Climatic Grief
Abe Geldhof
“On Transience” Today
It may surprise some that psychoanalysts have begun to take an interest in the current ecological drama. However, Lacan had indicated to “whoever cannot meet at its horizon the subjectivity of his time […]”[1] that he should rather give up analytical practice.
Today we are witnessing what scientists are calling the third wave of extinction. Our bodies and our desires are being impacted. In this context, to speak of climate change is an unacceptable euphemism. Instead, we are rather dealing with a disruption [dérèglement][2] and destruction of our environment. We can already foresee that the new migratory flows will put a strain on social bonds. The decline of the landscape in South Sudan and the resulting climate war are a gloomy but premonitory prospect in this regard.[3]
What is new about it? How are we affected by it? And why should psychoanalysts be concerned about it?
Éric Laurent expresses the novelty we are facing very well: “The consideration of the effects of global warming opens up a dimension that the effect of weapons of mass destruction was still veiling. It is human activity as such, beyond what can occur in the antagonism of wars, that endangers the human species.”[4] The atomic bomb could still make us believe that it was enough to stop the madman, the only madman, the one who was going to annihilate the human species. With climate change, it becomes clear that self-destruction no longer depends on anyone – rather, it depends on everyone.
That this situation affects us can be heard in our practice: young people no longer see a future for themselves, adults no longer see one for their offspring whom they hesitate to bring into the world. This reminds us of the exchange between Freud and Rilke in “On Transience.”[5] But are we still faced with the same transience as the early 20th century? In this regard, we refer to the novel Aberrant[6] by the Czech writer Marek Šindelka, which suggests that the shadow of a fault is beginning to fall on modern man, causing, he says, climatic grief [chagrin climatique]. Not everyone, however, reacts melancholically to this climate situation. Some people simply want to live faster and more intensely, like those athletes who, hearing the final whistle, want to shift into higher gear.
In any case, and as Geert Hoornaert has emphasised, climate change is a matter of our relationship to jouissance. Virginie Leblanc added, during a conversation at the Kring voor psychoanalyse, that it also modifies the social bond. Jouissance and social bond, this is the very field of psychoanalysis.
Translation Joanne Conway
References
[1] Lacan J., “Function and field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis,” Écrits, The First Complete Edition in English Edition, London, New York, Norton & Co., 2006, p. 264.
[2] Cf. Lynas M., Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, New York, Harper Collins, 2021.
[3] Cf. Welzer H., Climate Wars: What People Will Be Killed For in the 21st Century, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2017.
[4] Laurent É., « L'angoisse du savant et son symptôme écologique », Mental, No. 46, November 2022, p. 25.
[5] Freud S., (1915) “On Transience,” The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 14, London, Hogarth, 1957, p. 303.
[6] Cf. Šindelka M., Aberrant, Prague, Twisted Spoon Press, 2017.