Renee Lertzman

As it’s probably evident, this blog is on hiatus as I write up my PhD thesis, ‘The Myth of Apathy”. I submit around Christmas time. I will reinvigorate the blog then, very likely in the direction of my post-doctoral work.

In the meantime check out the Identity Campaign blog, launched by WWF-UK on the back of their excellent reports on consumption, identity and politics of climate change communications.

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I am thinking a lot at present about the process of dissociation and splitting. This seems to go to the heart of our current dilemmas and struggles to get our minds, language and hearts around the urgent (yes, urgent) ecological situation we are in. I was going to write, ‘we find ourselves in’ out of habit, but then this seems to reinforce once again the sense that it’s something that has happened-to us, rather than something we are part of, embedded in, and participating in all the time, as I type on the keyboard, drink my coffee and so on.

Splitting and dissociation seem to be at the heart of the industrial phenomenon. I am sure this has been written about, perhaps in different language, e.g. the Marxist critique of production of goods and labor is a form of splitting. It is the core dissociation at the center of our  way of life, our way of being. Picking up an item at the shop is part of the dissociation. The beginnings of commerce, of goods and products to sell. As we have refined our practices and techniques, the web of services, goods and relations has become nigh invisible. Hence, the move towards locality, meeting your growers at the farmer’s market… attempts to heal this rift. Part of us wants to connect. And when we do connect, sometimes the experience is shattering and traumatic, as demonstrated with BBC Three’s series “Blood, Sweat and Take-Aways” (a variation on the sweatshop series last year). Or the equally strange and radical series, “Kill It, Cook it, Eat It” in which a studio audience is treated to a demonstration of a slaughter (yes, purpose built at the studio), processing and the eventual culinary treatment (and consumption but not by all, needless to say). What is most fascinating about these programs is the very fact that there are always a percentage of people who refuse to consume the goods, once they have seen it’s source. The bits of fashion found at cheap high street shops no longer have their allure once you’ve seen the workers sleeping on the floor under their worktable, or have had to do this yourself for a harrowing 24 hours. The take-away curry is not as appetising once you see the way the prawns are processed in Indonesia, or have had to shovel the mud yourself in the hot sun. The intensively farmed chicken is not so tasty once you have seen or even visited one of these pens full of fat and lame chickens.

I am convinced that this tells us something vital about how we dissociate in order to enjoy the fruits of a cheap global market economy. The process of dissociation is something Freud wrote about over a hundred years ago; despite the immense sophistication and accuracy of some of his work, we continue to find reasons to deride Freud. However he wrote about this fundamental splitting and ability to “disavow”, to both know and not-know threatening information in order to function. This basic insight has since been refined and remains at the heart of most psychotherapeutic approaches and treatment (with the notable exception of cognitive behavioral therapy, which can’t really be bothered with such messy and complicated stuff). That is, that we split off “good” and “bad” sensations, experiences, thoughts and memories in order to proceed “as if.” Or as Lifton noted, we become numb when confronted with circumstances too painful or overwhelming to mentally or emotionally process. It’s as if we are all to some degree partially awake, partially conscious, sleepwalking through the shops, malls, highways, sidewalks. This makes total sense, of course. We cannot, by necessity be aware or conscious of everything all the time. It’s an inbuilt survival mechanism, one that works exceedingly well for most. And yet, Freud wrote about this “rift” in consciousness, that comes at a cost. There is a price, he says, for splitting off our consciousness. This price, it is suggested, is a lack of authenticity, of agency. We become cut off from a vital part of ourselves.

So the question then is what can be done. My thinking about this follows along the lines of the gifted psychotherapists I’ve been fortunate to have known or read over the years, which often combines compassion with a healthy dose of realism. It does no use to berate ourselves, but to seek understanding. This doesn’t mean saying, ‘there, there, it’s OK to enjoy your cheap, sweat-shop produced T-shirt/shoes/computer/stereo/camera” but rather to say, Yep, I’m part of this system and to some degree I have very limited control over what I can do. But I also have some control over what I can do. It means noticing the splitting and dissociation and having curiosity about it, and dedicating onself to compassionately seek to ‘associate’ rather than dis-associate.

I am tired of reading people who only deride, chastise and berate. I am tired of anything that suggests berating ourselves is in any way acceptable. Is it ever OK for a parent to berate a child for misbehaving? Having known adults who were raised in such environments, my answer is no. Such individuals are plagued with a chronic sense of disempowerment, insecurity and self loathing. Most insidious is the caustic effects of guilt, which can literally eat away at an individual’s sense of worth, value and capacity to make a difference. Persecutory guilt plagues many newcomers to our current ecological mess, is reinforced by environmental media campaigns, tapping right into our sense of worthlessness (e.g. original sinners that we are), and has been shown to rarely translate into good acts. Nothing good can come from this.
Understanding our way through dissociation does not mean being a pansy and accepting it. It is not a wimpy approach. It’s a powerful assertion of what is really happening, and a loving ability to face this straight on. It’s what Hanna Segal wrote about with regard to reparation. We need to face our losses and griefs and disappointments, so we can then move on towards position and “repairing” activities. We will be angry and frustrated and irritated, but it’s not a place to dwell in.

