council of Europe on immune to. I mean, who's the patient in the room now?
Human Rights and I worked in a very political way. I'm as anxious as anybody I'm sitting with. I'm as grief-
Then, in an attempt to understand more about human stricken as anybody I'm sitting with.
behaviour, I studied psychotherapy, particularly Gestalt
psychotherapy. Gestalt has the notion that self is We cannot touch this stuff without the presence of
not static… community. How do you hold this grief by yourself?
It's insane! We've been isolated in our grief, isolated in
Bayo: That self is ecstatic! our longings, isolated in every piece of our existence.
That itself is the pathology we have to overcome, how
Steffi: Ecstatic, yes! And self forms in constant to make this all communal once again. And still, there
exchange with everything that is around us, in is no answer. But at least there's five of us on the screen
exchange with the field. This was the theory that right now. I don't feel alone in this moment with my
I loved, but the practice had almost an invisible tears, with my grief, with my fear. That's the solitary
boundary around it, where nevertheless my focus was confinement that comes out of the Western ideology of
very much on the individual. So the way I told my story individualism. You're basically on your own.
also became very interior. It didn't become the story
of being human, it didn't become the story of being Steffi: James Hillman said something along the lines
German, it didn't even become the story of my family that psychotherapy is stuck because we don't see that
system. It became my story and in a way I feel like the institutions are sick, that the banking system is sick,
there's an additional layer of trauma that was added the education system is sick, that the sickness is out
because of this isolation, the fact that I became there. It's not doing away with individual psychotherapy
so myopic. but I don’t know the tools of working with the sickness
in the culture.
The widening out into collective trauma that is not
privately owned, that I may find out more about me Mary-Jayne: How do we enable the personal to
when I look at others, or when I look at the culture is resonate with what's happening with the collective? It's
so important. Even in trauma there's something deeply not that the focus has changed the collective but how
moving and joyful when it becomes larger than my own do we build bridges between?
story. It makes it much easier to contain things.
I spent ten years working at the Women's Therapy
And in terms of climate change, that's my experience, Centre, looking at my own wound around eating. We
too. If I just think about it in terms of what's going live within a patriarchal society. Our problems come
to happen to me and my loved ones, then it's a very out of our family history and the culture that we live in.
isolated story. Widening this out, there's beauty that One way of framing what we're living through is that in
is possible. terms of consumer culture, we're living in a giant eating
problem, all together. How do we work our way through
Bayo: Beautiful Steffi, thank you. that? What does it mean to attend to our hunger? What
Francis: I’ve noticed over the past few years how much are we really hungry for? There are all those questions
the material that comes in the room is changing, it's in there, for me.
not so intra-psychic anymore. It's not so much talking Sally: Yes and in order to hear what is traumatic, the
about my history, my wounds, my traumas. The world therapist has to take the trauma into themselves and
is coming into the room. Clients are talking about work it through themselves. If one is with a therapist
economics, the climate catastrophe and their impinging who is closed to experiencing trauma, the patient is
fears. The ambient field of anxiety, uncertainty and in trouble. Patients who have been traumatised know
grief is really coming into their psychic lives. whether they can raise something. If they're not going
The patient is now the community, the patient is now to be heard, they will be traumatised further and they
the culture, the patient is the planet. It isn't so much know that.
my individual personal wounding any longer. That's I don't call myself a recovering psychologist as you do,
in there, obviously, but there's a sensitivity coming Bayo, because that implies that it's something that I see
through that crease in the soul. as only dangerous. While I absolutely go along with the
What's really coming out of the people I'm sitting with truth in that, I also find myself undone with questions
is the larger ambient field that the therapist itself is not like: How do we keep a perspective on the individual
and make more allowance for how feelings exist beyond

the individual? How do we not collapse things? How do in that sense. The patient and analyst can be caught
we not get fractious about this in non-productive ways? up in a psychic retreat from reality, very much in the
I think we're at a point where a great deal of theoretical service of maintaining privilege within a culture.
advance can be made in our profession if we hold
these tensions. Francis: At the heart of all our sorrows is this
profound sense of emptiness. This is part of the legacy
Bayo: Sally, I deeply value the invitation to holding of white amnesia and the forgetting of culture, and
tensions and diffraction instead of thinking in terms the trauma of rupture between cultures. And how
of binaries, which is problematic. You want to see how much we've been cast out of a sense of continuity and
things come together and fall apart together, places of connectivity to place, to language, to traditions, to
convergence and divergence. practices and rituals. We've been left in that legacy
of individualism, basically with an empty self. And
I think the rhetorical force of speaking with the so much of our attempt to cope with that emptiness
cadence of the trickster and saying that I'm a recovering has been consumption. Not just of material goods but
psychologist is commensurate to the political needs of also of power and racism and everything we can do to
my context. The world that I come from skews heavily somehow avoid the confrontation with that emptiness.
towards the colonial and the imperial, and is still
battling with feelings of shame. I think, as therapists, we also have to examine our own
experience of that in our traditions and in our field,
We have lost rituals, celebrations, and patterns of so that we're not also contributing to it. How do we
communing and listening to each other. We curse each navigate around the emptiness?
other on aeroplanes flying into our airports and we say
things like: ‘Why don't we look more like New York?’ or
This entanglement explored in private
‘Why don't we look more like London?’
practice
The invitation that I hold is to say: ‘No, we don't need
Mary Jayne: How can I bring all of these different
to subscribe to an image that has been imposed on us.
threads into my work as a psychotherapist? I don't
Let's compost that image and see what sprouts from
believe in introducing things deliberately into the
that soil!’
work, so, how can I listen for it? How are my clients
Sally: Thank you for that. So many of us are in recovery bringing it?
from that kind of self-loathing, which is a cultural
Francis: Because when clients come to us, there's an
product. Thank you, that's really clarifying.
urgency to change but that change is almost always
predicated on self-hatred. ‘I’m not good enough, I
The long shadows of colonialism present in
have to change who I am to fit into the construct of
our profession approvability.’ Because we have forgotten our collective
Steffi: I am aware that monuments to colonialism have sense of belonging and we have become so isolated into
recently been toppled in many places, but there's an our singularities.
ongoing question about how these monuments have We're anxious all the time, whether ‘I'm in’ or ‘I'm out’,
been erected in me, in my thinking, in my mind. And and people come to therapy so much to see if they can
how do I participate in keeping them alive? What needs craft a self that fits the expectations of belonging. So,
to crumble in me? And what facilitates that process? a lot of my work with clients is trying to disavow that
Some of this is hardly tangible. fantasy, that fiction of ‘How do I fit in?’
Sally: That whole move – and Steffi, you mentioned Sally: I think the job of therapists has never been more
that it's linked with private practice – is linked with complicated or onerous. What we have to be burdened
privilege. It's linked with the fact that in the global by has never been more difficult. It undoes us but I
North therapists are largely white. It's linked with a still think, if we open ourselves up to this, we will have
whole culture which has been very splitting into the fantastic theoretical advances, which is needed. All this
haves and the have-nots, the better and the worse and is holding back the profession and we will also be of
all the rest of it. A fracturing culture. more help to the real problems that people are
I don't think that the analytic and therapeutic facing now.
profession has been any different from general culture
Bayo: There's hardly any choice we have left but to slow happen. I feel there is a sense in which we are in a
down and to build a classroom around the cracks. And Qarrtsiluni right now. We're in this place of darkness
maybe the new will happen to us. Not just depending but this darkness is productive, it's prolific. It’s how to
on our own skills or genius to weave it into being. sit here, that is the issue, how we chart a cartography of
exile and fugitivity and novelty, in the face of resilient,
My people say that sometimes wisdom is speaking out imperial structures.
of the corners of one's mouth. There's something about
speaking that always ruptures something else. There is Sally: Steffi, you posed us a question before we met
no middling area, there's no Socratic field to settle our today, which was concerning the familiar and how
bodies. So one learns to speak with the tensions that easy it is to slip back into the familiar setting. So I
Sally was inviting here. To speak with absolutes or to looked it up. It means ‘well known from long or close
speak with a sense of binaries is to do some injustice association’. You referred to the fact that the familiar is
somewhere else. dying, and how do we respond?
Our measurements actually perform and reinforce the The other meaning refers to characters that are rather
crisis. So, the question that I'm learning to ask is; how demonic, which I found very interesting because I
do our solutions reinforce the problems? How does the would say that there is a tension, that if we're going
clinical alliance and the context of therapy reinforce to survive this moment, we encounter the deeply
the problems that we're dealing with? unfamiliar in our apparent familiarities. If we're not
going to do that, I think we're headed towards a very
Out of the wound, whether it's climate chaos, racial desperate path. So, I found the word familiar very
injustice, or police brutality, with Deluzian thought, challenging. Thank you for the way you posed that.
there are certain dynamics that tend to reinforce a
concretion of the familiar. The practices that we swear Bayo: I’d never considered it from that perspective. But
by hold things in place and refuse us some kind of yes, my sister, I'm quite wary about what I call Psychic
fugitivity. I speak a lot about fugitivity, about a politics Gentrification. We colonise the darkness in order to
or therapy that is yet to come, that we don't know the let it be legible to what we already know. We drag the
contours of, we don't have a language for. screaming demons from the swamps, so that they speak
to our needs right now. The eloquence of today has to
It's not something new; it's not novel in terms of be a gasp, not just another series of words. It has to
dismissing what's very vital today but it's definitely an look something like my son, struggling for language
invitation to be humble. It's a humility, it's an animist and me noticing that this struggle for language is not a
humility. It's something that maybe critiques the disadvantage, it's a gift we don't know how to name yet.
human. By human, I don't mean the individual subject
but the territories of acting and behaving, the way we Francis: It's pretty clear that we've entered into what
frame space-time, the way we frame our economies and we could call the long dark. It's going to be decades,
politics. All of that is called into the room, like Francis perhaps generations, in the making before we even get
beautifully said. And we're being invited to wrestle a sense of what might be emergent. But we are in a time
with that. of deep descent and we're leaving the terrain of the
self and entering the terrain of the soul, and we don't
So, my politics is about how we escape this have much of a soul-language, we have a self-language.
convergence, this almost toxic cyclicity? How do we We don't even have a psychology, we have a self-ology.
break out of the plantation? How do we go elsewhere We've lost psyche, we've lost soul. So, we have to begin
that doesn't have a name? to become familiar again with the customs and the
I've been doing this work that I call ‘making sanctuary’. manners that closest resemble what soul is aching for.
It's not a manifesto for a new form of therapy but it's a Steffi: One of my questions is whether one-to-one
speculative fabulation – a way for us to gather around therapy continues to be the necessary focus. Do these
the cracks, the wounds, the stories that want to be told. times also call for something larger? Do the skills
The Inuit culture has this ritual called Qarrtsiluni. The that we bring need a wider context and maybe a
people hunting whales would gather in a dark room different frame?
and sit with the darkness, waiting for the lyrics of a Sally: I think it's not an either/or. There will be a role
song to sprout. The word Qarrtsiluni literally means for people needing to talk to somebody and have
sitting in the darkness and waiting for something to

therapy. I, for myself, have moved out of that kind of to cook and what I need to buy for my dad, which is
work. This decision was a long time in the making. what I had done over the last few years.
We have skills and understanding that can have a Then it began to dawn on me that we've sold the house
different level of application. We can have disavowal and I couldn't go there. Then I thought ‘Where's Dad?’
in a therapy session. We can have disavowal at COP26. I went through lots of possibilities in my mind as to
They can have structural similarities but it doesn't where he might be. Was he staying with blah? Was he in
mean the reason for them are the same. How do we a home? Was he living with my sister?
recognise the similarities at these different scales?
Then it dawned on me that he's died and it was really
These are very complicated questions but I think that's shocking even after all this time. When I realised that
where a lot of our work is needed now, at that sort of the house was gone and that he was dead, my thought
level. How to help people face the unbearable feelings was: ‘Where am I going to go now?’ It was really
that are here. How do we help people, not in one-to-one shocking and I woke up.
sessions but in larger groups?
It's going to be two years in March when he died. I still
Mary-Jayne: I definitely think there has to be spaces feel really shocked. It's as if they've just died.
for all different kinds of things. Personally I'm too
introverted. There was too much difficult stuff for me in For me it's not just a story about personal loss, it's how
the early years to have gone into a group. I tried it and I long it takes to take in the death of the familiar, and
couldn't do it. I had to have the one-to-one experience all the different layers that we go through with the
and I'm sure many other people feel similarly. realisation of it. It’s a story of how long it takes to seep
into our bones how many things we're losing at the
I feel passionately that there has to be a space for not moment. Other people have mentioned that it's not just
just group therapy. There's something else that's called creatures and people, it's loss of trust, loss of familiar
for. It's a kind of coming together to share grief and so ways of doing things, and so on.
many other feelings that people are going through and
having difficulty in naming. Unless we can do that, we I wanted to add how long this takes. We need to slow
can't move forward. down. There's a terrible paradox with needing to get on
with things so urgently, and yet, we need time to realise
The early years for me, attending Joanna Macy and take in the enormity of it. How do we take it in?
Residentials, weren't psychotherapy but it was very Losses on such a huge scale? It's hard enough to face
therapeutic. It was life-changing for me to be in the personal death. How do we take in the possible loss of
community and witnessing each other's pain for the ending of our species? I don't have the answers but
the world. these are the things that are preoccupying me.
Closing with a dream

Mary-Jayne: It might seem a bit odd to bring a dream
in for my closing remarks but it's about the death of
the familiar.
Just for some context, I've lost both my parents in the

last few years and I've also lost the piece of land where I
was born. So it's a lot of loss and a lot of death of
the familiar.
In my dream I'm going to visit my father – he was the

last one to die. I catch the train and the bus in the
familiar way, and I walk from the very small town to
where they were living.
But I go a different way to the way I would normally

go and I meet a woman who offers me a cup of tea. She
gives me a cabin to sit in and I'm drinking the tea and
I'm planning the weekend. I think about what I'm going
Bayo Akomolafe, PhD, is a philosopher, Sally Weintrobe is Fellow of the British

a psychotherapist and founder of The Psychoanalytical Society, a longstanding
Emergence Network. He has been Visiting member of the Climate Psychology
Professor at Middlebury College; Sonoma Alliance, and Chair of the International
State University, USA; Simon Fraser Psychoanalytical Association’s Climate
University, Canada; and Schumacher College Committee. Sally edited Engaging with Climate
in the UK. Bayo was born in Nigeria, is a Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary
descendant of the Yoruba people and lives in Perspectives (2012), authored Psychological
India with his wife and family. He is author of Roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal
These Worlds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to my Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare (2021)
Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (2017). and co-authored Climate Psychology: A Matter
of Life and Death (2022).
Steffi Bednarek is a Gestalt Psychotherapist,

trauma therapist and organisational Francis Weller is an American
consultant with a focus on climate psychology, Psychotherapist, writer and Soul Activist.
community psychology and trauma-informed He is the founder of Wisdom Bridge,
practice. Her work on eco-anxiety and an educational project that synthesises
climate trauma has been featured by BBC, psychology, anthropology and mythology.
Huffington Post, Resurgence Magazine and He has taught at Sonoma State University,
several international podcasts, including book The Sophia Centre in Oakland, and has been
chapters and articles. Steffi is an associate the featured teacher at the Minnesota Men's
of the Climate Psychology Alliance, co- Conference. He is author of The Wild Edge
founder of the journal Explorations in Climate of Sorrow, The Threshold Between Loss and
Psychology and her book Climate, Psychology Revelation, In The Absence of the Ordinary:
and Change will be published by Confer Essays in a Time of Uncertainty and A Trail on
in 2023. the Ground: The Geography of Soul.
Mary-Jayne Rust is a British Art Therapist,

Jungian Analyst and Eco-Therapist. She
teaches, lectures and facilitates workshops
on Eco-Psychology in a wide range of
settings, weaving together the ecological,
psychological, political and spiritual.
Feminist psychotherapy helped to broaden
her understanding of how culture shapes
our internal worlds. Mary-Jayne is author of
Towards an Eco-Psychotherapy.

14 Trudi Macagnino • Why aren’t we talking about climate change?
Why aren’t we talking about climate change?

Defences in the therapy room
Trudi Macagnino
Received 30 June 22; revised 7 September 22
Abstract
Increased attention is being given to the psychological impact of climate change, often termed eco-anxiety,
which is predicted to increase and be widespread. Despite this, therapists and clients do not frequently
discuss this in their sessions. Indirect side-mentions may be made by clients but these are often not opened
up for further exploration. This paper outlines findings from narrative interviews with therapists and clients
that show both are defended in sessions against potentially overwhelming feelings. A variety of mechanisms
including unconscious individual, organisational and social defences are observed. I draw on the concepts
of containment, transitional space and the therapeutic third help to understand these dynamics. Findings
suggest that therapists need training and to have worked through their own anxieties regarding climate
change in order to work effectively and safely with clients around this issue. I conclude that therapy needs to
be re-visioned as a psycho-social endeavour.
Keywords
eco-anxiety, psychotherapy, unconscious defences, social defences, psycho-social methods, thematic

analysis, narrative interviews, containment, therapeutic third, transitional space
Introduction healthy response to the CEE, rather than a pathology

(Bednarek, 2019a).
There is increased awareness and concern regarding
the climate and ecological emergency (CEE) with Psychotherapy and counselling professions have
75% of people in Great Britain stating they are begun to recognise the need to attend to eco-anxiety.
worried about climate change (Office for National Professional organisations such as BACP, UKCP and
Statistics, 2021). Attention is now being given to the the British Psychological Society (BPS) have run
psychological and emotional impact of the CEE. The CPD events, issued special editions of their journals
latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UKCP, 2016; BPS, 2020; BACP, 2021) and some have
(IPCC) report mentioned the impacts on mental health even made statements declaring a climate emergency
for the first time stating, ‘Mental health challenges, (Royal Society of Psychiatrists, 2021). However, as an
including anxiety and stress, are expected to increase integrative psychotherapist working in private practice
under further global warming in all assessed regions, I have not seen clients coming to sessions wanting to
particularly for children, adolescents, elderly, and talk about the CEE despite the evidence suggesting that
those with underlying health conditions’ (IPCC, 2022). eco-anxiety is increasing. This was a starting point for
Evidence supports this statement with depression, my PhD research.
PTSD, guilt, grief, anger and anxiety being associated
Through interviewing therapists and clients for
with climate change (Lawrence et al., 2021; Lertzman,
my research, a puzzle presented itself. Clients and
2015) and being particularly prevalent in young people
therapists easily and comfortably talk about the
(Marks et al., 2021). These symptoms are often referred
natural other-than-human world, such as animals, pets,
to under the overly simplistic umbrella terms of eco-
the natural environment and landscapes in therapy
anxiety or climate anxiety. These labels have a clinical
sessions. They speak about the healing and restorative
ring about them although many believe they are a
powers of nature, of special relationships with other-
than-human entities and the way in which the natural In this paper, I outline a psychosocial explanation for
world is part of their spiritual practice. Despite the the puzzle and an understanding of the unconscious
obvious value placed on the natural world by both defences at work in the therapy room which served
therapists and clients during their work together, the to keep the CEE out. I specifically draw on concepts
CEE is rarely spoken about directly. Therapists told me of containment (Bion, 1962), transitional space
that sometimes, however, clients make side-mentions (Winnicott, 1971), thirdness (Benjamin, 2004, 2009)
related to the CEE, such as noticing unusual weather and social defences against anxiety (Menzies-Lythe,
or referring to pro-environmental behaviour, such as 1960) to make sense of my findings.
going plastic-free. In these cases, therapists typically
choose not to explore the topic further, instead seeing Method
these comments as small talk. In parallel, clients also
choose not to say more or go any deeper into these Taking a psycho-social position concerned with
areas. So the puzzle for me was: if the natural world both inner and outer worlds, the psyche and the
is so important to them, why is the CEE, a threat to sociocultural, I utilised psychoanalytically informed
something they love, not being brought into the room? methodology which recognises hidden unconscious
structures and defences which lie ‘beneath the surface’
The interview data suggested that this was not due and ‘beyond the purely discursive’ (Clarke and Hogget,
to a lack of care or concern about the CEE. It is more 2009, p. 2). Specifically, free association narrative
likely that eco-anxiety caused by confronting the interviews (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000, 2013) were
reality of the CEE is potentially an overwhelming used with therapists and the biographical narrative
experience of existential magnitude (Lertzman, 2015). interview method (Wengraf, 2001) was used with
It is, therefore, not surprising that we are all likely clients. Each participant, apart from one (Lester) was
to defend against it to various degrees at times. Sally interviewed twice. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 24
Weintrobe has written extensively about disavowal, the of the 27 interviews were conducted online using Zoom
unconscious defence of turning away from the reality live video. I kept a research journal throughout the
of the CEE (Weintrobe, 2013). She has also suggested project to capture my thoughts, ideas, feelings,
that much of this disavowal is social, a result of our dreams and reflections and this became important
Western individualistic culture (Weintrobe, 2021). Such reflexive data.
a psychosocial perspective sees that the individual
is to be found in the social and the social within the
individual in a mutually constructing dynamic, not all
of which is conscious (Frosh, 2003).
Pseudonym * Gender Approx. Age Modality
Jenny Female 50s Core process
Lester Male 60s Humanistic/

integrative
Lee Female 60s Gestalt
Nellie Female 60s Integrative
Amanda Female 50s Core process
Sarah Female 50s Person-centred
Rob Male 30s Dramatherapy

