2nd Prague conference
otto fenichel
AND HIS LEGACY

Fenichel was well known for his engagement with the social as well as clinical sphere, whose era coincided with a time of immense social and political upheavals of Nazism and Stalinism. In recent years several psychoanalytic thinkers (eg. Dodds 2011, Weintrobe 2012, Lertzman 2016, Searles 1972) have attempted to address perhaps the defining challenge of our own times: climate change and the environmental crisis. Human effects on planetary systems now rival the great forces of nature with scientists proclaiming a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. The psychological causes and consequences of this momentous fact are in urgent need of psychoanalytic investigation. This paper seeks to articulate the legacy of Fenichel and his ideas, through a reading of several key papers, with emerging psychoanalytic approaches to the climate crisis.