Facilitated by Andrew Bryant and Alexandra Woollcott, from the Alliance of Climate Therapists - Northwest, this study groups meets regularly on zoom on the third Friday of every month. The goal of the group is to discuss a reading, film or other piece of media related to climate psychology.
In the October meeting, the group will discuss The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. The meeting with will be held over zoom at: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87837846379 (Meeting ID: 878 3784 6379)
Kathleen Wells, PhD, Professor Emerita, Case Western Reserve University, will lead the discussion of the 2020 book. She has said of the book: “This book is, in Stephen Frug's phrasing, a modernist novel, a science fiction novel, a utopian novel, and a political novel, but it does not conform to the form of any one of these genres. The novel opens in 2025 after a "wet bulb" heat event in India kills 20 million people in one week. The novel then, through weird and interesting ways, sketches the pathways through which humanity and the planet move forward from this and through other climate-related catastrophes. It is simultaneously a grim book and a hopeful book.
There is much in the text to discuss in relation to the consequences of the climate catastrophe for mental health, including questions such as:
Is PTSD an adequate framework with which to understand individuals' reactions to extreme weather events? Are the consequences of extreme weather events even best understood in terms of individual as opposed to communal experience? How can individuals come to terms, or should they, with violence committed in the name of restorative climate action and social justice? The book alludes to a communal "structure of feeling" that defines an age: Do we have communal structures of feeling in our society, and what might be the implications of these structures for despair, optimism, or healing in relation to the climate catastrophe? How might we understand the psychic consequences of living through a time of multiple revolutions (of understanding, of standards, of the prevalence (and loss of) species and habitat) in a world that is increasingly less habitable?”
Here are two reviews of the book that might be helpful:
See New York Times: https://www.amazon.com/Ministry-Future-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0316300136)