Seven therapists were recruited through convenience and purposive sampling (Patton, 2002).
The only inclusion criterion was that participants had to have an active therapy practice.
Seven clients were recruited through a similar sampling method.
Clients were unconnected with the therapists.
Inclusion criteria were that participants needed to be in, or had recently completed, therapy and were sufficiently
emotionally resilient as judged by their therapist to take part.
Seven participants were recruited:
Pseudonym * Gender Age
Sean Male 45
Margaret Female 75
Deborah Female 30s
Phil Male 39
Elaine Female 64
Martin Male 62
Helen Female 43
*All names have been changed to ensure anonymity
Pen portraits were written about each participant, Psycho-social research assumes both subject and
giving background and context, capturing individual researcher to be anxious and defended (Hollway and
characteristics, emotional tone of the narrative, the Jefferson, 2013), therefore, even with reflexivity it is not
core story line (Cartwright, 2004) and my general always possible for the researcher to access their own
observations and impressions. This process served to unconscious processes. I, therefore, involved colleagues,
capture countertransferential data which was then supervisors and peers in the form of research panels to
incorporated into my analysis. gain differing perspectives on extracts of the data that
I found particularly interesting, confusing or strongly
Thematic analysis (TA) (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was indicative of a particular theme.
then conducted for each individual data set (therapists
and clients) generating codes, themes and patterns. The final stage of analysis was to consider the two
Specifically, reflexive TA (Braun and Clarke, 2019, 2021) data sets of therapists and clients together as a whole,
was used which puts ‘the researcher’s role in knowledge identifying unifying themes as well as any differences.
production [..] at the heart of [the] approach’ (Braun
and Clarke, 2019, p.594) and this is consistent with a Findings
psycho-social methodology where the researcher is
understood to be co-constructing the narrative. A more As already outlined, one of the key findings was the
focussed reflexive and psycho-social lens was used by contradiction between the importance placed on the
further interrogating the data with questions designed natural world by therapists and their clients, and the
as prompts to deepen my analysis still further relative lack of direct reference to the CEE by them
(see appendix). in the therapy sessions; this was the puzzle. The
explanations for this puzzle constituted the remainder
of my findings and were captured under two broad
themes: ‘What therapy is for’ and ‘Feelings
and defences’.
Theme: What therapy is for until she’s ‘got the foundation’. I think what Martin and
Elaine meant by ‘foundation’ was a sense of personal
Therapists drew on a discourse of professional and resilience, a firm base, which they need before the
ethical practice emphasising the importance of not feelings regarding the CEE can be explored, perhaps
bringing their own agenda into the therapy or of leading because they sense they are potentially of a different
the clients in a particular direction. They used the order of magnitude; the small stuff is stuff they can do
therapeutic contract as an explanation for not exploring something about. When talking about the ‘small stuff’
clients’ feelings regarding the CEE in a deeper way. they are alluding to their own sense of smallness and
Jenny, for instance, does not open up side-mentions powerlessness in relation to the enormity of the CEE.
about the CEE from clients because she is ‘more
listening out for what that person is really wanting to The shared view about therapy from both sets of
bring in that session’ (my emphasis). I sensed that Jenny participants is that it is for the micro-level issues of self
was justifying this when she stressed that this would be and relationships with other humans. These issues are
‘in-keeping with what we've contracted to work on.’ The agreed upon between the client and the therapist and
need to justify suggests some anxiety around this. The then between the therapist and their supervisor. In this
disregarding of the side-mention seems to me a defence, way, a parallel set of processes is established,
an avoidance of stepping into material that she would both explicitly and implicitly in a strongly held
rather leave be. therapeutic frame.
In a similar vein, Lee said, ‘I don't want to be directive The adherence to a therapeutic model or framework
or leading or you know, I'm not that kind of a therapist.’ seems to provide some sense of structure and security
The suggestion was that the ‘kind of therapist’ who for therapists, a place to retreat to perhaps. For
leads clients, in this particular aspect at least, is an example, Nellie explained how she will ‘fall back’ on
unethical one. her core model, she knows she can ‘go there’ and ‘do
that’ when she doesn’t know what to do in a session.
In this way, therapist and client explicitly and implicitly This falling back suggests to me a kind of collapsing
agree on the therapeutic contract; in other words, into, a retreat from something threatening, rather than
this is what your therapy is for, and in so doing keep a stepping into the space of meeting the client, of not
socio-political concerns such as the CEE out, as though knowing and allowing oneself to be impacted by the
external contexts have no impact on the internal world. same things as the client.
This focus on the therapeutic contract is then The setting of the therapy also appears to play a
continued and further reinforced in supervision: role in the avoidance of exploring clients’ potential
anxieties regarding the CEE more deeply. For therapists
working in organisations, the goals of the organisation
‘With my own personal supervisor, […] I would tend to also serve to direct the therapy. This was expressed
be focusing on the really sort-of psychotherapy part of particularly strongly by Nellie who works in an NHS
the relationship with my clients with him […] attachment Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies service.
patterns, looking at people's own personal history, The focus on outcomes, measuring symptoms and
looking at people's thought processes. Um looking at my evidence-based practice serves to restrict the therapy;
relationship with them, you know, just me and them in in Nellie’s words, making her work ‘narrow’. She spoke
the room, you know, without that bigger without that about the pressures to keep sessions to a minimum:
bigger picture, so it's like the micro, the micro level levels
of the relationship.’ (Jenny)
‘[…] so I think there's been more pressure to keep the
sessions to the sort of minimum that we need in order
Similarly, client participants saw the purpose of therapy to get clients to a certain stage of recovery (laughs). So
as dealing with their personal issues, the small stuff I guess that's, you know, been a performance pressure,
of everyday life, and that large-scale global issues such like, oh, well, I've talked about x, y, and z, and they seem
as the CEE are not relevant to the task of therapy. to be better now so that's worked, job done, you know,
Martin described the topic of nature and the CEE as out the door (laughs).’
‘highbrow’ and that one needs to ‘get the foundations’
sorted out first, meaning personal issues. Elaine said
that she doesn’t want to talk about it with her therapist

Although she felt frustrated, organisational goals allow Client participants seemed to take responsibility for
Nellie to shift responsibility of what to focus on in the what was talked about and not talked about in their
sessions from herself to the organisation. therapy sessions, clearly shown in this extract from
Sean as he contemplates why he has not spoken about
There was a general assumption amongst the clients the CEE with his therapist:
that people, their therapists included, do not want
to listen to them talk about the CEE. Clients spoke
about being met with a roll of the eyes by people and ‘I know it's my responsibility, because counselling
that conversations were closed down very quickly. sessions are you know, you've got a helper and a helpee
This social construction of silence around the CEE and er you know the helpee brings everything to the
(Zerubavel, 2006) leads to a general hesitancy to whole context of the conversation as as, so I know it's it's
explore the subject and a vigilance about others’ my responsibility that I haven't brought enough about
potential reactions. This even played out in the how I how I feel about that, how it affects me.’
interviews. Clients made apologetic comments as they
explored their feelings about the CEE:
My experience of how therapy sessions unfold, however,
is that therapist and client are both jointly involved in
‘I'm sorry, this is a bit deep’ (Martin) the process of deciding what to talk about. This taking
‘[Sorry, I’m] being too serious’ (Margaret) responsibility had an echo of protectiveness to it. For
example, Phil wanted me to know that his therapist
‘Oh, I wonder how you're feeling? Maybe you're gonna go was really clever at ‘unpicking’ things and ‘joining
away feeling really depressed. And thinking, Deborah’s a things together’. Deborah emailed me after the second
real Debbie Downer today (laughs).’ (Deborah) interview asking me not to name her therapist in any
published material. However, who was being protected
from what would need further exploration? For
I think participants were concerned that I would see instance, was the client protecting their own idealised
them as a ‘party pooper’, someone who brings people version of their therapist? Did they fear that the CEE
down. I suspect this is how others have made them feel was too dangerous a topic to introduce, something
and this has contributed to a reluctance to even talk to that could disrupt the therapeutic alliance? Did they
their therapist about it. This was confirmed by Martin: fear a withdrawal of their therapist’s approval if they
introduced the subject? Were they protecting the
therapist from feeling distressed themselves about the
‘I'm thoroughly enjoying talking to you about it, because CEE? Such possibilities could be worked through in the
you seem to understand where I'm coming from. But transference and links made to any re-enactments of
if I was to have this conversation with […] another past experiences, such as having to protect a parent.
counsellor, they wouldn't necessarily be, I wouldn't have
a connection, they won't understand.’ Theme: Feelings and defences
Data from the interviews suggest to me that
Martin felt met and heard during the interview and less feelings regarding the CEE were present for clients
alone with his eco-anxiety. and therapists but these were defended against in
unconscious ways. These feelings were often beneath
Helen described her therapist as ‘cerebral’. When she the surface, arising in participant dreams, through
tried to talk about her grief regarding the CEE, her interpretations I offered to participants during the
therapist interpreted it as a projection of her grief interviews and in my own countertransferential
for her mother who had been absent for much of her responses during the interviews themselves and
childhood. This focus by the therapist on Helen’s subsequently when analysing the transcripts. I will
internal psychological process rather than on the focus here on the predominant feelings and defences
external reality of the CEE, is common (Totton, 2021) apparent in the narratives.
and linked to the idea of what therapy is for. However,
it can also be seen as an unconscious avoidance by the Guilt was often expressed as an individual sense of not
therapist of opening up material which they themselves doing enough but also as collective guilt – ‘We need to
may also find distressing. change our ways’ (Sean). Participants often emphasised
their attempts at being green such as recycling and
avoiding plastic. I see these as attempts at making Similarly, references to nature as dangerous and
amends, of easing the guilt. threatening were notably absent from the narratives.
No-one mentioned recent natural disasters such as
Grief was expressed and associated with loss. For mega-bushfires, floods, hurricanes and droughts, all of
example, Jenny told me about an incident when she which have caused devastation and loss of human and
accidentally vacuumed up a tiny feather gifted to her by non-human life. Nature as dangerous and threatening is
a client: thereby split off from a benevolent nature. Participants
were able to retain their idealised view of nature whilst
the natural world as destructive and savage stayed out
‘I had this real turmoil between do I risk my awful dust of conscious awareness, as did their fear. Ultimately,
mite allergy which will send it off for the next week our dependency on the natural world and our
by actually trying to look through to find it. Or to just vulnerability is split off from awareness and, as Jenny
accept maybe it's gone. It felt big, it felt like a big thing. I expressed it, we ‘do just live a little bit in this kind of
felt really sad that that had happened.’ alternative reality that it's not climate crisis’.
Disavowal and avoidance were also evident. On the one

Jenny’s sadness could signal some unconscious grief hand, participants acknowledge the relevance of the
about the destruction of our fragile natural world. Her CEE and therapists want to ‘make space’ for a client’s
turmoil alludes to the dilemma we all face in relation feelings about it, but at the same time neither therapist
to the CEE – do we act and inconvenience ourselves or or client opens up the topic. The therapists seemed to
accept the loss of species, land and people? As Jenny have a blind spot when it came to the CEE. They know
said, it is a really big thing. it is there but at the same time they do not see it. This
turning-away is a form of disavowal, a knowing about
Fear was apparent in the narratives through allusions to
the seriousness of the CEE and at the same
war, famine and death, and also surfaced in participant
time making it insignificant in the context of the
dreams. The therapists tended to speak about their
therapeutic encounter.
clients’ anxieties rather than their own – a way of
unconsciously projecting their own fears onto others. Another common defence was that of
Advising clients not to listen to the news was a common intellectualisation. Intellectualisation serves to
way of avoiding facing the reality of the CEE. maintain an emotional distance from the subject.
For instance, when asked to tell me about their
feelings about the CEE, participants would often
‘Even if that really is going on, […] if I’m not reading the resort to a cognitive problem/solution response –
news, if I'm not listening to all this negative talk, my life greed is the problem, connecting with nature is the
actually hasn't changed.’ (Sarah) solution. Participants used the words ‘interesting’ or
‘fascinating’ as they reflected on the CEE suggesting an
observing self, curious but dispassionate.
One of the most common unconscious defences
evident in the narratives was that of splitting. The
CEE was treated as separate and distinct from nature ‘We touched on it when I was at university. I became
as a nurturing and healing resource, and participants quite fascinated with […] the idea of the agricultural
did not move spontaneously in their narrative revolution, which we touched on at university and anthro
between these topics without being prompted by me. anthropocentrism, man at the centre. So I found this so
Participants spoke about their relationship with the fascinating um reading around it and I've been reading
other-than-human as being easy and unproblematic about it since I've left University.’ (Martin)
whereas relationships with people are difficult. What
is split off here and kept out of awareness is the fact
that our relationship with the other-than-human is Martin effectively maintains a distance from difficult
problematic. It is extractive, exploitative, lacking emotions by maintaining a ‘scientist’ position.
mutuality and destructive. In this way participants split
off their ‘nature-destroying self’ from their ‘nature- I have reflected on my own pursuit of a PhD as similarly
loving self’. defensive. By engaging with the subject matter through
an academic process, I am effectively distanced from
my emotional responses to it. In interviews I found

it tempting to engage in intellectual discussion with transitional space, to which both their inner life and
participants. I could pretend that this was purely the external world of reality contribute. It is also a
academic, any anxiety was deflected towards the space where play occurs – important because it allows
challenge of gathering data and achieving my PhD. for the accommodation to reality which can sometimes
be difficult or painful. For the infant, playing with a
Discussion reliable carer that is attuned to their emotional needs
allows them to tolerate the anxiety experienced as they
It would seem from the interviews I conducted that attempt to control their external world.
clients and therapists share a socially constructed
view that therapy is for personal, inner-world issues. If we apply this to therapy of adults, therapy can be
Additionally, beneath the surface, neither clients nor seen as a very sophisticated form of play, where both
therapists felt safe enough to explore eco-anxiety therapist and client are absorbed in a transitional space
deeply during therapy sessions. This speaks to me about of creatively making sense of something the client is
two core concepts of therapeutic work: containment finding difficult. Similar to the infant scenario, this
and the therapeutic third. In addition, a wider social needs to occur in a reliable relationship where the
perspective highlights a social defence against eco- therapist is trusted by the client to consistently attune
anxiety at play. to their emotional needs and contain any unbearable
affect that may be experienced.
Containment, the ability of the therapist to receive
powerful affect from the client and return it in a more Benjamin (2004) describes this experience as thirdness,
manageable and less overwhelming form (Bion, 1962), is a process of ‘letting go into being with [the other]’
necessary for the digestion, assimilation and ultimately (Benjamin, 2004, p. 7). When this process of thirdness
transformation of potentially damaging feelings into occurs, a shared vantage point is co-created by the
something which can be made use of by the client. therapist and client that is outside of each individual,
This ‘staying with the trouble’ (Harraway, 2016) is a leading to insights and new understanding. However,
fundamental tenet of therapy. The difficult work of this is not an easy process to facilitate and Benjamin
staying with painful feelings of helplessness, grief, contrasts thirdness with ‘twoness’ where each person
despair, fear and shame about the CEE could potentially chooses between submitting or resisting the other’s
lead to a re-connection with personal agency, a sense perspective, a ‘doer and done to’ dynamic
of love and commitment to the natural world and (Benjamin, 2004).
motivation for engaging in positive actions aimed at
reducing environmental damage or campaigning Benjamin applies this concept to therapy by considering
for change. the way in which a part-self of the client meets a part-
self of the therapist (Benjamin, 2009). If the part-self
However, for this to occur, both therapist and client being expressed by the client is not recognised and
need to feel safe. The therapist needs to have explored related to by an appropriate part-self of the therapist in
their own emotional responses to the CEE and such a way that they can engage in thirdness relating,
processed these in a safe space. They need to have then the transitional space is unavailable. This can
experienced their full range and intensity and survived all be out of awareness and need not be experienced
them. This then allows them to offer safe containment necessarily as conflict. On the contrary, on the surface
for their clients. Several of the therapists I interviewed it can appear harmonious, a kind of pseudo-mutuality.
seemed not to be able to offer the containment needed So how does this apply to my findings?
to explore the CEE with their clients, perhaps because
they had not processed their own feelings about it Let us consider that when a client is making a side-
sufficiently. Those that identified as eco-therapists were mention relating in some way to the CEE, he is
more likely to engage with it but still felt constrained by expressing his ecological part-self, the self which
the therapeutic contract. recognises a kinship with and dependency on the
natural world. If this ecological-self is not recognised
The concept of the therapeutic third derives from by the therapist because their own ecological-self is
Winnicott’s work. He proposed that in early infancy defended, then no transitional space is available for
we learn the difference between what is me and not- creative exploration of the client’s ecological-self. If
me through the use of transitional objects, that are the therapist holds on to the therapeutic contract,
both of me and not-me (Winnicott, 1971). This affords sticking rigidly to the original focus of the therapy as a
the developing infant an area of experiencing, a way of attending to her own needs – ensuring that her
ecological-self is not overwhelmed by the reality of the the boundaries be softened to allow the CEE into the
CEE – then she has failed to be the reliable and trusted room? Working within each client’s window of tolerance
other whom the client’s ecological-self can depend on. (Siegel, 1999) is crucial for safe practice. Additionally,
She has not been able to surrender to the process of moving between the inner and outer worlds of the
thirdness, of meeting in the shared space. The client’s client, disentangling the complexity of their distress,
ecological-self, therefore, retreats and the opportunity and developing an understanding of how inner and
is lost. I believe this is what happens when clients’ outer influences each other, is key to a more permeable
cues (side-mentions) about the CEE are not fully eco-psycho-social way of working (Rust, 2020).
explored by the therapist. The therapeutic couple, in
an unconscious inter-subjective process, does not feel Trainee therapists do not routinely receive theoretical
safe enough to contain the potentially overwhelming or experiential training in how to work with eco-
feelings experienced by both client and therapist. anxiety. As a result, it is not surprising that many of
us do not recognise the cues that eco-anxiety may be
Not only are we as individual therapists defended present. We do not feel confident in knowing how to
against our anxiety, but so are our professional explore it and may even feel it does not belong in the
bodies it seems. Social defences against anxiety, first therapy room. Although more is being provided in the
described by Menzies Lyth (1960) in relation to the form of CPD and by organisations such as the Climate
work of nurses, operate through the adherence to Psychology Alliance, training organisations have a
professionally recognised practices and processes that responsibility to include such material in initial
serve to distance the practitioner from their feelings training programmes.
in relation to their work. For therapists, stressing
the importance of therapeutic contracts and goals, Many of our frameworks derive from our individualistic
focussing on outcome measures and adherence to culture concerned as it is with the self, personal
therapeutic models, although arguably good practice in problems and relationships. There is little scope in
many situations, can also serve to shelter the therapist our current models for a collective lens. The CEE
from venturing into areas which may be potentially is a collective problem on a global scale; therefore,
distressing for them. it presents a challenge to current ways of thinking
and working (Bednarek, 2019a; Bednarek, 2019b). I
The way in which the social, in this case the CEE, is am beginning to wonder whether working with the
kept out of therapy suggests a split of politics from psychological and emotional effects of the CEE may
therapy (Samuels, 2006) which drives our collective be too big for a single therapist to adequately contain.
understanding of what therapy is for. Samuels (2006) Perhaps a different model is needed that is better fit for
draws attention to the way in which the external purpose. There are several examples of community-
socio-political world is hardly ever mentioned in based models based on group working that have been
psychotherapy clinical texts, even though the founders developed to support people with emotional responses
of psychotherapy such as Freud, Jung, Perls and Rogers to the CEE such ‘The Work that Reconnects’ (Macy
saw themselves as social critics (Samuels, 2001). As and Young Brown, 1998), ‘Carbon Conversations’
the reality of the CEE continues to make itself felt, (Carbon Conversations, n.d.) and ‘Active Hope’ (Macy
we are all likely to emerge from our climate bubble and Johnstone, 2012). Such practices have been
(Weintrobe, 2021) and experience significant shock. termed Emotionally Reflexive Methodologies (ERM’s)
We are likely to feel vulnerable, angry, traumatised, (Hamilton, 2019) and can facilitate the expression,
shamed, afraid and so on. This background collective containment and processing of difficult and painful
dis-ease will be the context in which client and emotions associated with the CEE. They share the
therapist are working. feature of being group based, creating a space for
reflexive practice and being held by a trained facilitator.
Professional practice guidelines may then present Participants can gain a sense of resilience through the
those of us who are more aware of eco-anxiety with interconnectedness with others and the opportunity to
difficult questions. How do we ensure we are not ‘that ‘link inner world with outer action’
kind of therapist’ who imposes our own agenda onto (Hamilton, 2019, p. 166).
the client and at the same time remain open for cues
that the client may be ready to begin exploring their
eco-anxiety? When and for whom is it therapeutically
beneficial to hold the boundaries that keep the CEE out
of the work, and conversely when and for whom should

Conclusions • Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2021) Can I use TA? Should

I use TA? Should I not use TA? Comparing reflexive
The findings suggest that there is an urgent need thematic analysis and other pattern-based qualitative
to rethink the way we do therapy in relation to eco- analytic approaches. Counselling and Psychotherapy
Research. [online] 21 (1), John Wiley & Sons, Ltd,
anxiety. Therapists, clients, our professional and social pp. 37–47.
communities are collectively defended to varying
• British Psychological Society (2020) Clinical
degrees, often unconsciously, against the potentially Psychology Forum. (332).
overwhelming feelings associated with the CEE. As
• Carbon Conversations (n.d.) Carbon Conversations
change agents, therapists have the potential to play (n.d.) [online]. Available from: https://www.
a part in softening these defences leading to a more carbonconversations.co.uk/p/about.html [Accessed 30
active engagement with the problem. However, we June 2022].
need support to do this. Our professional organisations • Cartwright, D. (2004) The psychoanalytic research
need to provide adequate training which is both interview: Preliminary suggestions. Journal of the
American Psychoanalytic Association. 52 (1),
theoretical and experiential. As therapists we need to pp. 209–242.
be prepared to do our own therapeutic work around
• Clarke, S. and Hogget, P. (2009) Researching beneath
the CEE, understand our relationship with it and our the surface: a psycho-social approach to research,
defences. We need to learn to recognise the subtle cues practice and method. In: Clarke, S. and Hogget, P.
from clients that may signal a preparedness to explore (eds.) Researching Beneath the Surface: Psycho-Social
Research Methods in Practice. London, Karnac,
this collective problem and be willing to move into pp. 17–49.
the transitional space where reality can be explored
• Frosh, S., Phoenix, A. and Pattman, R. (2003)
creatively, even when painful and difficult. More Taking a stand: Using psychoanalysis to explore the
broadly, therapy needs to be re-visioned as a collective positioning of subjects in discourse. British Journal of
eco-psycho-social endeavour rather than a purely Social Psychology. [online]. 42 (1), John Wiley & Sons,
Ltd, pp. 39–53.
individualistic one. Perhaps we can only begin to talk
about these feelings of existential proportions when we • Hamilton, J. (2019) Emotions, Reflexivity and
the Long Haul: What We Do About How We Feel
are in the company of others, when the container is big About Climate Change. In: Hoggett, P. (ed.) Climate
enough to hold us. Psychology: On Indifference to Disaster. Switzerland,
Springer Nature, pp. 153–175.
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Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and London, Duke
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face the mess we’re in without going crazy. Novato, CA.,
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• Macy, J. and Young Brown, M. (1998) Coming Back to • What cultural discourses are evident or being
Life: Practices to Reconnect our Lives. Gabriola Island, drawn on?
BC, Canada, New Society. • What subject positions is the participant being drawn
• Marks, E., Hickman, C., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., into? What subject positionsam I being drawn into?
Lewandowski, E., Mayall, E., Wray, B., Mellor, C., (Interpellation)
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University Press.

