Environmental Crisis and Pandemic. a Challenge for Psychoanalysis

Starting from the foreword written by Robert D. Hinshelwood, the British analyst points out that over four centuries mankind has conquered all the dangers and is out exploring new worlds in space, but that sense of triumph and omnipotence - and what he calls the "Disneyfication" of Nature - could turn against it, and this pandemic might represent a rupture in that overblown omnipotent confidence. From a psychoanalytic point of view, when omnipotence shatters, it is replaced by vulnerable impotence and danger. In this 'pandemonium', i. e. demons everywhere, where the much celebrated virtue of enlightenment thinking seems to be eclipsed on a global scale, as the virus makes our throats dry and our breath short, Nature could claim us as its helpless creatures. To date we have dealt with our concerns about climate change by reassuring ourselves with our omnipotence - "we caused it and in our omnipotence we have the means to cure it" - indulging ourselves to think we are the controllers of climate change, "and the globe is there simply for us to manage for our own purposes". After the writing by Robert D. Stolorow, and the introduction written by the editor, Giuseppe Leo, the chapters by Nancy McWilliams, Anna Ferruta, Hilda Catz, Giuseppe Riefolo, Merav Roth, and Cosimo Schinaia concern how psychoanalysis is a tool for interpretation of the pandemic crisis at various levels (individual, social, political) but also how to practice analysis dealing with the conditions under which it is possible in such an unprecedented global context. Moreover, Pietro Roberto Goisis writes about his experience of survivor of coronavirus. Finally, Marco Francesconi and Daniela Scotto di Fasano write about climate change from a psychoanalytic point of view.