Abstract
This chapter discusses collaborative research into the psychological experience of activists engaged with climate issues. Its depth psychological approach highlights unconscious dynamics occurring within, and between, participants of ongoing group discussions. Dream sharing within these discussions helped participants to explore what they habitually censored, marginalised or overlooked in their negotiation of the complex and disruptive aspects of climate change. Through the research process, participants identified contradictory desires and conflicts, re-examined core values, confronted existential anxieties, and worked through the emotions of profound change, helping to develop maturity and resilience. These outcomes suggest the need for open and respectful dialogues around climate issues which can examine deep-seated assumptions in non-threatening ways while encouraging the commonality of whom we are and where we are to emerge.
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Notes
- 1.
Curated by David Buckland on behalf of Cape Farewell.
- 2.
Although the idea of a linear sequence is antithetical to our conceptual framework, there is a rationale for proceeding in this way, namely that the matrix proceeds by associations. The sequence is not always linear, as we discuss, but there is a sequence, which necessarily begins in linearity at the start of the matrix. At a later stage in the matrix that linearity gives way to rhizomatic structures.
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Manley, J., Hollway, W. (2019). Climate Change, Social Dreaming and Art: Thinking the Unthinkable. In: Hoggett, P. (eds) Climate Psychology. Studies in the Psychosocial. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11741-2_7
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