24 Wendy Greenspun • Frozen in trauma on a warming planet
Frozen in trauma on a warming planet: a relational

reckoning with climate distress
Wendy Greenspun, PhD
Abstract
As awareness of the destabilising impacts of the climate crisis and its multiple layers of connected injustices
increase, individuals struggling with climate distress have begun to arrive at our clinical doorsteps. This
article details some of the questions and challenges of climate-informed clinical work, including aspects
of what both clinician and client experience emotionally and ways we may turn away from the reality of
harms and injustices. Utilising a trauma lens, a detailed case description is presented of a man ‘frozen in
trauma’ in response to the climate and environmental crisis. Since clinicians are embedded in the climate
emergency along with their clients, the author shares her personal trajectory of climate awareness (Hoggett
and Randall, 2018), along with countertransferential responses that occurred in the therapy. The clinical
description includes an understanding of the client’s history of a transgenerational trauma that echoed with
and amplified his responses to the planetary crisis. Ways of processing and holding the difficult emotions
within the clinical work are outlined, along with how the client was usefully able to enlarge his focus to
helping others. Recognizing multiple forms of interconnection, including with the more-than-human world,
are described as a way to move forward.
Keywords
climate distress, environmental injustice, trauma, grief, psychoanalysis, transgenerational, interconnection
This article starts with my sense of interconnection. tree of interventions, especially for those already
As I write, a tapestry of voices and experiences reside struggling with mental-health challenges (Doherty and
in my unsettled consciousness: altered ecosystems in Clayton, 2011). I hope that this clinical presentation
immense distress, communities suffering direct climate helps to illustrate some of the complexities entailed
harms and environmental injustices, young people in climate-informed therapy and encourages further
feeling the terror of a foreshortened future. Signs of conceptualizations of this important work.
what is crumbling on our warming planet. Infused with
awareness of these layered perspectives, I will present Mr. R, a white, cis-gendered man, came to therapy in a
the collaboration I have had with the person I will call state of extreme anxiety in response to the climate and
Mr. R, who shares my despair about the state of the environmental emergency. He reported that while he
destabilising ecosphere. I feel gratitude that he was typically handled adversity in his life with ease, climate
willing to generously share his story, and the story of change seemed beyond his ability to cope. After reading
our clinical work together. As Paulo Coelho (2008) said: the dire Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
‘The power of storytelling is exactly this: to bridge the report (IPCC, 2018) describing the short amount
gaps where everything else has crumbled.’ of time left to avert the worst consequences of the
warming world, Mr. R went into an emotional tailspin.
This story represents only one facet of the Like the rigid, repetitive play of traumatised children
multitudinous unfolding experience of the climate (Terr, 1990), he compulsively read every available piece
crisis. A single clinical case fails to represent the of horrible climate news, while ignoring or dismissing
magnitude of the emergency; a reminder of the information about environmental activism or solutions.
limitations of providing individual therapy when He described disrupted sleep and loss of appetite. He
entire communities require support. However, as spoke with urgency about the catastrophe with anyone
mental-health needs expand in the face of increasing who would listen (and even with those who would not).
environmental disruptions, psychotherapy will He felt unable to calm his worries or take action. He
continue to be an important branch on the growing said he felt frozen in terror.
People with climate distress and grief have begun to reality, understanding the truth on one level, yet
arrive on our clinical doorsteps. As the planet heats, simultaneously pushing aside what we know in
as ecosystems destabilise, as the threat of social and defensive disavowal. Weintrobe (2020) says that
ecological collapse looms large, the psychological disavowal protects our hearts from the moral conflict
fallout becomes evident. Emotional dysregulation of knowing our complicity and shields us from the
may be the clarion call needed for each of us to take worst of our despair and grief but precludes the ability
heed, breaking through the sense of complacency and to mourn and repair. Even for those of us willing to
complicity that keeps the emergency a lurking shadow connect to awareness of the climate crisis, we may still
in the background most of the time. Yet finding ways split off the embedded systemic injustices. I realise
to bear the reality of this monumental problem is as I write that I sit on the unceded tribal land of the
extremely challenging. Lenape people, just a mile from where the New York
City slave market took place; facts that I can easily set
The climate crisis has been described as a ‘hyperobject’ aside when I retreat to the pernicious oblivion of my
– Timothy Morton’s (2013) word for a phenomenon white privilege. And the climate crisis itself results from
so large in scale across space and time that it is disavowal of painful truths: that life has limitations,
hard to fully comprehend. It has been described as that we are interdependent with the natural world,
a ‘wicked problem’ – climate communicator George that many aspects of human ingenuity are also leading
Marshall’s (2014) phrase for difficulties that entail us toward demise. On the intrapsychic, interpersonal
interlinking problems that defy simple solutions. and larger system levels, disavowal can interfere with
From a psychological perspective, this existential taking responsibility and finding avenues for essential
threat represents manifest trauma of enormous scale, engagement and action.
since the cascade of terrifying impacts shake the very
foundations of our belief in a secure attachment to So how do we clinicians find ways to face this vast
the Earth. hyperobject without becoming overwhelmed or turning
away ourselves? How do we conceptualise the responses
And the trauma is not singular but infused with of those suffering in ways that validate the reality
multiple levels of pain, a necessary expansion of the of the crisis, recognise its interweaving with other
Eurocentric, individualistic definition of trauma psychosocial trauma and additionally understand the
(Craps, 2014) to a description that includes personal, psychic meaning in terms of an individual’s personal
relational, and communal experiences. Ecopsychologist history without reducing climate distress and grief to a
Andy Fisher (2012) states: ‘All things are not simply mere displacement? (Haseley, 2019). How do we begin
connected; they imply or contain one another in to metabolise the pain which spans past, present, and
their very being … A philosophy of internal relations future, affecting human and more-than-human alike?
reveals a world in which there are no self-contained … How do we reckon with our own climate distress since
entities but only fields of mutually informing relations’ we are entangled in the same planetary disruption as
(p. 92). For those with a history of individual or the clients we seek to help?
transgenerational trauma, the climate crisis amplifies
the impact of past wounds (Woodbury, 2019), further My own awareness of the climate crisis started like
undermining a sense of safety, which now includes raindrops in a pond, splashes of recognition each time I
a precarious future. This becomes trauma within read a news article about the catastrophic consequences
trauma. For those from frontline and marginalised of our warming world: the dramatic melting of arctic
communities suffering the most destructive climate and ice, devastating droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, and
environmental impacts yet contributing the least to the unprecedented species loss. Each moment of troubling
problem, environmental injustice sits enfolded in the recognition quickly dissipated into the normal rhythms
collective traumatic legacy of colonialism and systemic of my life and my immediate personal concerns, since
racism (Orange, 2017; Heglar, 2018; Ahmed, 2020). The my social and geographic location protected me from
climate crisis arises from the same toxic roots as these firsthand impacts. Robert Jay Lifton (2017) says that
forms of othering, wrapped in the tendrils of greed, when we continue to live in a functional environment,
exploitation and lack of responsibility for perpetrated we find it hard to grasp existential threats like
abuses. This becomes trauma within trauma climate change.
within trauma.
My awareness grew to a steadier stream when evidence
When faced with the enormity of these multiple of the climate emergency touched me more directly. On
traumas, we often turn away from the horrendous a visit to the mountains in my home state of Colorado,

I witnessed the marked devastation of forests, where that the ‘cataclysmic realities of climate change call
the usual glorious blanket of green conifers had turned upon all of us to cultivate catastrophic thinking’
into a graveyard of arboreal skeletons. Increasing (p. 60). Yet to make use of this crisis phase requires a
temperatures had prevented the usual winter die- capacity to process wrenching emotions and to bear
off of pine beetles and the proliferating insects were seemingly unbearable pain, most easily facilitated in
devouring the trees. The familiar solace I gained in the presence of supportive others.
returning to the alpine landscape of my childhood was
replaced with a deep mourning for the life and beauty During my own crisis period, I turned to my co-teacher
that was lost. Harold Searles (1960) noted that the non- for support and mutual processing of our grief and
human world can be as much a part of us as the parents fear. We met regularly to mourn ecological losses, to
who raise us, exerting influence, shaping parts of our rage at inequality, to acknowledge our terror and guilt.
inner experience. My sadness lodged as a dim presence We used humour to manage overwhelm and shared
in the background of my mind. unbridled tears. Over time I also joined climate activist
and climate psychology groups for additional sources
A flood of recognition was unleashed when I read a of solidarity and purpose. The poet Ryunosuke Satoro
fictional depiction of a dystopian future, where the (cited 2021) aptly stated, ‘Individually, we are one drop.
characters lamented that individuals and governments Together, we are an ocean.’ In connecting with others,
had known of increasing ecological devastation but my internal seas quieted, and I felt better able to both
failed to act. Stories have a way of breaking through the cope and engage.
wall of psychic protection, helping us face the painful
truths we usually push away. The veil of my defences Hoggett and Randall call this final phase of the climate
was fully lifted as I pictured my daughter and others of awareness trajectory ‘resolution’ – a period marked
her generation admonishing our passivity as they faced by a greater sense of agency, more proportional
traumatic stress. Waves of guilt, anger, sadness, and emotional responses, and less negative preoccupation.
fear engulfed me. Hoggett and Randall (2018) describe Resolution may be akin to transformational resilience
an ‘epiphany’ or sudden awakening to the realities of (Doppelt, 2016) and post-traumatic growth (Tedeschi
our warming world as an often-important initial step in and Calhoun, 1996), concepts that highlight ways that
the emotional trajectory of climate awareness. traumatic experiences can lead to new and stronger
capacities. Resolution does not imply that painful
The next step in this trajectory is the ‘immersion’ reactions stop occurring but entails a greater ability to
phase: a period of talking, thinking and acting on stay present with the feelings. This capacity becomes
climate change. In my own process, I read vociferously particularly important when embarking on clinical
on the topic as I worked to create and teach a work with climate distress, as I learned with Mr. R.
psychoanalytic seminar course on the climate crisis
with a trusted colleague. As we prepared the class, I From the start of our first session, I could feel my heart
read more pointedly about the overwhelming realities rate accelerating as a wave of anxiety rushed over me,
of ecological instability, the political and economic setting off a cascade of emotions. As Mr. R described
obstacles to making the urgently needed changes to details of species loss and rising greenhouse gases as
our way of life, and the disproportionate impacts on well as his vision of an apocalyptic nightmare for his
marginalised communities. I began to feel increasingly daughter’s future, I found my own sense of despair; that
distressed by the embedded layers of trauma in what fire I could usually calm to tolerable embers, reignited
I was learning, drowning in extended periods of like dry tinder. Despite all the time I had devoted to
sleeplessness, preoccupation, anger, sadness, and fear. processing my own climate anguish, in the immediacy
Hoggett and Randall call this the ‘crisis’ period in of Mr. R’s pain, I joined his experience viscerally. The
climate awareness, often marked by a sense of urgency, interpenetration of our psychic worlds pointed to our
disillusionment, and intensely destabilising emotions. shared relational system in the face of this terrifying
reality and to the ongoing countertransference
Many in the climate psychology field have noted the challenges in doing climate-focused work. My own
importance and even helpfulness of destabilising crisis feelings echoed within his, inhibiting my
emotions in the face of the environmental emergency, openness to try to understand him more fully.
since disrupting the psychic and behavioural status
quo can help us take in the urgency and find new By the second session, my internal wildfire was doused
ways forward. Bednarek (2021) calls this a ‘necessary as my defences quickly took over. Unlike our first
derangement’, while Kassouf (2022) pointedly states encounter, this time I felt emotionally detached, as if I
had moved from a resonant affective connection with the parent’s dissociative tendencies. This absence
Mr. R to a much more distant stance. My therapist role further perpetuates the impacts for the child, since
became a hardened, intellectualised shell, which pushed the traumatised parent cannot help the child learn
the anxiety and grief far away but seemed to interfere self-soothing or mentalisation (Salberg, 2015). In one
with my full presence in the session. I sheepishly noted illustrative childhood memory, after learning that
to myself the relief I felt that Mr. R was now holding the cigarettes cause cancer, Mr. R felt terrified that his
distress and I could remain safely outside of it. mother would get sick and die. He tearfully begged
her to stop smoking, but rather than empathically
I was curious about the pendulum swing of my responding to his fear and desire to protect her, his
emotions and what it might mean about Mr. R and our mother laughed and turned away. Mr. R recalled his
burgeoning relationship. For this ongoing exploration sense of despair, and a profound helplessness in the face
to proceed, I knew I wanted to remain emotionally open of impending tragedy, an eerie parallel to what was now
to Mr. R’s difficult feelings, to swim with him in those occurring in magnified form in the climate emergency.
churning waters. As part of my resilience approach
in doing climate-focused therapy, I strive to cultivate I want to note here that, as with Mr. R, when a
a ‘window of tolerance’ (Siegel, 1999), the capacity client’s personal history seems to align directly with
to stay present with unsettling effect without either their reactions to the climate crisis itself, we may be
hyperarousal or defensive shutting down. In this spirit, tempted to consider the early trauma as the pertinent
throughout my work with Mr. R, I utilised colleagues issue and the planetary emergency as only a symbolic
for support and paused to self-regulate, engaging in representation. But discounting current material reality
calming strategies such as meditation, deep breathing by privileging psychic reality belies the essential truth
and walks in nature. These practices provided ongoing of their interwoven nature and, at its worst, mirrors
sources of grounding, strategies I also encouraged for a bystander’s negligence in the face of actual harm.
Mr. R over time, and I was able to better sustain my In fact, Woodbury (2019) describes climate change as
clinical acumen. a ‘superordinate form of trauma’, encompassing and
triggering individual, cultural and intergenerational
As the treatment proceeded, we began to understand traumas. Climate-aware therapy asks that we hold
some of the personal underpinnings of Mr. R’s climate the ‘both/and’ perspective of complexity: that climate
distress. His family history revealed an unprocessed distress is both a terrifying, psychically destabilising
transgenerational trauma that easily mapped on to his threat and is filtered through the lens of an individual’s
response to the climate crisis. When Mr. R’s mother was history, strengths and vulnerabilities.
the same age as his teenage daughter currently, she was
subjected to prolonged exploitation by an older man Some of Mr. R’s vulnerabilities related to his dearth of
with the explicit knowledge of her family, and with no emotional coping strategies. While he had developed
sources of safety and protection. She was never able a capacity for certain forms of self-sufficiency in
to discuss this abuse in a meaningful way, sharing it the absence of his mother’s attunement, he had few
only once briefly with her husband. In unpacking his resources for managing when he was suffering. His
responses to this horrible experience, Mr. R wept as he emotional dysregulation seemed like an ecosystem
saw the numerous links between the harms that had out of balance, where essential resources had been
been perpetrated on his mother and the environmental depleted and the diversity of inputs needed for healthy
harms to Mother Earth. functioning were diminished. Trauma was his
invasive species.
While unaware of his mother’s trauma history growing
up, Mr. R lived with the sequelae of what remained So, what helps systems return to a state of balance
unspoken and unprocessed. Though often quite loving, and well-being? How could I facilitate ways for Mr. R
she drank excessively, withdrew in the face of conflict, to move through his terrible distress and find a more
and isolated herself frequently, leaving Mr. R without sustainable equilibrium? Zora Neale Hurston (cited
guidance or comfort when he felt upset. Hopenwasser 2009) mused, ‘The present was an egg laid by the past,
(2018) and Menakem (2019), among others, have that had the future inside its shell’ (p. 96). My work
spoken of the complex processes by which trauma with Mr. R entailed a relational journey of ‘emotional
gets encoded, embodied, and passed on to subsequent composting’ (Dunlop, 2015), where together we turned
generations. From an attachment perspective, Salberg over multiple layers of individual, intergenerational and
(2015) noted that the children of trauma survivors collective history and embarked on a path to process
experience a ‘missing presence’ when they encounter his suffering.

We spent considerable time focused on his fears about We also looked at Mr. R’s tendency to isolate from
his daughter, for here was the arena where past and others when feeling distressed, rather than seeking
future psychically collided in the present. Mr. R’s comfort or a shared sense of purpose; in this way, he
belief in the inevitability of environmental collapse mirrored his mother’s coping style of emotional retreat.
and his feeling powerless to protect his daughter Our therapy became one forum where he could openly
from a devastating future encapsulated his mother’s describe the depth of his reactions, reassured that I,
unmetabolized trauma and ways she had not been too, cared deeply about the climate emergency but also
shielded from harm. In addition, because he could seemed to have ways to manage that awareness. As his
not process or mentalize (Fonagy and Allison, 2014) trust in me and in the therapy grew, he was able to let
his own distressed feelings, he was unable to help his me witness and hold some of his complicated feelings,
daughter manage hers. The only protection he could as he mourned present and future losses, described the
imagine was walling her off from any awareness of guilt of his collusion, and waded into the murky waters
climate change. He would hide newspaper articles of helplessness and despair. Bednarek (2019) wisely
on the subject, turn off television shows about global reflects, ‘In order to take in the enormity of devastation
warming, and even hoped to block the Earth Day that we have caused in the world, we need to know how
curriculum in his daughter’s class. From Mr. R’s to allow our hearts to break’ (p. 15). As these emotions
perspective, he would hold all the pain of the became more mentionable and understandable, he
climate emergency and his daughter could remain was finally able to start discussing climate change with
blissfully unaware. his daughter.
Randall (2005) and Lertzman (2013) have each Several situations in his life helped increase his
described the process where individuals who are trying emotional connections and reduced his sense of
to ward off despair may project their environmental isolation, which began to thaw his frozen, helpless state
concern onto those who engage in climate activism, of crisis. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Mr. R felt
who then serve as containers for the split-off collective immediate panic. He initially responded much as he did
environmental distress. What does it mean, then, to to the climate emergency: he focused solely on how to
position oneself as the container and holder of pain protect his own family, stocking up on months of food
for others, the role Mr. R was constructing with his and supplies to feel prepared. Over time, he increasingly
daughter? I reflected on what I had not previously tuned in to those who faced greater COVID-19 exposure
realised was an enactment of this same dynamic in our than he and his family did: those in low-income
second session, when I had noticed my relief when Mr. communities and essential workers who were unable
R felt the upset and I could emotionally sequester on to remain secluded and therefore risked their health
the sideline. Mr. R observed that he played ‘town crier’ for others. Mr. R began a practice of sending pizzas
in many of his relationships, sounding the alarm of to frontline workers, expressing his gratitude and
climate doom for those who seemed less concerned. care. He reflected on how helping others seemed to
soften his existential panic, and he felt less alone. This
We explored both the useful and detrimental aspects of mirrors Doppelt’s (2016) ideas for building resilience
playing this role. Mr. R said that alerting others to the in the face of climate change: ‘When people experience
climate crisis felt quite urgent and essential, given the acute or chronic toxic stresses, new social narratives
prevalence of those who minimised its significance. At that shift their field of focus to something greater
the same time, his inability to metabolise the layers of than themselves ... can provide invaluable sources of
his distress left him in a perpetual dysregulated state. meaning, purpose, and hope.’ (p. 2).
As we explored additional unconscious and historical
underpinnings of his responses, he had this insight: In a second important experience, Mr. R encountered a
no one had acknowledged or prevented his mother’s young Indigenous climate activist who helped open his
traumatic experience, so maybe if he held tightly to eyes further to the plight of others. This young woman
unmitigated alarm, he could ensure that harmful truths described how sea level rise had caused her people’s
would have to be recognized. This important awareness land to flood, destroying the natural habitat on which
brought him relief; in the words of James Baldwin they depended for sustenance. Here was a community
(1962), ‘To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the already suffering the trauma of the warming planet.
same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to Mr. R became aware of how little he had thought of
use it.’ current harms to already marginalized groups, since
his climate terror had been focused only on fears for
himself and his family. We began to discuss various turn away. In my own climate journey, I have found
aspects of disavowal and complicity in harms, including that the reckoning requires courage and support. I
white supremacy and our shared white privilege, factors treasure the multiple ways I find meaning, connection,
that had not previously registered fully in his mind or in and sources of resilience, expanding my reach beyond
our work. These realisations increased his desire to find the consulting room, including conversations with
ways to fight climate injustice. family and dear friends, facilitating workshops and
climate cafes to provide forums for reflective sharing
The third significant situation was when his father, and resilience, participating in anti-racist dialogues
who had previously been diagnosed with cancer, took at my psychoanalytic institute, teaching mental
a sudden turn for the worse. With his father’s poor health clinicians to weave the climate crisis into their
prognosis, Mr. R drove across the country to be with awareness. Engagement protects against futility and
him. He was able to take care of his father physically can plant seeds to grow an urgently needed ‘culture of
and emotionally – joking, sharing memories, discussing care’ (Weintrobe, 2021).
regrets, pleasures and feelings about dying. In our
phone sessions during that time, Mr. R was able to And of course, connection with the natural world,
further process this loss. In the aftermath of his healing the split of our disrupted attachment, is
father’s death, we noted his growing capacity to face another crucial ingredient as we forge ahead. William
these difficult feelings, which helped facilitate such a Wordsworth (1798) tells us: ‘Come forth into the light
deeply meaningful experience for and with his dad. Mr. of things, let Nature be your teacher.’ I reflect on the
R reflected that this transformative encounter became extraordinary wisdom of the more-than-human world
an opening, a tunnel through the impenetrable wall of and wonder if we will listen (Kimmerer, 2013; Mitchell,
past and future trauma, where the ability to connect 2020). I try to honour what Thich Nhat Hanh (1993)
and mourn brought in some light. describes as ‘interbeing’ – the way all living things
comprise a mutually dependent system. I guide my
As I have discussed Mr. R’s immense growth, it is worth clinical work with systemic eyes focused on bringing
noting my ongoing experience during the treatment individuals into closer contact with disavowed aspects
as well. As presaged in our initial sessions, throughout of themselves, other people and with the broader web
the course of treatment I often rode the oscillations of of life.
Mr. R’s emotional upheavals, since at times his distress
and pessimism surfaced parallel feelings in me. In my In this spirit, I want to return to where I started,
own climate journey, I have vacillated between the acknowledging the voices and experiences that were
extremes of hope and despair about a viable future, a only peripherally included in the story I’ve presented.
not-uncommon dialectic tension when immersed in While Mr. R and I have struggled with the ‘pre-
climate distress (Lewis et al., 2020). Mostly I sit in traumatic stress’ (Kaplan, 2015) of those who are
uncertainty, the reflective attitude that my training climate-aware but not yet directly impacted by climate
as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst has enabled. disruption, our anticipatory anxiety cannot be equated
This has meant that I often haven’t known how to with the acute and post-traumatic stress responses
respond to Mr. R. Should I help him find ways to believe of those suffering actual harm from extreme weather
we can prevent the worst outcomes, directing him events, or the continuous traumatic stress (Eagle and
toward activism (Baudon and Jachens, 2021)? Should I Kaminer, 2013) resulting from environmental racism.
encourage existential reckoning in the face of inevitable Yet separating past, present and future traumas
deep loss and possible social collapse? I know my role is obfuscates the important recognition of temporal
not to provide answers but to find ways to stay with the interconnection necessary for our capacity to learn
difficulty of this wicked problem and wicked moment from previous mistakes, truly face current and ongoing
right along with Mr. R. devastations and make choices based on the needs
of those who will follow. Lifton (2017) speaks of the
So how do we all try to bear what is happening, power of ‘prospective survivors’ who use anticipatory
grappling with the ghosts of trauma past, present distress to drive courageous action. Powerful social
and future as we consider the climate crisis? How do justice movements have emerged from outrage at
we move away from forms of disavowal and othering systemic abuses. ‘Transformational wisdom’ is a term
that have harmed communities and ecosystems, and I use to describe the trove of capacities and knowledge
may be hurling us toward end days? Kassouf (2022) that have developed in communities who have suffered
has noted that a ‘traumatised sensibility’ may allow injustice and provide exemplary models of resilience
us to keep awareness open, rather than continuing to

