States of Emergency: Trauma and Climate Change

Abstract

In the midst of climate change—a process that is undisputedly traumatic and is perhaps even the greatest trauma—understanding trauma and its effects on our minds and bodies has become more important than ever. Similarly, climate change can be aptly understood as having evolved as a result of traumatic experience—aggression, isolation, addiction. Much of the diagnostic description of the ills facing the world has been likened to mental illness, a fact that only points more definitively toward trauma as a factor.

Research on the effects of trauma—how the human mind and body react to perceived threats and overwhelming affect—has made leaps and bounds within the last 20 years. Body-based psychotherapies have focused on treating the psyche and soma while neuroscience has edged closer to mapping its effects within the brain and psychoanalysis has continued to shed light on the intrapsychic mental processes at play. All of this amounts to an awakening to the pervasive nature of trauma and to its relevance to what has been called “the issue of our time” (Moon, 2011).

This theoretical paper briefly summarizes some of the current literature on trauma with a particular focus on dissociative processes and trauma's effects on the brain. These developing theories are described as they may relate to working with climate change on individual and collective levels, pointing toward the importance of a cogent understanding of trauma within the context of the climate change discussion.

Key Words: Climate change—Trauma—Ecopsychology—Attachment—Dissociation.

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