Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis

Sally Weintrobe is a Fellow of The British Psychoanalytical Society, a founder member of the Climate Psychology Alliance and she Chairs the International Psychoanalytic Association’s (IPA’s) Committee on Climate. In 2021 she won an award from the IPA for her work on climate. Her past publications include, as editor and contributor, Engaging with Climate Change, short-listed in 2014 for the International Gradiva Prize for contributions to psychoanalysis.

Preface
Introduction
EXCEPTIONALISM: THE PSYCHOLOGY EXPLAINED
1. The conflicted self
2. The ordinary exception (contained by care)
3. The Exception (in charge and unbound)

EXCEPTIONALISM’S RISE TO POWER IN THE NEOLIBERAL AGE
4. Neoliberal Exceptionalism
5. Friedrich Hayek and James Buchanan
6. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
7. Globalizing the neoliberal way
8. Neoliberals’ rise to power
9. The earth seen as a globe
10. Implementing neoliberal economic policy

WHAT CONTAINS EXCEPTIONALISM
11. Frameworks of care
12. The power of love

THE CULTURE OF UNCARE
13. Culture and the birth of consumerism
14. Neoliberalism’s culture of uncare

HOW THIS CULTURE OPERATES
15. New Speak
16. The World Bank using New Speak
17. Mass media
18. Promoting denial
19. Advertising
20. Political framing
21. Blocking tears
22. Infantilizing people

WE COLLUDE
23. On collusion

EXCEPTIONALISM GROWS FRAUD BUBBLES
24. Case studies: Enron and fund managers
25. The corporation
26. Social groups
27. Trickledown

THE NEW CARING IMAGINATION TODAY
28. Paradigm shift
29. Frameworks of care for a sustainable world
30. Living on Planet Earth not Planet La La

THE CLIMATE BUBBLE IS BURSTING
31. The damage
32. Living with our feelings about the climate crisis

‘THE CRAZY’: EXCEPTIONALISM RUNS AMOK
33. ‘The crazy’ in politics
34. Noah’s Arkism 21st-century style
35. We are gods
36. The ‘all or nothing-ness’ of having to be ideal
37. Bad leaders drive ‘the crazy’
38. The problem of guilt
39. Good leaders

Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References
Index