Individual and group defense mechanisms in front of the environmental crisis

Journal title RIVISTA SPERIMENTALE DI FRENIATRIA
Author/s Cosimo Schinaia
Publishing Year 2025 Issue 2025/3
Language Italian Pages 17 P. 137-153 File size 629 KB
DOI 10.3280/RSF2025-003007
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After a brief examination of the main positions of psychoanalysis from Freud to the present day, the article specifically addresses the most significant defense mechanisms, both at the individual and group level, against awareness of the severity of the current climate crisis. In order to respond adequately, it is necessary to change individual and family dynamics and lifestyles and allow, in a new dimension of fraternal collaboration, for every single sustainable action to be creative, respectfully restorative, and part of a global renewal through a resumption of individual responsibility, within a horizon of meaning that strictly refers to the reality principle, but opposes the skepticism of those who think that the individual is condemned to powerlessness. Psychoanalysis is not a luxury, but a necessary investigative tool to be added to the reparative tools we have at our disposal for the salvation of the planet and humankind. Psychoanalysis can help to place values other than the continuous expansion of consumption and production at the center of human life, to revive in ourselves the ability to think and dream of a better future, and to commit ourselves and contribute to the enhancement of a sense of moderation and the maintenance of a sufficiently good life, in which there can be room for love and creativity, countering magical and illusory thinking and contemplating with integrity and sincerity even the unpleasant aspects of existence without forcing ourselves or taking manic shortcuts.

Keywords: Climate change, ecology, defense mechanisms, individual, group.

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Cosimo Schinaia, I meccanismi di difesa individuali e gruppali nei confronti della crisi ambientale in "RIVISTA SPERIMENTALE DI FRENIATRIA" 3/2025, pp 137-153, DOI: 10.3280/RSF2025-003007