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32 Matthew Adams • Anthropocentrism, animism and the Anthropocene
Anthropocentrism, animism and the Anthropocene:

decentring the human in psychology
Matthew Adams, PhD
Received 30 June 2022; revised 7 September 2022
Abstract
This article explores the role of anthropocentric ideology, and belief systems in hampering effective
individual and collective responses to ecological crises. In the context of the Anthropocene, it considers how
anthropocentrism is culturally widespread and habitually reproduced across a range of practices. However,
to avoid overly deterministic readings of the power of anthropocentrism, the article considers how human-
centred ways of thinking and working are being challenged in many areas of life. It focuses on psychology,
psychotherapy and related disciplines, drawing on examples of research, professional practice and everyday
life that are actively questioning anthropocentrism. It considers if and how therapeutic practices can
engage with human healing whilst meaningfully shifting the focus to the ways in which human health and
well-being is entangled with other-than-humans. The article then critically considers whether an animist
worldview can effectively frame an alternative to anthropocentrism, exploring if and how animism can be
appropriately understood within a non-Indigenous and everyday context. The article concludes by reflecting
on the wider ethical and political challenge for psychology of actively unlearning anthropocentrism.
Keywords
animism, Anthropocene, anthropocentrism, Indigenous Knowledge, posthumanism, trans-species
Introduction and social forms of distress. The fact that these changes
are the result of (some of) the activities of just (some
of) one species is, according to a professional consensus
‘As the shockwave of the Anthropocene affects all life of interpretations of the geological record, most likely
on Earth, questions about human relationships with(in) unmatched in the unfathomably deeper history of the
the larger-than-human community are urgent and entire planet.
provocative’ (Harvey, 2019, pp. 79-80)
For many, the Anthropocene is a problematic label,
because it crudely assigns responsibility to all of
The word Anthropocene refers to the idea that the humanity, thereby downplaying the specific role of
Earth’s geological record has been transformed by one historical, economic and political systems – such as
species – the human. Anthropos is Greek for human colonialism, industrialism, capitalism and extractivism
and cene is a substantial geological time period within – that benefit some at the expense of others. And it is
the current 65-million-year-old Cenozoic era. The these systems, rather than humans as a species, that
‘shockwave’ of the Anthropocene signifies the speed continue to produce profoundly unequal and unjust
and scale with which many landscapes, species and outcomes within and across the species divide. While
habitats are being lost and threatened by the impacts I am sympathetic to these critiques, for me the term
of human activity. The list is by now numbingly works well enough to provoke those urgent questions
familiar: climate crisis and related consequences such about human relationships with(in) the larger-than-
as extreme weather, desertification, rising sea levels, human community. The idea of the Anthropocene,
ocean acidification; other forms of air, water and earth stripped of any residual hubris, should provoke a
pollution; species extinctions, habitat and biodiversity decentering of the human. It can encourage us to learn
loss, all intimately connected to unfolding psychological to recognise interdependence with other species
and more-than-human worlds, and to question what rationalises their subordination on a planetary scale.
it means to be human. As the late environmental
philosopher Val Plumwood warned, ‘we will go onwards Many academic disciplines have questioned the
in a different mode of humanity, or not at all’ presence of anthropocentrism in their own theoretical
(2007, p. 1). and methodological traditions (e.g. Hayward, 1997).
This article will not rehearse these developments
Anthropocentrism – literally meaning human-centred but turn instead to the professional fields most
– is a belief system intimately associated with the likely occupied by the readership of this journal –
Anthropocene. It is often considered a dominant psychology, psychotherapy and allied fields. Where
ideology at the heart of ecological crisis, alongside anthropocentrism is found in the theory and
colonialism, industrialism and capitalism. Most practice of psychology, it excludes the significance
importantly, it is a starting point for exploring and of human relationships with nonhuman others
developing alternative narratives to anthropocentrism and the more-than-human world more generally.
that are a necessary component of challenges to Dominant traditions in developmental psychology
the intersecting causes of our current crisis. After a and attachment, personality and mental health have
brief introduction to anthropocentrism, this article historically made no or little space for the significance
discusses how we are going about ‘actively unlearning’ of connections to place, animals or nature. Mainstream
it in academic and professional practices and how we theories of social psychology have rarely considered
might further decentre the human. It is followed by the extent to which identity and belonging beyond
a discussion of animism as a potential alternative to human categories matter to people. Until recently,
anthropocentrism, grounded in everyday practices. nonhuman entities were certainly not considered
to be active contributors to interpersonal, group or
Anthropocentrism social dynamics. Similarly, clinical and therapeutic
discourses making sense of experiences such as trauma
and loss have rarely incorporated our relations with
‘A dominant anthropocentric worldview is a barrier other species and places. In the conversation that
to society (and humanity as a whole) reaching an sparked this special issue, Mary-Jane Rust describes
ecologically sustainable future’ how the traumatic death of a family dog went
(Washington et al., 2021, p. 285). unacknowledged for years – emblematic of therapeutic
discourse which ‘focuses almost entirely on human-
to-human relationships’ (Bednarek, 2018, p. 11). Where
The belief that human beings are the central and/or other kinds of relationships are considered, such as
most significant entities in the world is deeply rooted in in the development of pet-attachment or nature-
various Western religious, scientific and philosophical connectedness scales, or evaluations of animal-assisted
traditions, including modernism and humanism. therapy, little concern has been evident for the interests
Anthropocentrism is not exclusively or unequivocally of nonhuman others involved, or to envision the
‘bad’. In challenging god-centred religious orthodoxy, nonhuman side of the relationships (Shapiro, 2020).
for example, human-centredness and humanism has
often been associated with progressive politics such as Thankfully, anthropocentrism is increasingly being
extending rights and care to other humans. It has been made visible, questioned and reflected upon in
a ‘useful’ belief system to the extent that it has played a numerous fields, including psychology and related
part in the development of human social organisation, disciplines. Recent studies in psychology explore the
technology, and culture, providing tangible rewards presence and implications of anthropocentrism as
of security, comfort and pleasure for some human a psychological construct, developing psychometric
societies some of the time. However, anthropocentrism measures of anthropocentric beliefs to determine
is also considered to be at the heart of a profound split its relations to other beliefs and practices (e.g.
between humans and the rest of nature, and therefore a Fortuna et al., 2021). Related research explores how
central culprit in the cultural and psychological origins anthropocentric beliefs underpin patterns of thinking,
and maintenance of ecological crisis (Washington et emotional defences and tacit knowhow connected with
al. 2021). At its core, anthropocentrism, especially as it exploitative everyday practices involving other-than-
combines with other prevalent ideologies, denies that humans. A good example is a flurry of recent work on
nonhuman entities have intrinsic value, legitimises a the psychology of eating meat (e.g. Rothberger and
lack of ethical and moral obligation to such entities, and Rosenfeld, 2021). Numerous studies have established

the psychological processes involved in maintaining Actively unlearning anthropocentrism

both a generalised love of and care for animals on the
one hand and meat-eating practices on the other – a
form of cognitive dissonance. Research has suggested ‘The next step after acknowledging anthropocentrism:
that people involve themselves in a range of cognitive the active unlearning of it’ (Rautio et al., 2017, p. 1381)
rationalisations and defence mechanisms that
allow them to continue eating meat. These include
minimising our responsibility for suffering; perceiving There are many signs that anthropocentrism is not
the animals we eat as highly dissimilar to humans, to just being acknowledged, but actively unlearnt. Work
have less capacity to suffer, and/or to be less intelligent. in disciplines like anthropology and geography, and
much feminist, posthuman and a resurgent Indigenous
This work highlights that the anthropocentric patterns scholarship and activism is coming up with conceptual
of thinking are not only psychological, they are frameworks and alternative professional practices
embedded in cultural and societal practices. These that challenge anthropocentrism in the context of the
include the physical location and (in)visibility of Anthropocene (for example in forestry, microbiology
farms and slaughterhouses; language, advertising and and zoology). From the human microbiome to global
branding discourses that objectify and commodify biomes (such as temperate forests), an emphasis on
other beings; and cultural rituals and social norms that the interconnection and interdependency of multiple
revolve around meat eating. Vitally, anthropocentric species, including humans, has become increasingly
beliefs are coded into everyday realities. In the context common. In the social sciences and humanities,
of resolving the meat paradox, social psychologists multi-species and more-than-human methodologies
Bastian and Loughnan argue that ‘when immorality are emerging (see Van Doreen et al., 2016, for an
reappears, people are not lost for ways to defend their overview). These approaches make efforts to give
psychological equanimity; they just seldom feel the ‘voice’ to nonhumans in the research process, whilst
need to’ (2017, p. 287). Other research points to the acknowledging their limitations. Examples include
cultural ubiquity of anthropocentric beliefs in multiple ethnographic researchers collaborating with relevant
settings including advertising, education, literature, specialists (e.g. botanists) and/or non-indigenous
science, newsprint, social media and everyday researchers; and the development of methods that
conversations (e.g. Pedersen, 2021). facilitate observation and attentiveness to non-human
beings and landscapes. All share a desire to recognise
The idea of anthropocentrism as a historically the ways in which being human is profoundly embedded
embedded, psychologically adaptive, and culturally in relations with landscapes, plants and/or animals (e.g.
pervasive belief system can leave us with a sense of Lien and Pálsson, 2021).
being ‘locked in’ to it, with alternatives difficult to
imagine. But of course, this is an overly reductive take. What might an active and practical unlearning of
In everyday life there are still countless examples anthropocentrism look like in a psychological context?
where (human) people still find ways to be open to In considering examples, it is perhaps helpful to move
the rest of life, and honour the living world, even if we a little closer to professional practices more familiar
also still routinely engage in behaviours and practices to those of us working in psy-disciplines. Taylor and
that do direct or indirect harm. There are also many Fraser’s (2019) ‘Rescuing me, rescuing you’ project
and increasing attempts across art, literature, film and explores companion-animal-inclusive domestic
wider culture to develop non-anthropocentric forms of violence social work practice which is grounded in
communication, representation and storytelling. But human-nonhuman animal entanglements. A dominant
we do not always have the language, norms, routines discourse in this context is that the discovery of animal
and rituals that adequately frame these practices for us abuse in families is important ‘only because it serves
professionally, privately or collectively. In this sense, as a red flag for interhuman abuse’ (p. 36). The authors
there is significant value in exploring and developing argue instead for practices that centre the experience
alternatives to anthropocentrism that are imaginative, of companion animals, ‘acknowledging that animals
tentative, opaque perhaps, but grounded in ordinary are sentient beings whose own experiences of physical
and everyday experiences. and emotional abuse is worthy of attention’. They reach
this conclusion after conducting research which made
animals affected by domestic violence visible, and not
just via human caretakers’ accounts, but as agents in
their own right – animals were present at interviews, and Fine, 2021); and my own research into sheep
while questions included a focus on the loving and grazing conservation programmes (Adams et al.,
restorative aspects of the relationship before, during 2021). All of these studies ask if and how particular
and after experiences of violence, and photoshoots were human-animal encounters benefit both, whilst also
arranged to capture human and animal participants as developing theoretical understanding of these spaces
the basis for an exhibition. as fundamentally relational. That is to say, emphasising
the nature and quality of what goes on between, rather
The authors make a strong case for companion-animal- than an either/or approach to human and nonhuman
inclusive domestic-violence service delivery in social- animal wellbeing. Such accounts should also demand
work practice, highlighting the significance of provision humility, recognising limitations in our ability to
for companion animals in victim/survivor’s willingness perceive and infer nonhuman animal agency and
to leave; how shared experiences of violence can subjectivity while asserting it.
intensify existing human-animal bonds; and relatedly
the importance of providing support for companion Another interesting example, and one directly relevant
animals and human victims as mutually beneficial. to therapeutic practice, is the experimental programme
Practical challenges to a more animal-inclusive service Serenity Park, based in the West Los Angeles Veterans
include staff willingness to recognise and advocate for Affairs Medical Centre (see Siebert, 2016). The project
the importance of human-animal bonds; places and brings together two groups of traumatised individuals
policies that can accommodate them; and providing – parrots that have been abused and abandoned, and
appropriate care for traumatised animals. In sum, the former soldiers suffering with post-traumatic stress, to
authors argue that the project and its findings ‘offers engage in mutualistic therapeutic practices explicitly
an opportunity to challenge and re-think the humanist designed to promote cross-species healing. Serenity
foundations on which traditional social work is built’ Park is an animal sanctuary, and takes in parrots in
(Taylor et al., 2020, p. 86). The project and the author’s need of care, who are then nursed back to health by US
priorities are all about recognising nonhuman animals veterans struggling with various trauma-related issues.
as actors in their own right, attempting to take on Parrots are well known for being socially attuned and
the perspective and experience of the companion responsive animals, and accounts suggest deep and
animal; emphasising trans-species relationality and mutually healing bonds are regularly formed during
interdependency as the basis for mutual suffering and this process. Bolman’s (2019) study of the therapeutic
flourishing; as well as cultivating a more-than-human process is insightful, and he argues that a unique ‘mode
attentiveness, a sense of accountability and of well-being arises between parrots and veterans’,
mutual obligation. which he refers to as ‘becoming-well-together’. This
is a dynamic which temporarily decentres the human
A growing number of studies in allied fields are making by extending personhood to parrots, in terms of their
efforts to meaningfully incorporate other animals capacity to suffer, connect, heal; and by advocating
and other species as actors (or persons) into research for an ethics of care that is not exclusively human, but
questions, design, ethical considerations; and to fundamentally relational and mutual.
consider implications for mutual care, development,
wellbeing across a range of settings. Gorman’s (2019) It promotes, in short, a transspecies understanding
research into care farms develops a conceptual of trauma and healing. Trans-species psychology
framework that places parasitic relations at one is in fact an identifiable field in its own right (e.g.
pole (benefit humans at the expense of animals), Bradshaw, 2010). It emphasises human and animal
and mutualistic at the other (produce some form of interdependencies and interrelationships, and greater
benefit to humans and animals alike), with commensal parity amongst species in terms of psychological
relations (benefit humans in ways that do not impact capabilities and experiences, whilst acknowledging
on animals) holding the centre. Asking these kinds of difference. It entails the difficult and uncertain task of
questions in specific settings requires us to seriously translating human healing practices across species; but
consider nonhuman interests and agency, or reciprocal also opens up a space for practices of mutual healing
relationality from a psychological perspective – what and care. As Bolman concludes, this is a space that at
Gorman calls a ‘mutually therapeutic becoming’. least acknowledges there are possibilities beyond an
anthropocentric perspective: ‘the willingness for beings
Similar motivations underpin recent studies of cat with very different histories… but shared experiences of
cafes (Robinson, 2019), swimming with dolphins suffering to open towards each other, a process which
(Yerbury and Boyd, 2019) and equine therapy (Peralta

is the linchpin of so much therapeutic labour, points us, during an earlier stage in the evolution of religion from
however hesitantly, in the direction of another world’ primitive belief to more ‘advanced’ monotheism to
(Bolman, 2019, p. 310). scientific rationalism (Lang, 1899). Such dismissiveness
was part of broader imperialist discourse in modernist
An active unlearning of anthropocentrism seems psychology, anthropology and science; one that
central to the other world Bolman hints at here. We positioned other contemporary cultures (especially
can see many other glimpses, across academic work, those being colonised) as further back on an
research practice, law, activism, art and popular evolutionary timeline, with modernity representing the
culture. There are art projects that encourage us to take enlightened present. That is why it was also detectable
on the perspective of industrially farmed animals using in children, most famously in Piaget’s child psychology,
VR headsets, and popular feature-length documentaries as part of a developmental stage we leave behind (or as
that focus on animal experience and human-animal Freud would have it, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny).
relationships. The rights of rivers, mountains and
trees are being legally defended as persons across the Recent ‘new animism’ scholarship firmly shakes off this
planet. Indigenous academics, filmmakers, artists and view, resurgent interest evident in disciplines such as
activists are resurgent and challenging anthropocentric ecological philosophy, posthumanities, anthropology,
worldviews. These examples are tentative, partial, geography and the social sciences. This is partly the
often problematic. But they do encourage us to shake outcome of a sense of indebtedness to Indigenous
off an exclusively human-centred perspective. We are Knowledges, in which complex animist worldviews
being asked to see the world and ourselves from the are a central tenet. Historically ‘animism’ (though
perspectives of nonhuman others, to acknowledge their not named as such) has been central to different
interests, but also to understand the depths of our forms of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) – defined as the
entanglement with other species, other life, on ‘understandings, skills, and philosophies developed by
the planet. local communities with long histories and experiences
of interaction with their natural surroundings’ (Zhang
Towards a ‘grammar of animacy’? and Nakagawa, 2017, p. 57). ‘New animism’ is also
viewed specifically as a way of thinking that can
provide alternatives to anthropocentric understandings
‘Maybe a grammar of animacy would lead to a whole new of the world. There are plenty of scholars in disciplines
way of being in the world’ (Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2017) like anthropology and geography, and many feminist,
posthuman and Indigenous scholars and activists
in and outside of these fields, such as Vanessa Watts
As an idea, animism is hard to pin down. Broadly (2013), Zoe Todd (2015) and Deborah Bird-Rose (2017),
speaking, it refers to a belief-system or worldview in to help extend and deepen our understanding of
which things human and other-than-human (creatures, animism in the context of the Anthropocene. Religious
entities, landscapes, objects,) are alive, animated by studies professor and scholar of animism Graham
something in common. In WEIRD cultures at least, it Harvey describes ‘animists’ as ‘people who recognise
is only the human side of this equation that we take that the world is full of persons, only some of whom
for granted. WEIRD is an acronym for people from are human, and that life is always lived in relationship
Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic with others. Animism is lived out in various ways that
societies – which academic research has tended to are all about learning to act respectfully towards…
accept uncritically as a universal norm, despite only other persons’ (2006, p. 204). Animist understandings
accounting for about 15% of the world’s population of what it means to be human are fundamentally non-
(see Hruschka, 2018). To WEIRD audiences confronted anthropocentric. The properties of humanness, such as
with the idea of animism, it is perhaps hard to shake mind, agency, intention and culture are not understood
off the baggage of a century of imperial and colonial to be exclusive to humans, nor is ‘personhood’ simply
discourses, imprinted in early anthropology. European extended to nonhumans. I find this aspect of animism
and Eurocentric anthropologists largely used the term the most difficult to grasp, but human and more-than-
negatively, presenting animism as the worldview of human worlds are always ‘co-becoming’ – to borrow
‘savages, barbarians and children’ in a ‘confused frame Country et al.’s term (2015) – in lively interrelationship.
of mind’, seeing all things, ‘animate and inanimate on Through these animate interpersonal, social, relational
the same level of life, passion and reason’ as one late connections, personhood is understood as constantly
nineteenth-century anthropological account put it
being manifest, through shared practices of perception, by them’? (Stacey, 2021, p. 98). There are many possible
attention and obligation. roads. Whilst Indigenous communities endure in
some parts of Europe (e.g. the Sámi peoples inhabiting
I could go on to describe different tenets of animism, northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia), it
but instead I want to consider briefly and tentatively is commonly claimed that European societies also
what it might mean in everyday practice, as a way of have their own indigenous roots in what we now call
‘actively unlearning’ anthropocentrism. Of course, we animist worldviews. Whilst the absence of authoritative
cannot simply concentrate hard and magic ourselves and agreed-upon traditions or texts is an obvious
into an animist cosmovision. In that sense, WEIRD obstacle, efforts are made to reclaim and revive animist
cultures and individuals are probably a long way off. We traditions in one’s own indigenous and geographical
must also be extremely wary of holding up Indigenous context. Inspiration might be sought in evidence of
communities as retainers of some form of pristine the almost equivalent to human status accorded to
animism the rest of us can appropriate. In terms of trees in early Irish law and lore for example (Fields,
appropriation, a key problem here is assuming that the 2020); or by the claim that early Celtic saints were
adoption of one or two attention-enhancing or nature- commonly ‘distinguished by their special rapport with
connection activities is equivalent to a hard-won animals’ (Serpell, 2010, p. 22). Contemporary forms of
animist perspective built by Indigenous Peoples over paganism combine these re-imaginings with knowledge
generations (see Kurth et al., 2020, and Schmitt et al., of Indigenous practices. Such hybrids are potentially
2021, for debate on the issues involved in subject to the issues of appropriation described above
advocating ‘indigenous’ nature-connection in amongst other difficulties (see Rountree, 2012; Fisk,
psychological research). 2017 for excellent overviews of the complexities
Relatedly, it is problematic to assume that such involved). That said, the deliberate, reflexive adoption
standpoints and practices can be extracted from of animist worldviews in neo-paganism and related
ongoing, specific place-based relationships and developments are a path, if not a straightforward
held up as universal. Indigenous Knowledge (IK) one, for actively unlearning anthropocentrism and
traditions of animism are not a romantic worldview embracing a coherent alternative. But if contemporary
intact ‘over there’. Rather than homogenous, ossified paganism is likely to remain a marginal(ised) everyday
‘traditions’, forms of IK are plural and dynamic, pursuit for the time being, where else might we turn?
evolving over hundreds or thousands of years, as Various efforts have been made to try to articulate
adaptive responses to the environment and embodied common qualities of an animist sensibility that grows
in reciprocal relationships with place. This includes out of our experience of the world we live in, rather
responses to loss, destruction and change that have than directly borrowing from specific traditions,
deep historical roots in Indigenous experiences of and that speak to everyday psychological processes.
colonial power (Whyte, 2017). When it comes to Amongst other things, Wall Kimmerer focuses on the
assumptions about animism being somehow intact in vital importance of the language we use to describe
Indigenous communities, it is also vital to acknowledge the more-than-human world for example, encouraging
that specific experiences of the Anthropocene are an us to move away from seeing nature as a collection of
intensification of the environmental changes imposed noun-objects and instead consider a grammar in which
on Indigenous peoples since colonialism. Animism may rivers, bays, trees, are verbs, involved in being, and
be struggling to survive, adapt and develop in deep nature as made up of subjects rather than objects in a
collective histories of loss. As Kyle Whyte puts it (2017, ‘richly peopled world’. Westerlaken’s (2021) account of
p. 155), ‘Indigenous peoples [have long] witnessed the a ‘relational care ethics’ echoes a common emphasis
away-migration of their nonhuman relatives’. on learning to listen to what nonhuman others are
Whyte sees the renewal of Indigenous ecological saying, to pay attention with all our senses to what is
knowledge, including animism, as a necessary basis happening. Her specific focus is mundane, everyday
for self-determination. encounters with other species ‘that are continuously
I could go on to describe different tenets of animism, appearing right in front of us… [as] starting points for
but instead I want to briefly consider what it might further imagination and knowledge generation’ (2021,
mean in everyday practice in non-indigenous contexts. p. 522). She includes her own annotated illustrations
Or as Stacey asks, how can ‘people with no claim to to depict interactions with other species, framed as
ownership of animist imaginaries find their way into moments where we (humans) can pay attention, be
them, play with them’ and even ‘become transformed curious, and act with care – such as being mindful of a

