Dr. Joseph Dodds visits CFPS

CFPS hosts visiting lecturer Dr. Joseph Dodds on Saturday, April 11, 2015 from 9-11 AM at 900 Lovett. The title of his lecture is Feeling the Heat...What is Ecopsychoanalysis? Psychoanalysis and Climate Change in the Three Ecologies. Seating is limited. Must RSVP to 713-524-0790 or info@cfps-tx.org no later than Wednesday, April 8.What role can psychoanalysis play in understanding the ecological crisis and climate change? In our era of anxiety, denial, paranoia, apathy, guilt, rage, terror and despair in the face of climate change, there is an urgent need for a psychoanalytic approach to ecology, and an ecological approach to psychoanalysis. Drawing on the presenter’s book Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos (Dodds 2011) an ecopsychoanalytic approach suggests the need to move our psychoanalytic perspective beyond the confines of the family and even wider social system, to include relations with the other than human world, a move begun by Searles (1960, 1972). In contrast to the schizoid fragmented space of the university, divided into ever narrower sub-fields, climate change forces us to think transversally, about a world of unpredictable, multiple-level, highly complex, nonlinear interlocking systems. How does a phantasy impact on an ecosystem, and vice versa? There is a need for a way of thinking able to integrate the disparate strands of analysis, related to what the psychoanalyst Bion (1984) calls the work of ‘linking’, connected with the alpha-function and the dreamwork. The philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (2003) combined with the sciences of complexity and chaos can build on psychoanalytic perspectives to offer a new framework, or rather a 'meshwork' (DeLanda 2006), able to integrate Guattari's (2000) 'three ecologies' of mind, nature and society.Ecopsychoanalysis is a new transdisciplinary approach to thinking about the relationship between psychoanalysis, ecology, the ‘natural’, and the problem of climate change. It draws on a range of fields including psychoanalysis, psychology, ecology, philosophy, science, complexity theory, aesthetics and the humanities. This paper seeks to introduce the main coordinates of this perspective, with the aim of helping to open up a psychoanalysis of ecology, and an ecological approach to mind, phantasy and the dynamics of the therapeutic process. How can we, as individuals, societies and as a species, bear the anxiety involved with attempting to ask the question, how are we to survive?

Dr. Dodds is a Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) and Associate Fellow (AFBPsS) of the British Psychological Society, and a Candidate Member of the Czech Psychoanalytical Society (International Psychoanalytical Association). He lectures at three universities in Prague: Charles University's CIEE Study Centre, the University of New York in Prague and the Anglo-American University, where he has taught courses in psychology, psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Dr. Dodds is the founder of the Prague Neuropsychoanalysis Group (International Neuropsychoanalysis Society), and is a member of the Management Committee of the Climate Psychology Alliance. Dr. Dodds has lived and worked primarily in Prague since 1999. His current research interests include the increasingly productive dialogue between psychoanalysis and the neurosciences, as well as the application of psychological and psychoanalytic insight to the domains of culture, society, art and nature.

A selective list of his publications follows:

• Dodds, J (2014) (forthcoming) Introducing Psychoanalysis: Theoretical, Clinical, Applied. Open University Press

• Dodds, J (2013d) Climate Change, Violence, and Social Disorder and Collapse. Ecopsychoanalysis. August 16, 2013

• Dodds, J (2013c) Minding the Ecological Body: Ecopsychoanalysis and Neuropsychoanalysis. Frontiers in Psychology. 4:125. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00125

• Dodds, J (2013b) Struggling with the reality-principle: Why carbon footprint feedback can backfire, and how psychoanalysis can help. Ecopsychoanalysis March 17, 2013

• Dodds, J (2013a) Cloud Atlas: Clouds are Alive - New Scientific Research Shows. Ecopsychoanalysis. February 8, 2013

• Dodds, J. (2012e) Hurricane Sandy, the psychology of environmental trauma, and the unpreparedness of our mental health care systems (Dodds 2012). Ecopsychoanalysis, November 2, 2012.

• Dodds, J. (2012d) Animal Totem and Taboos: An Ecopsychoanalytic Perspective.Psyart Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts. November 26, 2012

• Dodds, J (2012c) Paint it Black: The Psychological Significance of the Art of Hard Rock. Art of Hard Rock Exhibition 2012.

• Dodds, J (2012b) Farewell Lucian Freud (1922-2011): Master Painter of the Subjective Body. Psyart Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts. January 17, 2012

• Dodds, J (2012a) The Ecology of Phantasy: Ecopsychoanalysis and the three ecologies, in Rust, M-J. & Totton, N. (2012) Vital Signs: Psychological Responses to Ecological Crisis. Karnac

• Dodds, J (2011d) Rozloučení s Lucianem Freudem (1922–2011), mistrem malby subjektivního těla. Revue Psychoanalytická Psychoterapie. 2011XIII/2 zima. Čas v psychoanalyze.

• Dodds, J (2011c) Psychoanalýza a klimatická změna: nový pohled na tři ekologie (Psychoanalysis and Climate Change: Re-Thinking the Three Ecologies). Revue Psychoanalytická Psychoterapie. 2011XIII/2 zima. Čas v psychoanalyze.

• Dodds, J (2011b) Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos: complexity theory, Deleuze|Guattari, and psychoanalysis for a climate in crisis. Routledge

• Dodds, J (2011a) The Monstrous Brain: A Neuropsychoanalytic Aesthetics of Horror. Psyart Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts

• Dodds, J (2010) Affective Finance: Psychoanalysis and the Economic Crisis. The Living Document: Journal of the Institute of Counseling. Winter 201. Vol. 3 No. 3. pp14-17

• Dodds, J (2009b) Prague Neuropsychoanalysis Group: From Moravian Screen Memories to Groups, Complexity, Psychosomatics and Bi-Logic. Neuropsychoanalysis Vol 11. Issue 1, 141

• Dodds, J (2009a) Artificial Group Psychodynamics: Emergence of the Collective. Simulating the Mind: a technical neuropsychoanalytic approach. Springer: Wien, New York. pp.347-366