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It’s been a very busy few weeks!

A few weeks ago, I was at the conference Psychological and Political Challenges of Facing Climate Change, hosted by the Center for Psycho-Social Studies at University of West of England, and Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility UK. The organizers kindly invited me to lead one of the workshops on the topic of apathy and my research. The conference was very well attended, attracting about 160 delegates, which indicates the rise of interest in these topics. Keynote presentations by George Marshall of COIN, Paul Hoggett and Mary-Jayne Rust seemed to reflect very well the various facets of how these topics are addressed, from the communications/activist orientation, to theoretical/analytic, to psychotherapeutic and “ecopsychological.”

I’ve been a bit involved in searching out various post-doctoral opportunities, and in the process got to know Professor Jan Haaken a bit, a Professor of Psychology at Portland State, who also is engaged with critical psychological approaches, psychoanalytic orientations and multi-media (Jan is a documentary filmmaker). We did an interview together on KBOO, Portland community radio. You can listen to the interview here.

I hope to have more contact with Jan and folks at Portland State University, as it is host now to a growing new sustainabilty initiative, the Center for Sustainable Processes and Practices, and have also formed a wonderful connection with the Portland Center for Public Humanities.  Such programs really do need representation from psychology and in particular, more analytic approaches.

In the meantime, I am working away at my PhD thesis… stay tuned for periodic updates and reviews.

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Just a note to say the website is in ‘transition’ mode… Will be taking more focused approach of thought pieces relating to communications/environment/psychology/culture. Whew! Stay tuned. And thanks for your support!

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I’ve been reading something I picked up by chance, From Freud’s Consulting Room: The unconscious in a scientific age, by Judith Hughes. I suppose the full title says it all: what does it mean to consider the unconscious in an age where the scientific approach rules?

This question means a lot, when it comes to how we study people’s responses to serious ecological problems. For so many decades now, people working on behalf of nature, animals, non-human life, protection of places, wildness and resource quality (air, water, soil, etc) have been trying to understand 1) why don’t more people want to protect nature and care for our ecological resources and 2) what gets in the way of helping people become more environmentally inclined. Approaches to these profoundly complicated questions tend to branch out into the micro or macro — the study of behavior, attitudes, values and ethics, and/or the study of social groups, cultural trends and how views shift and change over time. Very rarely do these areas intersect, dialog or intertwine. And how much closer are we, really, from understanding these questions?

This is the focus of my work, and it’s no wonder that I often feel overwhelmed and frustrated. However, when I think about the essence of what I want to know, it tends to come back to the same thing: how do messages about our declining or threatened environment (read: world, ground of being) feel, shape us, inform how we think and perceive, and resonant? And this then leads me into the persistent sense that there is more to the picture than calculating what changes attitudes towards the environment. For are we not a lot more complex than a set of attitudes and values which can be segmented and categorized, and marketed to?

For various reasons, looking and incorporating unconscious processes into our analyses is not particularly popular. Why this is requires some consideration. As we may suspect, it has a lot to do with the dominance of needing to measure, feel and ’see’ (observe) in order to study and analyze. However, this seems to fly in the face of hundreds of years of real innovation in the clinical psychotherapeutic arts. What has happened to the work that takes place every day, in consulting rooms and between people, or that is written up in volumes of studies that explore with great nuance and sophistication, how and why people avoid pain, difficulty and anxiety, and the way that anxiety often forces much underground. That is, below the surface.

To examine and study unconscious processes in relation to the environment therefore raises many sticky issues. However, as I’ve suggested, I feel it may be our only hope if we want to really understand the impact of messages and how we choose to respond, act and behave. But how can we study something that may not be apparent? If unconscious processes are, as suggested, unconscious, then are we not faced with a methodological bind?

I believe we are, but I don’t feel it’s unsurpassable. In fact, I believe this is the frontier of understanding, that can join up with neurosciences and all sorts of work coming out of contemporary psychological research. But what I don’t understand, is how it came to be that as psychologists, we have consistently disavowed the very heritage that gave rise to the field. Is it possible to bring the unconscious into our research?

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I just posted another piece to the Green Awards blog.

I wanted to highlight what seems to be a shift in focus from trying to get people to buy more green products, and a more considered and values-based approach.

This approach to appealing to values, and more interestingly how we can consciously shape or change them to be more ecologically sensitive or attuned, is somewhat related to what I’m exploring in my psycho-social research at the moment. What I appreciate is that it’s a move away from status quo, as if we can smooth over the “ruptures” as Toby Smith writes about in her brilliant book The Myth of Green Marketing. (And if you are Toby or know her whereabouts, please email me!)