pigeon’s space at a water fountain. She also frames her WEIRD societies] would find it impossible to live as
illustrations as ways of posing questions, such as ‘How we do’ (2019, p. 69). For me, claims that we should
can we design public squares as suitable resting places embrace animism, whilst recognising Indigenous
for pigeons?’; ‘Can we think of trees as interlinked traditions, as ‘a new conceptual paradigm for the
networks that care for each other?’ Though difficult to Anthropocene’ (Conty, 2021, p. 7) are ambitious and
articulate, Westerlaken argues that everyday examples hopeful, but can feel remote. Similarly, exhortations
like this are important in speaking to ‘doing ethics, in to learn ways of seeing or thinking can feel difficult,
practice, rather than defining ethics, in theory’ inaccessible, threatening even. In this discussion,
(2021, p. 522). an active unlearning of anthropocentrism, and a
tentative adoption of a grammar of animacy, are
Echoing our earlier emphasis on more-than- grounded in practices we can perhaps more readily
human methods, others point to cultivating arts recognise. Moments already or almost present are a
of attentiveness to the ways in which the more- basis for nurturing our imaginative capacities, however
than-human world is alive, vibrant, intentional and modestly. In this sense, animism can be viewed as an
communicative (e.g. Van Doreen et al., 2016). Felice engagement of practised affection that recognises a
Wyndham describes this attentiveness as a form of more complicated sense of personhood in ourselves
‘enhanced mindfulness’ commonly found in Indigenous and nonhuman others; a localised experience of being
communities: ‘an extremely developed skill base of in relationship and an act of accountability, mutual
cognitive agility, of being able to put yourself into a obligation and care.
viewpoint and perspective of many creatures or objects
– rocks, water, clouds’ (cited in Robbins, 2018). More
Conclusion: decentring the human
prosaically, recent psychological research highlights the
importance of ‘noticing nature’ for developing a deeper in psychology
sense of wellbeing and connectedness (Richardson et The wider challenge for psychology as a discipline
al., 2022). It follows that greater attentiveness offers remains a foundational one – not decentring the human
ground for developing deeper levels of care, obligation as such, but decentring a certain understanding of the
and accountability. Heightened attentiveness is even human – one which is independent, bounded, superior;
argued to be the basis for developing a felt sense of and assumed to be exceptional in its abilities to
shared becoming: ‘that the relationships humans have problem solve, suffer, communicate, socialise, become
with nonhuman entities are reciprocal and contextual encultured. At this juncture, we need a psychology
rather than unidirectional and abstract, and that as which vocally adds to calls to indigenise and decolonise
these relationships progress each entity shapes the curricula, challenging entrenched, often Eurocentric
other in meaningful ways’ (Reid and Rout, 2016, and androcentric coverage of topics, citation practices,
p. 429). Shaping each other – reciprocity – is considered theories and methods (Kessi et al., 2022). It requires us
an important element in unlearning anthropocentrism, to attend to the role of animals and other species in our
from Westerlaken’s everyday ethical practices to mutual development, in processes of healing, forming
Serenity Park human-parrot encounters. identities, a sense of belonging, community and culture.
It also demands that we account for the lives of animals
Optimistic claims are made based on one more aspect
in the history and present methods of our disciplines,
of new, resurgent and converging forms of animism.
acknowledging our ethical obligations.
Might they ‘derail anthropocentrism’s story of the
human as singular in subject, identity, and agency’ It is vital too that psychologists and allied professionals
and facilitate a ‘transformational, potentially healing acknowledge that attempts to decentre the human,
process—for the planet, and for a humanity reunited challenge anthropocentrism and develop meaningful
with a lively, thriving, vibrant interconnectivity of alternatives, animist or otherwise, are inherently
entities’? (Keating and Merenda, 2013, p. 71). Perhaps political. At the same time a global shift to protect and
we are indeed witnessing such a transformation, the defend the ‘rights of nature’ (RoN) or Earth rights
shock of the Anthropocene acting as an invitation to is well underway. This movement fights for natural
fundamentally reimagine the interdependencies of entities (rivers, mountains, species, ecosystems)
human and more-than-human worlds. Pamela Gibson to have their rights to exist, thrive and regenerate
argues that ‘were we to have real empathy for “the enshrined in law, on a par with those afforded people
other” in the form of plants, mountains, animals, and corporations (Diver et al., 2019). Despite facing
indigenous humans we [the main beneficiaries of powerfully opposed alliances of extractivist industries,
lobbying organisations, media control and government • Bednarek, S. (2018). How wide is the field?: Gestalt
bodies, many of these movements are resurgent and therapy, capitalism and the natural world. Gestalt
Journal of Australia and New Zealand, 15(2), 18-42.
gaining wider support and traction.
• Bird-Rose, D. (2017). Connectivity thinking, animism,
Finally, challenging anthropocentrism in and outside of and the pursuit of liveliness. Educational Theory,
our disciplinary homes encourages us to be attentive, 67(4), 491-508.
creative and open-minded in how we orient ourselves • Bolman, B. (2019). Parroting patriots: interspecies
trauma and becoming-well-together. Medical
in everyday life, embracing, however tentatively, a humanities, 45(3), 305-312.
‘grammar of animacy’. It is of course no coincidence
• Bradshaw, G. A. (2010). You see me, but do you hear
that an ‘active unlearning’ of anthropocentrism and me? The science and sensibility of trans-species
the storying of alternative imaginaries is happening dialogue. Feminism & Psychology, 20(3), 407-419.
in the context of unprecedented climate and • Conty, A. (2021). Animism in the Anthropocene.
environmental emergencies that also speak of a crisis of Theory, Culture & Society, 02632764211039283.
the imagination underlying modernity (Ghosh, 2016). • Country, B., Wright, S., Suchet-Pearson, S., Lloyd, K.,
Donna Haraway writes that ‘a kind of dark bewitched Burarrwanga, L., Ganambarr, R., Ganambarr-Stubbs,
commitment to the lure of Progress lashes us to endless M., Ganambarr, B. and Maymuru, D., 2015. Working
with and learning from Country: decentring human
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world, reimagine, relive, and reconnect with each other,
• Diver, S., Vaughan, M., Baker-Médard, M., & Lukacs,
in multispecies wellbeing’ (2016, p. 51). In radically H. (2019). Recognizing “reciprocal relations”
readdressing our place in the natural world, an active to restore community access to land and water.
unlearning of anthropocentrism is vital in lighting up International Journal of the Commons, 13(1),
those other ways. The words of the late, remarkable, 400–429.
environmental philosopher Val Plumwood are offered • Fields, T. R. (2020). Trees in Early Irish Law and Lore:
as a final reflection here: Respect for Other-Than-Human Life in Europe's
History. Ecopsychology, 12(2), 130-137.
• Fisk, A. (2017). Appropriating, romanticizing and
reimagining: Pagan engagements with indigenous
‘Help us re-imagine the world in richer terms that will animism. In Cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and modern
allow us to find ourselves in dialogue with and limited paganism (pp. 21-42). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
by other species’ needs, other kinds of minds. I’m not • Fortuna, P., Wróblewski, Z., & Gorbaniuk, O. (2021).
going to try to tell you how to do it. There are many ways The structure and correlates of anthropocentrism as
to do it. But I hope I have convinced you that this is not a psychological construct. Current Psychology, 1-13.
a dilettante project. The struggle to think differently, • Ghosh, A. (2016) The Great Derangement:
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project in our present context. I hope you will join it’
(2009, p. 113). • Gibson, P. R. (2019). Waking up to the environmental
crises. Ecopsychology, 11(2), 67-77.
• Gilbert, S. F., Sapp, J., & Tauber, A. I. (2012). A
symbiotic view of life: we have never been individuals.
Acknowledgments The Quarterly review of biology, 87(4), 325-341.
Thanks to Steffi Bednarek and two anonymous • Gorman, R. (2019). What’s in it for the animals?
Symbiotically considering ‘therapeutic’ human-
reviewers for helpful and constructive feedback on an animal relations within spaces and practices of care
earlier draft of this article. farming. Medical Humanities, 45(3), 313-325.
• Haraway, D. (2016) Staying With the Trouble (2016).
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Gestalt therapy, anthropocentrism, and the

family of things
Rhys Price-Robertson, PhD, Mark Skelding and Keith Tudor, PhD
Received 1 July 2022; revised 20 September 2022
Abstract
In the context of the world’s numerous ecological crises, in this article we consider how Gestalt theory
can help or hinder the change from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric perspective in and for therapy. In
particular, we examine some of the theoretical entanglements of Gestalt therapy in the very anthropocentric
worldview that lies at the root of our current ecological crises. In response to this, we argue that Gestalt
therapy could both expand and decentre self by drawing on ideas and methods that position humans as but
one member of a vast ecological ‘family of things’.
Keywords
Gestalt therapy, self, organism, contact cycle, anthropocentrism, field theory, more-than-human world,
climate change
Introduction efforts at mitigating and adapting to ecological crises,

some of which is represented in this special issue.
Soul healers have been thinking about and taking
action towards healing souls and the earth since However, Gestalt therapy (along with most other
homosapiens emerged, and ‘outlier’ scientists, psychotherapeutic modalities) tends to focus
psychologists, and psychotherapists (e.g. Bateson, on human-to-human relationships, thereby de-
1972; Carson, 1962; Shepard, 1969, 1971) have long been emphasising the more-than-human world. This article
urging wider attention to the interface between human seeks to contribute to ecopsychology and ecotherapy
and planetary well-being. However, it was not until by examining some of the theoretical entanglements of
the early nineties that Theodore Roszak’s books put Gestalt therapy in the very anthropocentric worldview
ecopsychology on the more mainstream psychological that lies at the root of our current ecological crises.
agenda (Roszak, 1992/2001; Roszak et al., 1995). One We agree with Haywood’s (1997) perspective that
item on this agenda is the discussion and critique of ‘anthropocentrism is the mistake of giving exclusive
the extent to which psychological theories address the or arbitrarily preferential consideration to human
world’s numerous ecological crises – including global interests as opposed to the interests of other beings’
warming, biodiversity loss, pollution, deforestation, (p. 51). Alongside most, if not all, environmental
and ocean acidification – and enable therapists and theorists and ecopsychologists (including Bateson, 1972;
clients not only to reflect on this but also to act. Within Roszak, 1992/2001; Fisher, 2002/2013, 2019; Rust, 2008,
this literature, some Gestaltists have focused on the 2020; and Selby et al., 2010) we see anthropocentrism,
potential of Gestalt therapy to address the psycho- in its various manifestations, as one of the key drivers
social aspects of ecological crises, such as leadership of anthropogenic environmental degradation.
and communication within the climate movement
Is Gestalt therapy anthropocentric? Some would agree
(Kolmannskog, 2013), and the collective denial of
that it is, but argue that this is not a problem as, like all
the impact of climate change (Bednarek, 2019). This
other approaches to psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy is
is important work, and we think there is much that
primarily concerned with the human psyche. Our
Gestalt therapy can contribute towards our collective
response is, with Haywood, that ultimately this is an
ethical (or axiological) question for therapy itself,

42 Rhys Price-Robertson et al. • Gestalt therapy, anthropocentrism and the family of things
which also raises the question of the ontological interdependency of organism and environment. In
(essence) of therapy: in effect, the definition and scope this view, self is a process of contact at the boundary
of therapy. Ever since Freud’s (1930/2002) Civilisation of the human organism and its social and natural
and its Discontents, the scope of therapy has included the environments. Thus, descriptions of processes such as
social, political, and material realms. Psychotherapists the cycle of contact or the interruptions to or modifications
have long been interested in forces and entities other to contact are in fact descriptions of the ongoing genesis
than the individual human psyche – social structures, and functioning of what Perls et al. (1951/1994) call the
political institutions, communication technologies, ‘organism/environment field’.
discourses, material resources – and it is not obvious
why the non-human realm should be excluded from Even on its own, the concept of ‘organism’ is a
this. Others may argue that Gestalt therapy is not substantial improvement over individualistic
anthropocentric, especially given its highly contextual understandings of ‘self’, ‘individual’, or ‘person’. In his
understanding of self, which is seen as a process of revision of Freud’s theory and method, and influenced
contact between an organism and its environment. by Goldstein (1934/1995), Perls (1947/1969) challenges
However, while we recognise that Gestalt theory offers the ‘isolated treatment of the different aspects of
significant improvements on many psychotherapeutic the human personality’ and declares that ‘man is a
traditions with regards to the relationship between living organism’ (p. 31). Likening the use of the word
humans and the living world, we argue that it ultimately organism in Gestalt therapy to that of object in object-
fails to escape the trap of human exceptionalism. relations, Clarkson (1989) suggests that the organism
Indeed, by focusing on the point of contact between denotes ‘subjectivity, liveliness, and biological roots’
humans and their environments, Gestalt theory (p. 27). As intimated in the above quote from Perls,
perpetuates a deep-rooted form of anthropocentrism defining something as an organism simultaneously
that places human subjectivity at the centre of denotes its individuality or subjectivity and its deep,
all theorising. biological interconnection with the natural world (see
Neville & Tudor, 2023-in press). Weber illustrates
In response to this, in this article we first examine the this well:
concept of self in Gestalt therapy, arguing that it does
provide a good base for recognising self as an ecological
phenomenon. Second, we suggest that Gestalt therapy ‘The flower is a common imagination of the plant and
could ‘expand self’ by including the living world in the bee. Metabolism integrates the ingested matter of
theory and in the consulting room, and give an example others into the framework of our own, and lets go of
of how we can do that using the Gestalt cycle of our own flesh that becomes air again. There is a deep
contact. Finally, we argue that Gestalt therapy could sense of communion and interpenetration. But this does
‘decentre self’ by drawing on ideas and methods that not mean that we ‘all are one.’ We are one, and we are
position humans as but one member of a vast ecology individuals — and through this tension comes meaning
– what poet Mary Oliver (2004) calls the ‘family of and inwardness into the world.’ (quoted in Bekoff, 2017)
things’ – and that the call to do so comes from the
family itself.
The concept of organism is also one that can be
Self in Gestalt therapy: contact between transposed across vastly different scales of analysis,
from an individual bacterial cell (Varela et al.,
organism and environment
1974) to Gaia (Lovelock & Margullis, 1974), that is,
A good launching point for our exploration of understanding the earth as a self-organising system.
anthropocentrism in Gestalt therapy is the conception
of self that informs the tradition, which, at least While the concept of organism plays an important role
at face value, appears well-suited to the challenges in Gestalt theory, Perls (1947/1969) recognises that ‘No
of our age of ecological crises. Both Perls himself organism is self-sufficient. It requires the world for
(1947/1969) and his colleagues (Perls et al., 1951/1994), the gratification of its needs ... [but] there is always an
as well as numerous subsequent Gestalt theorists inter-dependency of the organism and its environment’
(e.g. Robine, 2016; Philippson, 2017), conceptualise (p. 38). It is the unfolding of this inter-dependency
self not from the individualistic paradigm shared by that Perls et al. (1951/1994) describe as the self. The
many psychotherapeutic traditions but, rather, from profoundly relational conception of self-process works
a radically relational paradigm that focuses on the to undermine the various dualisms – mind and body,
inner and outer, human and nature – that continue With notable exceptions, Gestalt therapy appears
to animate much psychotherapeutic theory. Any yet fully to embrace the expansive conception of self
psychotherapy that aims at making deep and congruent to which its theory points. Thankfully, this form of
contributions toward addressing ecological crises must anthropocentrism is a problem of emphasis, one that
at a minimum avoid perpetuating an anachronistic can be addressed without any major modifications to
Cartesian dualism that sees the ‘individual, inner, Gestalt therapy’s underlying theories and concepts.
subject, self-enclosed “mind” or “self” distinguished Indeed, there are heartening signs that movement
from an outside, objective, extended universe’ (Orange, in this direction is already occurring, such as the
2010, pp. 43–44). Bateson (1972) goes as far to suggest publication of the current special issue, and increasing
that it is ‘doubtful whether a species having both an contact between Gestalt therapy, ecopsychology
advanced technology and this strange way of looking at and ecotherapy.
its world can endure’ (p. 337). Neurobiologist Dan Siegel
(2011) puts it even more pithily: ‘If the Self is defined as As an example of how the self of Gestalt theory may be
a singular noun, the planet is cooked.’ expanded to include the more-than-human world, we
now turn our attention to the widely referenced cycle
of experience (CoE; also known as the contact cycle, the
Expanding self: acknowledging the family
cycle of awareness, or the cycle of Gestalt formation and
of things destruction), which is one way of illustrating how self
is continually expressing at the boundary between
‘If our civilisation is to survive and thrive, we must foster the organism and its environment. It is something of
shifts in our collective perspective away from being a Gestalt therapy custom for the CoE to be illustrated
primarily self-centred species, with demands that must using examples of immediate organismic needs, such as
be met and interests that must be served, to seeing hunger and its satiation by eating. In contrast, below we
ourselves as part of a wider natural system in which we illustrate this cycle using examples (from an experience
have responsibilities towards the rest of life.’ Mark had) that emphasise organismic connection to the
(Juniper, 2022). living (and dying) natural world, along with some of the
human actions that current ecological crises demand.
Given its relational, post-Cartesian conception of self- Cycle of experience: the planet has your back
as-process, Gestalt therapy has much potential salience Mark Skeldings
in our age of ecological crises. (Readers will note that
My father was dying slowly in hospice. I had returned
we don’t use the definite article before ‘self’ as, in our
to my parents’ home in a small Cornish village, far
view, that undermines the concept of self-as-process.)
from my own in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I began a
Despite this potential, the Gestalt therapy literature,
daily practice of walking up the lane to the cliffs, and
and indeed the practice of many Gestalt therapists,
around the rocky headland back to the old harbour.
tends to be heavily focused on relationships between
It was a stunning autumn, and the various daily tasks
humans, with more-than-human entities and forces
settled together into a singular rhythm of deepening
comprising a backdrop (at best). As Bednarek
relationship with place, mother, father, absence,
(2019) observes:
longing, belonging, healing, seasons, dying and more.
One particularly still morning…
‘Our therapeutic discourse focuses almost entirely on Sensation
human-to-human relationships. We do not include Waking to these unresolved issues, feeling constricted,
the absence of relationship with the living world into I take my familiar walk up toward the headland. The
our diagnostic thinking of developmental trauma, herring-bone stone walls and overhanging leaves of
attachment patterns, personality adaptations and mental the lane open out to the old commons near the Iron
health problems. Equally, our notion of community, Age fort. Breeze, birds, shades and shapes dissolve the
relationship and kinship usually stops at the threshold of gnawing of existential issues in my being. The ocean
our social network or our own species. It rarely includes is shimmering.
our relationship to trees, rivers, mountains, salmon,
bees, or water flowing through our bodies.’ (p. 25)

Awareness Satisfaction
It dawns on me that this moment, these sensations I continue to the village thoughtful, enriched, and
and this ‘me-ness’ – even including ‘my’ issue – are empowered: I have fallen deeply in trust with life.
intimately related. Something loosens up inside me and
I pause for a moment. Withdrawal
Gravity returns to normal after a while, and I
Mobilisation return home. On one level, I feel relieved and gently
The looseness and shimmering coalesce as an almost invigorated for the matters at hand. On a level beyond
jaunty, light-filled energy that takes off as if with a this, I feel ‘commissioned’, as if some important
life of its own, effectively leaving ‘me’ trying to catch initiation has begun.
up with myself. As Fisher (2013) expresses it: ‘we
have the most vivid awareness and mobilise the most Fertile void
excitement (life force) only for those actions that are While I am ‘disidentified’ from the experience on the
organismically important’ (p. 68), in which context, we clifftop, it remains accessible, powerfully embodied,
might again wonder how large and encompassing the deeply sensate, energetically and emotionally ‘live’.
organism really is. That ‘the planet has my back’ has encouraged, guided,
comforted and corrected me in a process that has
Action taken me deeply into ecopsychology, social ecology,
I am suffused with a quality of being that I slowly and psychologically-informed activism (for a fuller
recognise as profound grace and gratitude. A private description, see Skelding, 2020). It invites renewal,
wonder arises, realising this flowing not so much as participation, and trust in our 13.8-billion-year process
being between me and something else, or even between – whether walking in the old forest beside my house,
an inside and outside, but rather as a movement within meeting with a client, public speaking or writing to
a much wider container that involves all elements and remind an eminent body or institution that there is a
contexts. I am moved to dawdle, and then, just to real emergency, that ‘our house is on fire’ (Thunberg,
lie down. 2019), and that a systems-savvy psychological voice is
much needed here.
Contact
It’s the strangest thing: one moment, there I am, lying
back, gently held in the soft heather, watching the
puffins whirl and swoop in the clear sky above me. The above example of a CoE focused on contact with a
Waves are splashing on the rocks below, a calm white- wild environment demonstrates how Gestalt therapy
noise moment. I feel deeply held, steady in this moment concepts might be used in ways that are more attuned
of centredness within this time of profound change. I to the living world than is usual. Such attunement will
am glad to be here, looking up. be necessary if Gestalt therapy is to remain relevant in
the coming decades of unfolding ecological emergency
Then, with no preamble, everything shifts very and disruption. One can imagine attuning other
smoothly, like a special effect. Rather than looking Gestalt concepts similarly, such as the modifications
up into a familiar sky, I find myself transfixed to to contact e.g. the deflection of distressing information
the planet, looking down and down, out beyond the on ecological crises, the introjection of the consumptive
familiar. I have a wave of vertigo and realise that I values of free-market capitalism, and so on. The
am now glued to the earth, sucked back against this above example also begins to demonstrate what the
massively solid presence now palpably above me, hard expansive conception of self in Gestalt therapy may
against my spine. Transfixed, immobile, I stare into offer to psychotherapy more broadly. In the dominant
the hugeness of space. I am part of this, barely finding psychotherapeutic paradigm, where self is understood
meaning. It is something to do with whether I want as separate to the environment, Mark’s experience may
to align or not. There are choices, and consequences, easily be dismissed as an unusual personal experience
and the planet is indifferent. But, if I so choose, on a clifftop or, worse, as a dissociation or even a
alignment offers other possibilities. It’s like a voice stress-related psychotic break. However, when his
resonating along my spine: ‘the planet has your back’. inseparability from the earth is acknowledged, and
And suddenly the universe becomes a wonderfully when his non-ordinary experience on the clifftop is
welcoming kaleidoscope of choices. contextualised with a broader cycle of experience, we
can understand it as a moment of numinous contact
between human and non-human. However, even this
expanded conception retains a bias toward the human say “the field”, existed prior to our thinking and talking
side of the organism-environment coupling. Self is about it. Indeed, we emerged from it, and our thinking
expanded, to be sure, but it is still the protagonist of and talking are part of it.’ (p. 35)
the story. Thus, in the third and final part of the article,
we turn to the more radical approach of
de-centring self. However, more current understandings of the field,
which are indebted to Kurt Lewin, tilt in a much more
De-centring self: finding our place in the anthropocentric direction. If we consider Lewin’s
(1926) famous statement: ‘The need organizes the
family of things field’, this points us to the subject of the need which,
in Lewin’s theory, is exclusively human. As McConville
Whatungarongaro te tangata, toitū te whenua. (2001) puts it: ‘fields cannot be spoken of properly as
existing in themselves, in nature, apart from a co-
(The people fade from view but the land remains.) constitutive human subjectivity’ (p. 201). We suggest
(Māori whakataukī [proverb]) that the theory is clarified by adding the subject, in this
case the word ‘human’, thus: ‘the human need organises
the field.’ It is clear that, with rare exceptions (e.g.
We have argued that, with a shift of emphasis, Price-Robertson, 2020; Roberts, 1994), contemporary
Gestalt therapy can avoid the particular form of field theory does not attempt to describe a world in
anthropocentrism that involves ignoring, or at least which human beings are but one member in a broader
sidelining, the natural world. However, there is a subtler family of things; rather, it describes how the broad
and deeper form of anthropocentrism that is not as easy family of things interacts with, and is organised by, the
for Gestalt theory to resolve. The solution to Cartesian awareness and needs of its human member.
dualism that this tradition has settled on is to focus
on the contact between organism and environment. If contemporary field theory requires a co-constitutive
While this solution is effective for many purposes, it human subjectivity, where does this leave the more-
nonetheless ensures that there is a human being sitting than-human-world? Where does it leave the black-tailed
at the very centre of all enquiry; the more-than-human wallaby, nursing her joey, evading wild dogs, feasting
world is relevant only to the extent that it makes on tussock grass, sheltering from the midday sun,
contact with the human. It is as if, re-awoken to the living a life beyond the human gaze? Where does it
existence of the family of things to which we belong, we leave the varied seasonal exchanges between cedar, fir
then narcissistically demand that all family activities and hemlock, and, as Simard (2021) has demonstrated,
must revolve around us: ‘If I wasn’t at that family get- a tree’s favouring of its own offspring even while
together, it didn’t happen!’ supporting others of the same and other species? The
simple answer is that it casts these family members to
Perls et al. (1951/1994) certainly emphasise the point of the peripheries of the field, unrecognised as distinct
contact between organism and environment. However, entities, restricted to ‘the phenomenal silhouettes they
they also conceptualise the field as a precursor to present to the human gaze’ (Harman, 2005, p. 35).
consciousness and self, therefore making space in their
theory for consideration of the world beyond human This puts the Gestalt-therapy-informed climate activist
access. Indeed, in their work we catch glimpses of such in the awkward position of simultaneously trying to
more-than-human consideration; for example, when walk in two diverging directions: in one direction,
they write of ‘the case of a stationary plant’ whose they move towards redressing humanity’s deeply
‘osmotic membrane is the organ of interaction of skewed relationship with the rest of nature; in the
organism and environment’ (p. 307). Roberts (1994) other direction, with every step, they risk reasserting
makes an even stronger case for a field that exists prior the human exceptionalism that is itself a core part of
to human access, arguing that: the problem. A gentler way of putting this is that the
anthropocentrism of Gestalt therapy risks confining the
theoretically-consistent Gestalt activist to what Næss’
‘The field to which the term “field theory” refers is not (1972) calls ‘shallow ecology’, which sees the natural
socially constructed. It is not a concept which one lays world as a resource to be managed or used – even,
over reality the way one might lay a Cartesian grid over for example, as a therapist, to provide a therapeutic
three dimensional space. The field referred to, when we intervention for our clients. Næss stressed that there

is nothing inherently wrong with ‘shallow ecology’, Contact: Mark’s story unfolded
and that in fact it is important for some to carry on the
work of managing the environment with the ultimate Earlier, I described an experience I had during a cliff-
aim of benefitting our own species. Nonetheless, top walk in Cornwall. Talking with my colleagues
Næss is famous for his idea of ‘deep ecology’, which is in the context of this article, they pointed out how
founded on the idea that ‘the well-being and flourishing I was describing the event in ways which seemed to
of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in step between worlds; sometimes I was describing the
themselves’, and that ‘these values are independent experience I was having, and sometimes my language
of the usefulness of the non-human world for human seemed to be drawing from a wider ‘common sentience’
purposes’ (Næss & Sessions, 1986, p. 1). and immersive presence in the whole moment.
In reading the current Gestalt therapy literature, it is The forthcoming poetic approach speaks to the fluidity
possible to garner the impression that the only possible of meaning and the softened identification: whose voice
solution to Cartesian dualism is the phenomenological – manandplanet, manasplanet, planetasman, evolution
approach of focusing on the point of contact between itself? The layout seeks both to slow the eye and any
the organism and environment – everything else is rush to make meaning from what we may already know,
dualistic, reductionistic, objectivistic, scientistic, and so and to offer different ways for the eye to move.
on. Numerous bodies of literature demonstrate this is Scanning back, around and through the words and
not the case. This includes: clusters distracts from familiar linearity and you may
• Various ecological and dynamic systems theories, notice ideas emerging in fleeting super-positions and
including chaos theory, the Gaia hypothesis, deep various half- and quarter-thoughts of your own. In
ecology, and Weber’s (2017) ‘erotic ecology’. this way, and even at this remove, you too are already
• The ‘posthuman turn’, including Braidotti (2013) and enrolled, in the height and depth of the moment.
other authors who explicitly challenge what Haraway
(1991) refers to as the ‘leaky distinction[s] between
human and animal, organism and machine, and the
physical and non-physical’ (pp. 150-151).
• Actor-network theorists such as Latour (2005) who
reconsiders the nature of entities and the locations
of agency by exploring the material linkages between
both human and non-human actors, which interact
and negotiate with one another in complex social-
material networks.
• Speculative realists and object-oriented ontologists
(e.g. Harman, 2005), who conduct what Bogost (2012)
calls ‘alien phenomenology’, which ‘puts things at the
center of being’, stressing that ‘humans are elements,
but not the sole elements, of philosophical
interest’ (p. 6).
In the previous part of this article, we propose an

expansion of the cycle of experience to include the
natural world. In this part, we go further and consider
how we think and feel as the natural world. One
way in which we do this is through poetic enquiry
(Prendergast, 2009), which offers a humble attempt at
offering a ‘fluid responsiveness’ (Chidiac & Denham-
Vaughan, 2006, p. 9) to the environment. We could
even see this as a form of alien phenomenology (Bogost,
2012), which, while acknowledging that we can never
know if and exactly how non-human – or ‘alien’ –
entities perceive the world, suggests that it is our very
openness ‘to understand something about interobject
perception’ (p. 65) that can stretch our thinking beyond
the horizons set by human self-interest.
In this moment presence

Steadying flowing breathing moving warming (earth water life air sun) presencing
feeling felt
here this earth
of cliff and puffin wave and heather sheep-shit and seapink living and dying
of wrenching and burning and breaking and taking
in this moment loss seeks balancing
balance loss and seeking

born of patterns borne of patterns bourn of patterns
I this moment presence resting in this moment present

spaciousness and ease exchanging mingling rock through bones
and then the letting go
in touch is to touch is to be touched

cliff and puffin wave and heather sheep-shit and seapink living and dying
looking up outstretching beneath the skyfullblue
in this moment when loved and loving
- - - - - - breathing - - - - - -
presence spirals now perspective rearranging

... here
hanging in space
suspended tiny all above the terrifying down
vast familiar spinning flesh-turning more-than
where here no-there
nothing to catch
(this)
(catch this) (catch me)
keep me
from this falling
in the shocking vital holding
and the
enormous gravity of being
this massive participating
darkness blue of take it or leave it midnight starburst cold explosions soundless now
and yet
born of patterns borne of patterns bourn of patterns

me here now being

here now being me
in the vital presence
of this
sensation presenced
sus-pensive
there is sound within
stars planets puffins shoulders hips skin heather soil rock magma
i i am you i have you i have you back you i have your back
you who also

keep me
from this falling
i have your back
take up this bed

of heath and heart
and walk
i take you up
i am your back spine and purpose trust and terror

voice and vision
i have your back
(the planet has your back)
walk on
keep me from falling
Theory and practice clinical question here would appear to be: how can
we encourage our clients to occupy a more humble
As we note (earlier in the article), the cycle of position in the family of things? People arrive at
experience is also referred to as the Gestalt cycle of ecocentric perspectives in varied ways. For some, it will
formation and destruction. This is particularly apposite be a gradual process informed by scientific data and
to our argument, in the context of this special issue as concepts (e.g. ‘global warming’); ecological ideas and
we are, in effect, suggesting that some of our familiar activism; Indigenous perspectives (Selby et al., 2010);
theory needs to be deconstructed and reconstructed time spent in wild places; spiritual or contemplative
if it is to be relevant to our living and changing world. practice; and/or creative activities such as poetic
To that end, we have suggested ways in which Gestalt enquiry. For others, a decentring of self may occur
theory both challenges and is entangled with the suddenly in the form of a peak experience, as Mark’s
structures of thought that underpin these problems, vignette (reported above) illustrates. His experience
as well as ways in which we might extend and expand enabled his recognising of a ‘psycho-ecological niche’
Gestalt theory and application. Indeed, this very article, (Plotkin, 2021) within a ‘psychosphere’ (Skelding,
along with others in this special issue, may be seen as a 2020), existing alongside more familiar drivers of
contribution to Gestalt therapy’s expansion beyond the planetary well-being such as biosphere, atmosphere,
boundaries set by an industrial-capitalist mindset. As etc.; and precipitated many unanticipated private
long as such an expansion continues, Gestalt therapy and public initiatives, which, in due course, led to
will have much to offer broader, multi-modality, and participation in this article. Strategies aimed at shaking,
trans-disciplinary dialogue aimed at collectively disrupting, or dismantling the centring of human
understanding and grappling with the urgent global experience have long been practised by shamans,
problems of our age. healers, spiritual teachers, and psychedelic guides. The
Here, in this final part of the article, we offer some current ecological crises creates a pressing need for
broad and general reflection on the clinical implications such strategies to be employed by psychological guides
of our arguments. such as psychotherapists, including Gestalt therapists.
In the part on expanding self, we provide the example No matter how we progress the shift from an
of a cycle of experience explicitly directed towards anthropocentric to an ecocentric perspective in and
Mark’s relationship with the living world. There are for therapy, it is important that with each step we
many other therapeutic concepts and practices that strive to maintain an ‘I–Thou’ relationship with the
could similarly incorporate the more-than-human things of the natural world, seeing them as willing and
world, as Bednarek (2019) suggests. Might our intake available participants within a ‘communion of subjects’
and assessment practices involve exploration of a (Berry, 1987), rather than therapeutic resources,
client’s relationship with the trees, water, soil, and interventions, or objects to be exploited. However, even
wildlife in their local environment? How can we include this – which positions us (humans) first – needs a final
carbon dioxide, mycelium, ravens, and bushfires in our deconstructive twist, for which we draw on Schmid’s
understanding of trauma? How would our conceptions (2006) argument for a ‘Thou–I’ relationship and ‘an
of progress in therapy shift if we could recognise, with epistemology of transcendence’ (p. 240) in response
Plotkin (2008), that healthy psychological development to the challenge of the other. From this perspective,
appears to follow ‘a general principle of psyche ... The it is important to conceive of healing as at once an
deeper we understand ourselves, the more of the world individual, collective, and systemic process; one that
we identify with and, as a result, the wider our circle of builds on immanent, embedded, prior-to-human
identity’ (pp. 359-360)? patterns and structures through which our world has
emerged (Weber, 2016). In other words, it is important
In the part on decentring self, we gesture towards a that we acknowledge, over and over, our place in the
more radical refiguring of the relationship between family of things.
us humans and our non-human relatives. The
Dedication
To the memory of Mary Oliver, Bernie Neville, James Lovelock, and all the wild geese and soul healers
finding their place in the family of things.

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Keith Tudor, PhD, is professor of

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Guide (Karnac, 2023).

[email protected]

52
Opinion
Climate change and thirst

Shelot Masithi
This article is an amended version of a presentation at the Conference ‘Six Months on from COP26:
What Have We Learnt?’ organised by the Association for Psychosocial Studies and the Climate
Psychology Alliance.
I am a 23-year-old psychologist and climate activist experiences of other villagers and countries concerning
from South Africa. I grew up in three different villages: water access and climate change.
Tshandama, Dzimauli, and Tshitavha. Growing up
in Dzimauli, I had the privilege of playing in the Amidst this chaos, my geography teacher started with
mountains, rivers, abundant waterfalls and lakes. We the climate-change chapter. I still did not think that our
did not worry about municipally supplied water because water shortage had anything to do with climate change.
we had the river flowing near our homes. This is where I He spoke of it as an event that would happen hundreds
learned to swim. Seeing the river barely flowing today is of years later. When I started reading about it, I realised
nerve-wracking. that climate change was already affecting our present.
Tshandama is the second village in which I spent In June 2017, during a council meeting with community
half of my childhood. Growing up in this village, we residents, my local chief decided to source water from
experienced severe water shortages. Severity is an the mountain. From October 2017 to October 2020,
understatement for the water-shortage horror we went water problems were resolved. Then, in October 2020,
through from the years 2012 to 2017. The longer the there was not enough water from the mountain either.
crisis continued, the stronger my anxiety grew. Seasons have dramatically changed; it does not rain as
we usually expect.
My mind was always occupied with water: ‘What if
tomorrow there won’t be water?’ ‘Do we have enough Now that I understand the links between climate
buckets to conserve water when there isn’t any?’ In change and water shortage, I also understand the need
2016, we experienced water shortages for a whole for psychosocial interventions. We have separated
month. The water buckets were not enough and the climate change and social issues as merely scientific
water we had reserved for such a crisis ran out mid- issues, ignoring the social and psychological effects
month. That month dragged on. We did not have they have on people.
enough money to buy water from those who I had learnt about Ubuntu. When I look at climate
had boreholes. change and water scarcity, I have seen in my
I remember one day, in the morning when I was ready community that people can come together to solve a
for school, I thought, ‘Should I take a bucket to school problem with a common outcome. The Ubuntu in my
so that I can fetch water on my way back from school – people. They wanted to have water to continue with
from the school taps or the river?’ My high school had their lives.
boreholes and rarely ran out of water. I thought that if I think about psychology and that the psychosocial
I took a bucket to school, my classmates might bully approach is a necessity for these problems. In the face
me for it. The thought of other village children being of climate change and thirst, we need psychologists to
anxious did not cross my mind. I stormed out of my look at these problems with holistic approaches that
room and ran to school, without the bucket. Studying accommodate diverse communities and perspectives.
was a nightmare as the water was now a tenant in my Ubuntu is an integrated approach that recognises
head. At the time, I had little knowledge about the the individual, the collective, and the planet. Ubuntu
is a South African concept that recognises the rethink, re-invent and re-design with the collective
intersectionality between us and nature. Climate in mind.
change is a collective catastrophe, and so the solutions
need to be collective too. References
As we are reflecting on COP26 in Glasgow, we need to • American Psychological Association, APA Task Force
on Climate Change. (2022) Addressing the Climate
understand the role of psychology in addressing climate Crisis: An Action Plan for Psychologists, Report of
change as well as the mental health effects of these the APA Task Force on Climate Change. Retrieved
problems on the collective. As a young activist, I can from https://www.apa.org/science/about/publications/
climate-crisis-action-plan.pdf
say that when we unite, we form a collective community
with different branches, skills and expertise, • Hogan, Clover (Host). (2021, September 29). Force
of Nature. Will we run out of WATER? We need to
broadening our understanding of climate change, talk about eco-anxiety [Podcast]. https://tinyurl.
water scarcity and what we need to do as mental-health com/3x963d85
students and practitioners. • Mekonnen, M. Mesfin. & Hoekstra, Arjen Y. (2016,
February 12). Four billion people facing severe water
Global water scarcity is a systemic threat that four scarcity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/
billion people face worldwide (Mekonnen & Hoekstra, PMC4758739/
2016). Psychology in its individualistic form cannot help • Olander, Eric. (2022, February 28). South Africa’s
people in their diverse communities – it excludes them Limpopo Province Approves $10 Billion Chinese-
from the communities that make them who they are. Finance Coal Project… But There’s Just One
Very Small Problem. https://chinaglobalsouth.
COP26 showed that many world leaders and corporate com/2022/02/28/south-africas-limpopo-province-
leaders are united to harm us. They continue to approve approves-10-billion-chinese-finance-coal-project-but-
coal projects that take away water access rights from theres-just-one-very-small-problem/
the people (Olander, 2022). We cannot afford to discard • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
our eco-anxiety. (n.d) Working Group III Six Assessment Report
(Latest). https://www.ipcc.ch/
The American Psychological Association agrees that • The United Nations (n.d) COP26: Together for our
the interconnectedness of climate change and mental planet. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/cop26
health can no longer be ignored. Human beings burn
out trying to solve these problems individually. The
task to address climate change is beyond the abilities,
Shelot Masithi is a Psychology student and
skills and knowledge of one person, one region, or one
young environmental activist from South
perspective – it is all of us. Within us, we each embody
Africa. She has a passion for collective
distinct strengths. And it is those strengths that hold
interventions for mankind’s collective
solutions in them. When we try to alienate ourselves
trauma. She is the founder of She4Earth;
from the community, we risk the error of solving the
an organisation that’s educating children
functions of the crisis instead of the causes.
and youths about environmental crises
Despite our awareness of the crisis and its psychological with solutions rooted in Ubuntu. She is a
effects, progress is far away. I know that most of you volunteer at Force of Nature, a Social Change
do not know what it feels like to be thirsty. I recently Ambassador at Thred Media and a YOUNGA
learned that 75% of European consumers pre-rinse their 2021 Youth Delegate. She is also an author and
dishes before they wash them (Hogan, 2021). A privilege passionate hiker.
that we, in the Global South, can only dream of.
The latest IPCC report projects that about seven

hundred million people in Africa could be displaced
due to drought. Instead of us looking at ourselves as
intelligent living organisms that question everything,
let us reflect on how we are shaping the problems and
how others perceive them.
As mental-health practitioners, students and activists,

where are we going wrong and how does that affect the
impact of our interventions? This is our opportunity to

54
Four lectures for the Kyiv Gestalt University in a

time of war
Peter Philippson
Lecture notes edited by Steffi Bednarek
Introduction The dangerous nature of human beings:

Before the invasion of Ukraine started, I was invited aggression and creativity
to present four webinars for the KGU. With the Human beings are about the most aggressive species
changed situation, we had to decide how to make them in the world. Other species kill, mostly to eat, or in
appropriate for the present situation. battles over land and power or sexual dominance, or for
play. Human aggression includes all of that, but adds
I sat with this for some time. Of course what I said had
something else – creativity. We, seemingly uniquely,
to link to the war, the anger and the fear, as well as the
have the capacity to imagine a world, an artwork, a way
mutual self-support and resilience Ukrainian people
to get somewhere, and our aggression has the capacity
have shown, which has impressed people all over the
to turn that imagination into a physical reality. We
world. At the same time, I felt that it would be wrong
blow up mountains to get materials to build homes and
of me, sitting in my safe place, to lecture Ukranians on
offices, or if they get in the way of where we want to go.
how to be in a war situation. In terms of supporting the
We kill or displace people who don’t fit into our vision.
traumatised, injured and terrified, psychotherapists and
There is nothing personal about it – our attention is on
psychologists in Ukraine probably know much more
the vision, not the destruction caused by the vision. So
than I do. So how do I do this in a way that feels honest
the danger in our aggression is not our anger towards
to who I am and who you are?
other people, but our visions and plans that ride
I am clear about what I bring. As well as skill, over others.
knowledge and experience in Gestalt theory and
practice, I bring my background as the child of refugees Resilience, self-support and trauma
(from Germany, Austria and Poland in the thirties),
much of whose family died during mass killings, both
as Jews and as antifascist resistance fighters. I heard my ‘People who remain calm in the face of disaster have
mother’s stories as well as her and my father’s struggles what psychologists call resilience. People with resilience
to create a life for themselves as refugees in a new are able to utilise their skills and strengths to cope and
country, with a new language and culture, having to recover from life's challenges ... People with resilience
make a whole new set of friends and finding new work do not experience less distress, grief, or anxiety than
possibilities, while grieving what and who they had left other people do. They simply use healthy coping skills to
behind. They (and I) also had to face hostility towards handle such difficulties in ways that foster strength and
a German-speaking family living in a Britain that had growth, often emerging stronger than they were before.’
been so badly hurt by Germans. I saw the struggles (Graham, 2022)
of my wife’s parents to accept that she had fallen in
love with me, and how to relate to me and my mother.
I am indebted to them for the care and love they still Gestalt therapy has been speaking since its beginning
managed to show me. about this positive ability as something to be achieved
by therapy, rather than therapy being about fixing what
So I will speak of what I know that might have some is broken – we call it ‘self-support’. Perls commented
parallels with what you are facing now, if you are in that without there being an ‘other', self would have
Ukraine fighting or surviving, or have left Ukraine. And no meaning, and it is the mutual emergence of self
I hope that some of what I have to say will be useful. and other in contact, on the contact boundary, that he
makes central. Self-support inevitably involves not just
the human organism, but its environment.
Self-support (or resilience) has two complementary The attachment and neuroscience researcher Allan
aspects. First, there is the early assimilation from the Schore asked the question ‘What makes post-traumatic
kind and engaged presence of parents, neighbours, symptoms more or less severe following a trauma?’
teachers etc., with the complementary effects of both (Schore, 2003). At first, he checked the correlation
the presence and absence of this. Not only will the child between the severity of the trauma and the severity
be assimilating a sense of the world as pleasant and of the symptoms but found no correlation. The best
homely, or painful and rejecting, their brains will be correlation he found was with the person’s attachment
developing neural connections that support that shape. history. People with a poor attachment history suffered
After the first two years of life, that kind of extreme post-traumatic stress whatever the severity of the
early shaping only changes with difficulty. This is what trauma, while people with a good attachment history
traditionally gets referred to as the ‘internal’ aspect did not, but found support for themselves from both
of self-support. ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. This is the same as the approach
to Panic Disorders that Francesetti (2007) wrote
Then there is the support that people develop in their about: the problem is not the figure of the trauma,
present-day world, which can be everything from but the lack of assimilated ground of support that can
family, relationships, friendships, hobbies, living space, sustain a difficult figure. The work is not on the figure,
the other-than-human environment. This is what but on slowly building the relational ground, which
traditionally gets referred to as the ‘external’ aspect can then be assimilated to support the painful figure.
of self-support. The traumatised client (or therapist) will take time to
But these two are not separate by any means. People develop the neurological structures that allow such
who, from their early experiences, tend to see the world new ground. I wonder what Ukraine’s secret is, being
as mainly friendly and rich in possibilities will usually so resilient in the face of both its history and present
actualize their environment in a way that mirrors that, experiences, in a way that has inspired people all over
so that when things go wrong they have many resources the world.
to draw on. What is more, their instinct will be the The basic meaning of trauma is the response to an
inbuilt human one to join together to aggress on the event that is outside our normal range of what we
problem and to support the person. Meanwhile, people have resources to cope with. It is not about something
whose early experiences have led them to see the world painful or frightening if those are within that range.
as dangerous and rejecting will usually actualize their What then happens is that this new, painful and
environment to mirror that, so that when things go unfamiliar event cannot be assimilated into the
wrong they do not have people and resources to go to. person’s life and becomes a separate system. We are
Also, they are less likely to use those resources even built to do this by what is called State-Dependent
if they are around because their understanding is that Memory, Learning and Behaviour. Traumatic
they will either be let down or betrayed; and that the flashbacks are sudden shifts into the traumatic State-
painful situation they find themselves in is just how the Dependent system, including its sense of confusion and
world is, and they can’t expect anything else. helplessness. So the work is to build a bridge between
The third aspect, which is often not talked about in the traumatic system and the rest of the person’s
therapeutic discussions, is that the second group who functioning, so that they can bring their resources to
see the world as dangerous and rejecting will tend the experience rather than flipping into a
not to be people who others want to become close to, separated state.
because their hunger is to receive, and they usually This is why ‘trauma debriefing’ is harmful rather
have nothing to give as well as being rejecting and than useful. If the person ‘goes into’ their trauma
sometimes dangerous in their own right. They are experiences, they go into the traumatic state, where by
better at resentment than kindness, and are always definition they cannot access the support to assimilate
on the lookout for betrayal and abandonment – which it. If you are going to build a bridge, the first support
actually leads to the abandonment they are expecting. I pillar you build is on the most solid ground, not in a
think this is happening on a national level in Russia. swamp. Then you build out from there, making sure you
These considerations will play a part in the response to don’t put too much strain on that first pillar.
the current situation. To be in the room with traumatic horror stories, having
our mirror neurons connected to a terrified client,
can be profoundly destabilising for the therapist,

56 Peter Philippson • Four lectures for the Kyviv Gestalt University in a time of war
who needs to develop their own support and ‘anchor in Britain shortly after Britain had been in a vicious
points’, including a satisfying life, good supervision and war with Germany. The hatred that many people in
a comfortable working environment. Otherwise, the Britain felt for Germans sometimes led to violence
therapist gets pulled into the swamp. That and discrimination against me and my family, even
helps nobody. though I felt it myself. It was difficult for my future
father-in-law, who had been paralysed as a soldier
Having developed that, there is a need to go slowly in the War, to accept that his daughter was getting
towards the trauma, while still having the priority to married to someone from a German-speaking family.
stay firmly attached to the here-and-now therapeutic It was wonderful that he was able to get past that and
contact. It is fine to stop the client if either they are make a connection with me and my mother. Later on,
losing contact (talking into space, stopping breathing, I did go to Germany and found a country that was
closing their eyes) or the therapist is losing contact now very different from the one my parents faced, and
(avoiding hearing or looking, stopping breathing). I which offered to reverse the Nazi removal of German
remember a woman client, who was a child prostitute, citizenship for anyone in the Philippson family who
telling me about extreme abuse. At times, I had to ask wanted it. I am now a German citizen as well as a
her to stop telling me because I could not hear more, British one! I did not see that coming.
and she needed me present. She told me later how
important it was that she did not have to look after me. Some years ago, I was sent the first issue of a new
journal: the Journal of Family Violence. It said that it
I often have a cup of tea that I am drinking as part of aimed to explore the ‘problem of why we hurt those
holding onto normality while going into the traumatic we love’. I looked at this with some curiosity, and
material. And it is vital to keep in mind that it is not the commented to a colleague ‘Who else would we hurt, the
telling in itself that is important but the assimilation. postman?!’ The point was that most hatred comes in
Of course, it is difficult working with trauma in a war areas of intimate connection, even as a shadow side
situation where the trauma is shared by the therapist. of love. No wonder Freud wrote about the Oedipal
In this situation, it is particularly important for the conflict, and Melanie Klein (2017) wrote about the
therapist to attend to their own grounding and pacing. splitting between the ‘good breast’ and the ‘bad breast’,
Last year I did online supervision with a group of and the difficulty for a young child to hold the loved
trauma counsellors in Beirut, with riots and fires satisfying mother and the hated unsatisfying mother
happening outside their homes. Almost the only thing in one person. And that then moves into a wider field
I did was find what resources the counsellors could as the child gets older, whether it is between different
access. One woman had completely lost hope, but I saw groups of children in school or teenage gangs etc.
on Zoom what a beautifully furnished room she was in, In most family situations, the hate is balanced by the
so I asked her to move her computer around so we could love and connection between people, so the hurting
all appreciate her taste and surroundings. She could is not common and not serious. Hate is often not
access her pride in having created this, and it made her acknowledged, as people play ‘happy families’. But
more available to support and contact. when families break up, hatred and competitiveness
The development of self-support or resilience is about can come out fully. I saw that many years ago in former
the building of a pillar of connection, and then building Yugoslavia, where a number of different countries and
out from that to the more swampy side of the traumatic cultures had been put together as a single country.
experiences, making sure never to lose the connection When that country came apart, the positive national
to the pillar (either by the therapist or the client). cultures had become less important, and the defining
point of nationhood was: ‘I am not like you’. Let us see
what Perls and Goodman (1994/1951) say about hate:
Hate
I want to speak about my experience of hatred from
my family situation. I grew up hating Germany and ‘To these settled passions the other functions of the self
Germans for what had happened to my family during are sacrificed; they are self-destructive. To hate a thing
the Nazi regime. I would not go to Germany, and if I involves binding energy to what is by definition painful
saw a film about the Nazi period, including Cabaret, I or frustrating, and usually with diminished contact with
felt very disturbed by a wish to kill somebody. At the the changing actual situations. One clings to the hateful
same time, I was a child in a German-speaking family and holds it close.’
Many times I have seen clients who have not been able sides, including the original removal of Palestinians
to individuate from their childhood families because from their homes to refugee camps. A breakthrough
they remain tied to their parents by binds of hate that seemed to come from the Camp David negotiations
survive even the death of the hated parent. This is the between Sadat and Begin, facilitated by Carl Rogers.
truth behind the otherwise meaningless platitude to Rogers has written an article with Richard Ryback
forgive parents. Just to forgive leaves the unexpressed about the process where slowly Begin and Sadat began
anger retroflected into self-hatred and internal to discover each other as human beings rather than
angry words. But to stay with the hatred is very self- hated objects, and an agreement emerged from those
destructive and itself prevents the person from growing negotiations. However, those agreements and that move
up. To forgive parents feels like a betrayal of the away from hate separated the leaders from the people
hurt child. they were there to negotiate on behalf of, who were
still hating. Begin was voted out of office and Sadat was
How does this apply to war and conflict? Hate has assassinated. The success that Rogers and Ryback wrote
its uses. My hatred of Germany and Germans would about was a success in the wrong context. And yet,
have done many things: it supported me in fighting something like that has to happen, or we will continue
against fascist groups that were becoming active again to have war.
in Britain; in a strange way, it aligned me with feeling
British, and it was a distant and therefore safe object The more hatred is used as a tactic, the more likely it is
of my anger with people who were nasty to me because that even army initiatives towards ending the war will
of my German-ness. Hate dehumanises the other and be opposed by the population as treason and betrayal.
makes it easier to kill, injure or torture them. It is the Hate is so energised that it becomes the dominant
easiest way to motivate conscripted soldiers as opposed figure, putting into the background the collective
to professional soldiers, whose primary motivation is mutual support. It is a figure without an exit strategy.
an allegiance to their military unit and comrades (and
who would tend to respect other soldiers even if they Hatred is profoundly destructive of community
are fighting them). It is also a quick and easy way to resilience. It leads to an erosion of trust, and a looking-
motivate a population. And, of course, in the Russia- out for traitors and spies. Of course, there are people
Ukraine war, Russia is providing a lot of incentive to in the community who identify with the enemy, but
hate by the extremity of their actions. they rarely cause great trouble. Their main value to
the enemy is that they lead to paranoia and internal
However, hate – while a good tactic – is a very conflict. The doctrine of ‘The enemy of my enemy is my
dangerous strategy. There is a Chinese proverb: ‘If you friend; the friend of my enemy is my enemy’ both lead
fight dragons, you become a dragon’. As the Goodman to very dangerous alliances (as the Americans found
(op. cit.) quote says, hate binds you to the other and after they armed and trained Osama Bin Laden against
makes it more difficult to see the whole situation. It the Russians) and internal civil wars.
does not allow for any exit strategy, because that would
be a surrender to the hated other. We can see that with In speaking about hate, I am aware I am treading
Putin, who would rather destroy Russia, and maybe into ‘hot’ territory, and that it would raise many
even use nuclear weapons, than appear defeated. But emotions in people. I thought that it would not have
that can apply to Ukraine as well. You cannot truly been honourable for me to ignore a topic that seems
negotiate with the hated other. so important in the present situation for people both
inside Ukraine and for those who have left.
This is not me telling people in Ukraine to agree to
negotiate away part of their territory. But at some stage, Life and death
either there will be an agreed strategy for moving away
from continuous war (or extreme actions like nuclear I want to start by describing an experience. I am
attack to quickly end the war). A continuing ‘eye for an standing in my Aikido class, facing another student
eye and a tooth for a tooth’, as the Bible says, eventually who is holding a sword. When he is ready, he will attack
leaves everybody blind and toothless. me. I feel very alive in many ways. I know that if I do
not move, I will be injured or killed by the attack – the
Let me take an example that shows both sides of this. attacker trusts me to defend myself and is not holding
The situation between Israel and Egypt has been back. My life is in my hands, and the present moment
one of continuing hatred, leading to war on several has an edge as sharp as the blade of the sword. I am
occasions and acts that have stoked the hatred on both focused – I don’t know of any situation where I go

58 Peter Philippson • Four lectures for the Kyviv Gestalt University in a time of war
so quickly into a meditative state. My focus is on the in his experience. And I believe this fits perfectly with
moment, I do not try to guess what the other will Gestalt self theory. Because if self is a comparison with
do in the future because if he does not do that, I am other, for somebody in an epileptic fit, and for a dead
unprepared for the actuality. In Perls’ (1992) terms, I body, there is no otherness, and therefore no self. And
am response-able in the present moment. I am aware the organisation which was that person’s life does not
that my life is one pole, and that the other pole of death just disappear. The ripples of our actions and intentions
is always present as a possibility. Death is part of the flow on after we die and are part of the ground of what
ground of the figure of life. comes next. Of course, what has changed is that we can
no longer add new actions.
Our present self only remains stable as we stabilise it.
To stay the same in a changing field is in itself always an There is an experience of moving towards death, as
act of creativity. When people come out of depression, there is an experience of moving towards epileptic fit or
they usually have images and fantasies of dying. And sleep or coma. But death is by definition not part of that
that is what is happening: the depressed organisation, experience. Death, as we relate to it, is a narrative. It
not just ‘internally’ but – as Francesetti and Roubal carries the projection of my wish to stay alive, my wish
(2015) emphasise, of their whole field – has to die and to die and get out of pain, my beliefs about the afterlife,
a new self emerges with a new organisation. With this my mourning of the people I am separating from or my
viewpoint, the statement ‘I would rather die than stay sense of their mourning for me. Our lives have a shape
like I have been’ becomes a powerful support for change in our minds, and death is a disruption of those shapes.
rather than a statement of suicide. It is a living organisation in the time before death,
that opens up new vistas with each turn, fighting to
Conversely, the death of an organisation by which we stay alive, accepting that I will die, thinking of events
are what we are is a destruction of the self. When our in my life, stray thoughts about ‘I’ll never know how
world changes as it has for every Ukrainian (and with my children will grow up’. And sometimes all of this
at least ripples for everyone in the world), the way we happens, but the narrative goes somewhere different,
recognise ourselves is lost. People have to rediscover and the death doesn’t happen or doesn’t happen how I
themselves as fighters, refugees, prisoners and people expected it to. Or my narrative is about going on living
close to death. And we do not know until we self- and I get hit by a car.
actualize in this new organisation what kind of soldier,
refugee etc. we become, which will also depend on the I have had some of these experiences: I had cancer
responses of those around us. Who would have thought around forty years ago, and the treatment failed. I
that my mother, a German-speaking secretary, would knew that the alternative treatment had a very poor
end up as an English teacher, and then as a painter? survival rate, and I went to the hospital and refused
it. I was clear that I was going to die as a result.
I saw very clearly during the COVID-19 pandemic that However, they told me that they were going to offer me
the people who did very badly were those who either an experimental new treatment, which they thought
tried to hold onto their self-concept as it was before the would work better, and nobody on the new treatment
pandemic or spent their time resenting the situation. had died so far. Well, it worked, and I had to come to
Those who did best were those who reasonably quickly terms with not dying the death I had previously come
embraced the new situation with an openness to how to to terms with, but also with aspects of my body not
be. The question for those people was how to balance working as they used to because of the treatment. I
risk and opportunity, how to balance the risk of dying have also been in a car crash where the car I was driving
with the risk of not being alive. What were they willing turned over with my wife and baby son in it. We were
to give up, and what would they not give up even if it like Schroedinger’s cat at that (and every) moment,
could kill them? poised between life and death. We all survived, but
It is in these existential moments that we know we are we wouldn’t have known if we hadn’t. And the fact of
alive and facing a choice that is meaningful. I want to expecting to die and then surviving changed me. And
suggest that, in this view of self, time and space, nobody my friend with epilepsy died during a fit but would have
is dead, and at the same time we are all constantly had no more sense of it than of the fit itself.
dying to who we were in the previous present moment. Much of our cultural sense of death is to do with an
I am thinking of an epileptic friend who told me that understanding of me as separate from my body and
epilepsy was something that happened to other people, continuing in some way after my death, and all sorts of
not to him. The body shaking on the ground was not hopes and (mainly) fears about what that will be like.
Of course, there will be fears of the narrative we make actions in such a world are machine-acts. Our existence
of death, combined with what many have learned about is the provider of meaning.
the possibility of eternal punishment if we believed or
did the wrong things before dying. But the existential One could say that my intention is in continuous
question is not about death but finitude, our knowledge dialogue with the world of my intention. And the
of non-existence at some, usually unknown, point in dialogue is always now, not past or future. And the
our lives. Death is also traditionally seen as a character people who do this are part of the field, not separate. As
in its own right, having its own narrative, and not my life changes, my narrative of the past and the future
relying on any narrative of ours. The idea that all our also changes.
plans and expectations and relationships will at some
moment vanish fits well with the idea of Death’s scythe References
suddenly cutting us down. And we have as a species • Francesetti, G. (ed.) (2007). Panic attacks and
invented many different ways to avoid this idea, from postmodernity. Gestalt therapy between clinical and
social perspectives. Milan: FrancoAngeli.
the immortal soul to cryogenics.
• Francesetti, G. (ed.) (2015). Absence is the Bridge
Yet, just as it is the awareness of the other that gives us Between Us. Siracusa: Instituto di Gestalt HCC
our sense of self, it is the awareness of not being that • Graham, M. G. (2022) Reaching out for yesterday at
points up the amazing fact of our being alive now. After Jones Bridge. Available at https://tinyurl.com/zdja823r
I realised that the cancer would not kill me, every day • Journal of Family Violence. Available at https://www.
has seemed like an extra gift. springer.com/journal/10896
• Klein, M. (2017). The Collected Works of Melanie Klein.
One of the things that become very figural in times London: Karnac Books
of war is the inherent randomness of our lives. Which
• Perls, F.S. (1992). Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Highland,
building will be hit by a missile, who will be shot at, NY: Gestalt Journal Press. p. 85
who will step on a mine? Of course, we had to face that • Perls, F., Hefferline, R., Goodman, P. (1994/1951)
in a different way before that with the pandemic: who Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human
will become ill, who will recover, who will die? How Personality. Gestalt Journal Press, New York. p. 125
much do we risk ourselves and those around us? This • Schore, A.N. (2003). Affect Dysregulation and Disorders
is true for all our lives, and we all know people who of the Self. New York, NY, Norton. pp. 234ff
have suddenly had heart attacks, car crashes, sudden
illnesses. When we turn left or right, we know our
lives will be different, but we only know what actually Peter Philippson is a UKCP Registered
happens down the path we take. Gestalt psychotherapist and trainer, Teaching
and Supervising Member of the GPTI Institute
Randomness is an important part of freedom. Freedom UK, a founder member of Manchester
is at the intersection between the unpredictable and Gestalt Centre, Full Member of the New York
the predictable. If our lives are completely predictable, Institute for Gestalt Therapy, Senior Trainer
there would be no choices and no freedom, and for GITA (Slovenia), advisory board member,
we would be clockwork machines. I would say that Centre for Somatic Studies and a guest trainer
intelligence and consciousness would be very unlikely for many training programmes internationally.
to evolve in such a universe because it would have no He is also past President of the Association
function. If our lives are completely unpredictable, for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy, and
again there would be no meaning to making choices founder of IG-FEST.
and consciousness would be unlikely to evolve.
Consciousness only has meaning on the edge where He is the author of Self in Relation, The
unpredictability and predictability meet, so in a chaos- Emergent Self, Gestalt Therapy: Roots and
theory world where order emerges from chaos and Branches and many other chapters and
chaos remains the background and the engine powering articles. Peter is also a teacher and student of
the order, all the orders we make in the world, whether traditional Aikido.
they are about nations and self-concepts and narratives,
can quickly become transparent and show the chaos
[email protected]
underneath. But, and this is vital, that does not mean
they are meaningless, in fact exactly the reverse. What
is fully fixed and ordered has no meaning, and our