I’m thinking a lot these days about agency, and how we come to feel we are ‘agents’ in our world. This relates to both personal, biographical, psychic contexts, and political, social and cultural forces as well. It would seem at least in parts of the States, there has been a gradual erosion of trust or engagement in the political process. Particularly for certain segments (e.g. more working class), there seems almost a given resignation. This frustrates me, when I see how much people care about their place, environment, whatever have you, and yet feel it’s totally out of their power. It’s like how we feel as children towards the Adults. They call the shots. They exercise the control. We are children.

How did this happen?

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I have just posted a new blog on the Green Awards website… check it out!

I am very angry about the recent cuts at NCAR of its social sciences programming. You can read all about it and recent discussions here.

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We want our world to support: to hold, carry, contain. We yearn for the resting place, the release into another: tree, ocean, meadow, rock, fog. Arms. Sand bars. Waters. We look upward and outward, for reassurance, respite; you are here, the stars like tiny pinpricks in our vast knowledge of nothing; you are here, and it is okay, the crunch of leaves under our feet, the scent of a jasmine opening in the evening cool, glowing luminous as tiny moons. We reach and touch, search and etch, tiny movements and designs, webbing and netting ourselves into this world. And yet, the world skims our desires, or at least plays with it, like a trickster, or more sinisterly, a magician teasing and taunting, flashing silk scarves and tufts of white fur, roses. For you are here, we are here. And the flower, the jasmine, the rock and the river, invite and rebuff. We want to disappear into this watery, rocky, sandy, verdant place — to feel the moist leaves on our fingertips, sink toes into the damp soil, the chill of water sending our heart beating. We want the envelop of heat: You are here. Instead, we sit at tables, the fork clinks on the plate, and I see my reflection in the glass. The clouds cover the skies full of pinpricks, reminders of our place, however incomprehending and dumb, locators and coordinates sparking over our heads. We lose ourselves, in the mixed up flights and migrations, in the stone and rock, the ground granite smoothed. But we are here, the tea cup says, the clang of the cafe; the silent walking, the ground, always the ground. I am reaching, I am tracing your veins, under the skin. Is this a map? Are we here?

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I was trawling the web in search of a good chocolate chip recipe (they really are mostly the same) when I came across a piece about Alice Waters in the New York Times. (Okay, I was looking for a really good recipe.) The article is great - but the real gem is the video on how to “work a farmers market” Alice Waters style (my favorite bit is when she’s checking out the peppers - I miss fresh, just picked peppers!) I watched all several minutes in rapture; certainly one of the nicest things I’ve seen in a while (at least for me; sorry to say British farmers’ markets sort of lacks some of the jouissance, although I’m grateful for them all the same). This is just pure, simple life affirming stuff. God I miss American farmer’s markets; New York and Berkeley and Portland, all blow everyone out of the water.

Also, a point of personal trivia: I was once hired to work for the now-obsolete Alice Waters.com website, published by Time/Warner, which involved doing an inventory of every farmer’s market in the United States! I had to call every farmer’s market organizer in the States and confirm dates, times, and so on. It was a lovely website, with recipes and columns; too bad it folded.

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I am very pleased to have been invited to speak at the forthcoming Communicate Now conference, in Bristol later this year. This event is organized by the Bristol Natural History Consortium, an innovative collaboration of leading UK national environmental groups and agencies. I am also happy to hear the conference format is designed for more dialog and interactivity, less presentations, which is hopefully a new model for conferences. How many of us attend conferences, only to wonder afterwards who else was in the room?

Also on a related environmental communications note, Green Awards has asked me to contribute a few blogs in lead up to their event in November. You can learn more about the Green Awards here.

post-script… I just received a call for papers for the upcoming ASLE conference. It seems that indeed there is a new model for conferences… well done! Why haven’t we been doing this before; don’t all conferences need to be run “to make it count”?
MAKE IT COUNT: ASLE RESPONDS TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS
At ASLE’s last biennial conference at Wofford College in 2007, Bill
McKibben said that if we were going to travel to a conference in a
time of climate crisis, we should “make it count.” We have taken this
call to heart and made a number of changes to this year’s conference
in order to justify the costs of our collective resource use as best
we can. In addition to creating as “green” a conference as possible in
terms of our ecological footprint, we have attempted to create an
intellectual and creative space where things can happen *that would
not happen otherwise.* In particular, we have adapted the schedule to
include more time for conversation, dialogue, and discussion in the
hope that these exchanges will help to inspire creativity and
innovation. These adaptions include new breakfast discussions, longer
lunches, longer concurrent sessions, more time between sessions,
informal discussions for attendees with special interests, a new
presentation format, and several large concurrent discussion sessions
for everyone at the end of the conference. More info here.

Incidentally ASLE have been producing probably the best environmental/ecologically-themed gatherings and conferences for decades; particularly the interdisciplinary events hosted at University of Nevada-Reno. I highly recommend attending!

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