60
When the familiar collapses: living and practising as a

psychotherapist during a time of war
Inna Didkovska
Translated by Valentyna Pshoniak
On 24 February 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine and Meaning and joy as a means of support
war broke out in my country. Suddenly, I was the same
Gestalt therapist and Gestalt institute director, but For me, one of the most difficult experiences is the
now in a war situation. As a lecturer, I began teaching experience of meaninglessness. The war aggravated and
Gestalt therapists and counselling clients who were deepened this personal struggle, which is why I want to
experiencing war themselves. start here.
The war touched me in an extremely close way: it I recently read The Choice by existential therapist and
literally broke into my house. Today, the whole world Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger (2018). At times it
knows about the Ukrainian cities of Bucha and Irpin was hard for me to imagine how Eger managed to make
and about the ‘Bucha massacre’. My son and I were born sense of the suffering that she and her family went
and brought up in Bucha. My parents lived in Bucha all through. Later in life, she met Viktor Frankl, studied
their lives. This is where their graves are. For ten years, existential therapy and worked as a psychotherapist.
I attended school every day in neighbouring Irpin. I
Eger’s first two clients were Vietnam war veterans.
know each street and many of the people who live there.
Both clients had paralyzed limbs and a prognosis that
I knew firsthand what was happening in my hometown
they would never walk again. The first client lay on a
from neighbours and friends, long before it appeared in
bed in a foetal position and cursed everything in the
the news.
world: the Government, God, his life. The second client
I am sharing this so that you can get a sense of the was wheelchair bound and met Eger looking forward to
personal and global context in which I am writing this being taken outdoors. He kept saying: ‘How wonderful!
opinion piece. Now I will be able to see the faces of my children. I will
smell. I will be able to share important moments of life
All Ukrainians, including therapists and clients, are with my loved ones!’
currently exposed to trauma. As therapists, we face
the urgency of working with war trauma, whilst being Eger suggests that we all consist of these two veterans
affected by it ourselves. and highlights the importance of not getting caught
in either polarity. This means allowing oneself to feel
Thanks to the support of the international community, anger, despair, and grief whilst also paying attention to
I was able to implement two projects this summer: gratitude and a focus on what's there rather than
what's lost.
• ‘Inside and Out of Trauma’: a project working with
war trauma Following the Gestalt idea of polarities, I move
• ‘Existential Gestalt’: a project, launched with Peter from one polarity to another, from meaninglessness
Philippson, which supports Ukrainian Gestalt
psychotherapists who are experiencing war and who to meaningfulness; from experiencing injustice to
are working with clients experiencing war at the experiencing gratitude; from sadness to joy. Of course,
same time I would prefer not to experience a polarity that includes
despair and depression. Even if I tell myself: ‘You need
In this article, I will share my thoughts on topics to notice what is here and not just what is absent.
that have become figural for me in this difficult time, Notice the things you do have’, this war teaches me
both professionally and personally. These are themes that it isn’t always possible for me to get out of bed.
of meaning and meaninglessness, responsibility and I experience moments of deep despair, strong anger,
choice, justice, agency, the collapse of background and even hatred, and complete impotence. However,
support, and the search for resources. after half a year of war, moving along the spectrum
between polarities, my sadness, hatred and despair
haven’t transformed into joy, but I experience relief
and gratitude for what I have, despite all the loss. And I especially at the point of choice. Existential philosophy
hope that over time the experience of joy will became widespread on the eve of the Bolshevik
return too. Revolution and the First World War, which put an end
to the hopes for a ‘golden age’. We Ukrainians had the
As I said earlier, I have a hard time experiencing a illusion that Russia would not invade our country. For
sense of meaninglessness. It seems that in moments me, the situation in Ukraine and its effect on the wider
of joy, people don’t tend to question the meaning of world stage resembles the beginning of the twentieth
life. I don’t mean to suggest that the meaning of life century. This contributes to my experience that we
is to experience joy, pleasure, and happiness, but joy are lonely, though responsible for our choices; we are
certainly is an important form of support. When you finite and live in an unfair and chaotic world. Reality,
experience joy, meaninglessness recedes. even a chaotic or meaningless reality, is always more
The pain and sadness that Ukrainians face is so great supportive than the illusion of order, justice, infinity,
that for many people the opportunity to experience determination, certainty, or the possibility to avoid
joy is inaccessible. There is a sense that whilst people loneliness. Reality can be relied upon, even if it is
are dying in their hundreds every day, there is no time unpleasant, unhelpful and not ideal.
and place for joy. People postpone pleasure and joy Perls talked about the way we idealise the world and
for a period after the war has ended. This is how they then suffer when reality hits home. When I rely on
cut off their vitality, lose access to the very possibility reality (in my case, the reality of war), I regain the
of experiencing joy and, as a result, find themselves function of choice and can assume responsibility for
‘frozen’ in the polarity of despair, depression and my life. I can respond to what's actually going on. Some
traumatic experiences. people choose to defend the country with weapons,
In my opinion, it is crucial to be able to move some volunteer or provide other assistance, some flee
between the polarities of despair, disappointment and the country. Those who chose to stay continue to give
meaninglessness on one side of the spectrum and joy, their children a Ukrainian education, the opportunity
meaningfulness and gratitude on the other. to learn the Ukrainian language, and to live in their
country without getting caught up in delusions.
The polarity of joy is not only important for civilians, Whatever my choice, I am less likely to sit and wait
but also for those who are in active combat. Many passively for an escape. Accepting reality in all of its
people who are on the front line say that it is unfairness, imperfection and finality opens up choice
important for them to fight, knowing that in the ‘rear’ and the orientation towards support. Understanding
people keep living a full life, filled with sadness and that the world can be unfair gives me a foothold. It
meaninglessness as well as pleasure and joy. The helps me to assume responsibility for my life, for
knowledge that they are protecting a world that has joy justice, and for what is happening around me. Although
in it can therefore be a support. I have to admit, the position of ‘it’s all their fault’ can
be very seductive at times.
I remembered how my mother forbade me to express
joy when my father got cancer, even though my dad When I rely on reality, I accept that a war is raging in
never wanted me to lose my joy. As a matter of fact, my my country and that my life is affected by this. What
capacity to experience joy gave meaning to the last days is important is what I chose to do next. As Sartre said:
of his life and served as his support. ‘Freedom is what we do with what is done with us.’
Just as fear for a loved one can be more intense than Russia attacked Ukraine. Russia is responsible for its
fear for oneself, joy for others can be stronger, too, actions. But the victim ceases to be a victim when
and serve as a support and an antidote to a sense of they accept responsibility for their ‘response-ability’
meaninglessness. Of course, I don’t suggest being and understands that they need to defend and protect
invested in either side of the polarity, but it is important themselves as well as ask for help.
to maintain continuous access to the full spectrum of
experiences, whenever possible. When a woman is raped at gunpoint by a soldier, she is
the victim. At the same time, becoming a victim of an
event or a person does not mean remaining a victim
Existential questions as support
and living like a victim forever. It is the reliance on
Following the ideas of the existentialists, life is reality that makes it possible to step out of that role.
meaningless, unfair, imperfect, finite and lonely, I have worked with victims of violence for ten years

62 Inna Didkovska • When the familiar collapses
and recognise the difficulty in taking responsibility. • a loss of a sense of security (even in a safe place)
It is tempting to take the stance of: ‘I am a victim and • an attack on the self (identity)
everyone owes me.’ It is important to legally recognise
that violence and damage have been done and that In my experience of living and practising as a
there is a need to atone for the damage. On the other psychotherapist in a time of war, numerous issues
hand, it is crucial not to develop self-destructive become figural: the collapse of the background, the
behaviour on the level of individuals, groups or the collapse of support, the collapse of personality and the
country. Ukrainians are likely to struggle with this loss of connection with meaning. All these phenomena
victim syndrome for some time. can be viewed as systemically interrelated with one
impacting all others.
When facing reality and relying on it, it becomes
possible to:
Background collapse
• take responsibility for your life
The collapse of the background in the case of war
• be less dependent on circumstances, or recognise trauma happens due to the fact that it isn’t just one
your dependence on circumstances and, as a
consequence, suffer less from them connection that collapses, but the entire familiar
systems of belonging at local, communal and national
• take care of your safety, because no one else will take
care of it. This does not mean that it is mandatory to levels, such as social networks, professional contexts,
leave the war zone or the country. After all, soldiers and local embeddedness.
on the front line also care about their safety. It is
important for this choice to be conscious and based When a loved one dies, you go outdoors and see that
on reality. As Gestalt psychotherapists our goal is not everyone keeps living while you grieve. You may think:
to ensure that people will save their lives or flee from
war. It is important to respect a person’s choice and ‘Why is everyone doing well when I am not?’ At the
responsibility. We can support contact with reality same time, the psyche is supported by things in the
rather than supporting fantasies about how life background remaining stable. The peculiarity of war
should be. I can choose to give my life for the freedom
of my country, for my freedom or the freedom of my trauma is that the collapse of the background occurs
loved ones. Therapists need to make sure that this for everyone throughout the entire country, for every
choice is conscious, that a person is not stuck in a neighbour and friend. The entire support system falters
victim role and that they create their life in response at the same time. The world seems to be collapsing.
to the situation they are in.
This is scary and makes it harder to reach out, as
everyone needs support and others may have an even
War trauma and existential issues
more difficult situation than you.
In the first months of the war, clients and
psychotherapists faced existential issues and many The collapse of support
Ukrainian institutions, including ours, organised acute
The collapse of supportive pillars is another
trauma and crisis support. This is why Peter and I
phenomenon of war trauma. When working with
created the Existential Gestalt course for Ukrainian
trauma, the search for resources and support is
psychotherapists.
essential in order to avoid further traumatisation.
War trauma, like all large-scale injuries, inevitably
What support is there? I distinguish here between
raises the entire list of existential issues that I have
external and internal support systems while also
mentioned above: lack of meaning (meaninglessness),
recognising that this division is clumsy, because
loneliness (choice), finiteness (death), responsibility
internal support emerges, exists, and changes as a
(freedom of choice), lack of justice, imperfection, etc.
result of contact with the environment.
These issues affect individuals, groups, and the nation
during war. External support includes close and reliable
relationships as well as the entire environment. In
War trauma is collective in nature and can be described
particular, I think of:
in terms of:
• personal, family, professional and seasonal routines.
• a loss of agency at the individual level and at the level In Ukraine it is important for everyone to sow the
of social groups. (People don’t have any influence on fields and plant vegetable gardens in the spring and
war, death, bombing, violence, etc.) harvest them in the fall
• a loss of control
• the professional environment, with its strike a balance between decreasing and increasing
relationships, contacts and routines sensation in our work.
• the opportunity to stay at home, which is
illustrated by the proverb ‘your home is your castle’ Self-support as self-reliance
• the opportunity to stay in your native country and
its customs. In Ukraine we say, ‘It is easier to walk Self-reliance or self-support is an ambiguous topic.
on one's own land’ Gestalt therapy tends to avoid splitting a person into
• As part of the context of this special edition I also ‘I’ and ‘myself’. On the other hand, self-support is also
want to acknowledge that the natural world and environmental – it is directly linked to the experience
other living beings can be a source of support as of support by others, which impacts on one’s ability
well as further grief (needing to leave pets behind or to create a supportive environment and make use of
seeing agricultural land destroyed). available resources.
For example, when I was growing up, it was very

As I write, the war has been going on for six months
common in Ukrainian culture that support and concern
and is not likely to end soon. We have the difficult task
were expressed in the form of criticism. Now, when
to build support whilst our background is collapsing.
something goes wrong, instead of looking at myself
People in towns and villages around Kyiv that survived
with love, I criticise myself. An internal monologue or
the occupation in the spring are rebuilding houses
dialogue takes place. Depending on one’s internalised
without the certainty that they will not be
experience of support, this can either sound like ‘You
destroyed again.
are a loser, you will fail’ or ‘Be patient, my love’.
Before the war, I often worked with the consequences
This internal dialogue is a product of past experience
of trauma. Now we have to work with the impact of
i.e. the environment developed this form of self-support
trauma that continues to happen every day. People
or self-sabotage. The ability of restoring the collapsed
do their best to restore some supportive pillars and
background is therefore directly linked to one’s early
resume the continuity of life even in the conditions of
attachment experience.
an unending war.
The depth and duration of PTSD depends on the level
At first, the war was experienced as an acute situation
of support available after the trauma. It also depends
of high intensity. Over time it turned into a chronic
on how a person’s basic attachment was formed. If
situation of high intensity. We are adapting. Just like
a secure attachment has been formed, the person is
we adapt to extreme heat or cold. Initially, it seems
more likely to have access to self-support, even when
that you will not survive in such heat, but after three
the background of the habitual support system has
months you adapt and even a slight coolness makes you
collapsed. With insecure attachment, a person is more
shiver. The same takes place in trauma. At first, you
likely to see rejection everywhere.
don’t know how to get through it, then you build new
support, you adapt and it becomes more difficult to deal For example, many Ukrainians are returning to
with a calm environment. The price of such adaptation Ukraine, despite the fact that the war continues and it
is desensitisation. This is a creative adjustment. is still not safe. People are returning even to insecure
cities in pursuit of familiar footholds as they have
Through trauma work, it becomes possible to regain
struggled to settle in a new place. The challenge of
sensation. Pain usually returns first. I compare this
recreating support systems in a new place can be too
to coming in from a frost. You immerse your frozen
overwhelming. That is why many people are returning
hands in warm water and, along with the blood flowing
and decide to rebuild their houses amidst an
through the vessels, the sensation of pain emerges.
ongoing war.
Despite the pain, the return of sensation is important,
as it reduces the depth and duration of PTSD.
Personality transformation
As therapists, we need to work carefully with the ability
Collapse and transformation of personality is another
of the psyche to desensitise. Although Gestaltists work
significant phenomenon of war trauma. I notice it in
with the assumption that in ordinary life sensation is a
myself, as well as in my work with clients and students.
support, in a situation of chronic and acute trauma, it is
I quote Peter Philippson’s lecture for the Kyiv Gestalt
desensitisation that can become a support. Depending
University, as presented in this British Gestalt
on the adaptive abilities of each individual, we must
Journal issue:

64 Inna Didkovska • When the familiar collapses
‘A fixed personality provides a person with stability As director of the Kyiv Gestalt Institute and a
and meaning in life, even if neither one nor the other psychotherapist who works and lives in a time of war,
suits him. Only real experience can push the client to my background and familiar support mechanisms have
change.’ been partially destroyed. This opportunity to write
has turned out to be a very big and new supporting
pillar for me. I sincerely hope that this article will
This describes the experience that most Ukrainian provide support for the Ukrainian psychotherapeutic
clients report: they say that in peacetime they would community this autumn, just as Peter Philippson's
never have made the important changes that they made course ‘Existential Gestalt’ became a supportive
in the context of war. Both clients and therapists share pillar in the summer, according to the feedback of the
that their self-image has collapsed, or continues to participating therapists.
collapse. The flexibility of self-functions, in particular
personality, and the ability to creatively adjust to a References
changing environment often ensures the resilience of a
• Eger, E. E. (2018). The Choice: Embrace the Possible.
person in difficult, existential situations. My
ideas about myself and my meaning-making are • Scribner Kaufman, W. (1989). Existentialism from
Dostoyevsky to Satre. Meridian Publishing Company
therefore changing.
For example, before the war, I used to invest energy

in online and offline educational projects about Inna Didkovska is Director of the
relationships: male-female relationships, family Kyiv Gestalt University (Ukraine), a
relationships, relationships with children. Now, this has psychotherapist with over 25 years of
almost lost its meaning for me. This does not mean that experience (Gestalt, Psychodrama and
meaning will not return, but everything that happens Process-Work) and lecturer. She is also an
outside the context of the war loses its meaning for me. active member of EAGT, EAP and FORGE.
And even the topic of family relations is now devoted to She is a Gestalt teacher, supervisor, author
family relations in the context of war. and organiser of online educational projects
(international conferences, international
Another example of the transformation of my
courses and webinars).
personality is related to the fact that before the war I
considered myself apolitical. I felt it was important that Address for correspondence:
psychotherapists take a non-political stance and be as [email protected]
neutral as possible. This has changed. Now I have a
definite political position. I will talk about it, as I have
in this article. It determines the clients I choose to work
with and what students I take on as trainees. The
range of my acceptability and tolerance has
significantly decreased.
I view these changes in the light of self-deconstruction

and self-transformation, in particular with regard to
personality and ego functions (since we make choices
based on the ID and personality functions). I have
been experiencing this self-deconstruction and self-
transformation for several months and will probably
continue to experience it for a long time, like many
other Ukrainians.
With these reflections, I would like to conclude my

commentary. I would like to thank Peter Philippson for
his lectures on existential Gestalt and Steffi Bednarek
for inviting me to contribute an article for this special
edition of the British Gestalt Journal that deals with the
‘death of the familiar’.
NECESSARY
DERANGEMENT
Climate science predicts that pandemics, extreme weather events and global challenges are going to
increase in our lifetime. The collective pull towards ‘business as usual’ is very strong. How do we adjust to
the future that is coming towards us when the culture that we have been adjusted to is costing us the Earth?
What does it take to stay with the necessary derangement of our times? And what is the role of
Steffi ad
psychotherapists in a time when we can’t rely on old habits and thought patterns to get us out of trouble?
In order to fully be able to support others on this journey, we have to attend to our own responses and our
perhaps unexamined visions and hopes. How do we participate in the collective amnesia and anaesthesia of
our time?
This day provides a container for a small journey of exploration into these themes. We ask what skills need to
be fostered in order for us to rise to the enormity that lies ahead and step into the biggest and largest version
of ourselves in order to attend to something that is larger than ourselves.
This is an online gathering for a small group of a maximum of 24 people. It includes:
- creative writing in order to loosen the ground
- invitations for the body to inform a fuller knowing
- an engagement with the other-than-human world, listening for what may lie outside of our awareness
- small group work that invites us to learn from each other in inter-connected ways
poetic imagination that speaks to our inter-being with the world
Timing: Saturday 10-4pm
Date: choice of 3 dates throughout 2023 (to be confirmed)
Cost: £95 (Concession available upon request)
Please register your interest: [email protected]
Steffi Bednarek is a psychotherapist and consultant in climate psychology, systems thinking, and trauma
informed organisational change. She has worked for national governments, the corporate sector, global
financial institutions and large NGOs. Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, the BBC, Ed
Miliband’s “Reasons to be cheerful’ Podcast, Resurgence Magazine&the Ecologist, and numerous
international publications. She is co-founder and co-editor of the journal ‘Explorations in Climate Psychology’
and guest editor of this special edition on climate change. Steffi’s work is informed by Gestalt Therapy,
Climate Psychology, Systems Thinking, Internal Family Systems and nature connection.

A New Book by
66
Ruella Frank
Foreword by Michael Vincent Miller
“Ruella Frank has given us

a great gift. Keenly
observed and richly
considered, she connects
us to the current of
contact that underlies
human experience.
Her insights into the
body’s role in both
obstructing and facilitating
entry into the present
moment are invaluable.”
Mark Epstein
author of Thoughts without a Thinker and The Zen of
Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life
A new paradigm is presented in the making of

experience through a radical and thorough investigation
into the basics of animated life.
routledge.com or amazon.com
Working with Children & Young People in Times of Adversity:

A Year-long (7 dates) Gestalt Creative Arts Intensive with Jon Blend MA
Jan 19 2023; Mar 23; May 18; July 13; Sept 14; Nov 16 + Jan 18 2024.
Venue: Friends Meeting House,

Ealing, London W5 (Good transport links)
Fee: £749 Includes refreshments,
worksheets & materials.
42 hours CPD
Information: gacp.co.uk (see Events page)
Booking: Email [email protected]
* Reasons young people enter therapy, developmental principles, family -based interviewing & assessment, Gen Z and process work, crisis-intervention,
anger and grief, safeguarding, special needs, resilience, taking arts work online/outdoors.
* Explore: drawing, clay, sand tray, improvised musicking , ensemble movement, puppets, haiku, lyric-writing, sound healing.
Jon Blend
Approved UK Trainer: Violet Solomon Oaklander Foundation. vsof.org.
CAPE COD Develop Presence, Insight

TRAINING and Skills for High-Impact
PROGRAM
Interventions
Live-Online
Live-Online: The Cape Cod Training Program offers the opportunity to

change the way you see human behavior, human connections and human
potential.
Develop Presence, Insight, and Skills for High Impact Interventions with
the Cape Cod Model.
As a participant in this program you will:

• Learn to use yourself as a powerful instrument of influence
• Develop the ability to give compelling, appreciative feedback
• Explore the Cape Cod Model as a sequence of steps for intervening with
clients
• Learn how articulating the competencethe client system is foundational
to effecting change
• Have an opportunity for extensive practice with daily feedback
• Enjoy an immersive experience that brings about profound insights and
personal growth
Learn more: https://www.gisc.org/cape-cod-training-program
PROGRAM INFORMATION: PARTICIPANTS

“Week 1” Session Dates This program is designed to benefit coaches,
Dec 1 - 3, 2022 organizational consultants, psychologists,
January 12 - 14, 2023 psychotherapists and other mental health
February 9 - 11 professionals, as well as leaders, educators,
and others.
“Week 2” Session Dates
March 9 - 11 CCTP Online will have all the interaction
March 30 - April 1 and connection you expect from GISC in
May 4 - 6
our virtual format!
All sessions are required
Sessions Meet:
Daily, Thursday - Saturday
10am - 4pm Eastern
Faculty:
Lucy Ball
Carol Brockmon
Nancy Rutkowski
CE Hours:
80
GISC • 508.349.7900 • gisc.org © Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

68
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The aim of the SOCIETY FOR EXISTENTIALANALYSIS is to provide a forum for the expression of views and the
exchange of ideas amongst those interested in the analysis of existence from philosophical and psychological
perspectives.
Membership is open to all. Visit our website:
EXISTENTIALANALYSIS.ORG.UK

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BRITISH

The Climate Change Special

Why aren’t we talking

britishgestaltjournal.com Gestalt therapy,

Rhys Price-Robertson, PhD,

Printed back issues: £13.50 + p&p per copy.

Digital back issues: £10 per copy.

Annual subscription rates vary.

Address for all correspondence

British Gestalt Journal

Subscriptions and Sales:

Copyright belongs to Gestalt Publishing Ltd. and

British Gestalt Journal is published by Gestalt

Gestalt Publishing Limited, Registered Office:

Company registered in Cardiff

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

British Gestalt Journal

Steffi Bednarek Editorial 6-7

Shelot Masithi Climate change and thirst 54-55

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

Psychotherapy in a time when the familiar is dying

The edited video recording can be viewed at britishgestaltjournal.com

Discussion can catch a scent of what soul is trying to say to us in

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

Closing with a dream

Just for some context, I've lost both my parents in the

In my dream I'm going to visit my father – he was the

But I go a different way to the way I would normally

Bayo Akomolafe, PhD, is a philosopher, Sally Weintrobe is Fellow of the British

Steffi Bednarek is a Gestalt Psychotherapist,

Mary-Jayne Rust is a British Art Therapist,

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

Why aren’t we talking about climate change?

Received 30 June 22; revised 7 September 22

eco-anxiety, psychotherapy, unconscious defences, social defences, psycho-social methods, thematic

Introduction healthy response to the CEE, rather than a pathology

Pseudonym * Gender Approx. Age Modality

Jenny Female 50s Core process

Lester Male 60s Humanistic/

Lee Female 60s Gestalt

Nellie Female 60s Integrative

Amanda Female 50s Core process

Sarah Female 50s Person-centred

Rob Male 30s Dramatherapy

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

Seven clients were recruited through a similar sampling method.

Clients were unconnected with the therapists.

Seven participants were recruited:

Pseudonym * Gender Age

Deborah Female 30s

*All names have been changed to ensure anonymity

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

Disavowal and avoidance were also evident. On the one

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

© Copyright 2022 Gestalt Publishing Ltd.

Conclusions • Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2021) Can I use TA? Should

• Macy, J. and Johnstone, C. (2012) Active Hope: How to Appendix