Ecology, psychoanalysis and global warming: Present and future traumas

This editorial introduces a special issue of the Journal of Social Work Practice bringing together psychoanalytic perspectives on ecology and global warming. Opening with Freud's observation that humans are threatened with suffering from three directions - the body, the external world, and other people - the editors argue that while no single way of communicating about the climate crisis is sufficient, multiple approaches each offer valuable pathways into a complex field that evokes fear, anxiety, despair, anger, grief, guilt and shame. The issue's contributions are framed around the difficulty of absorbing successive waves of frightening climate information before attention moves on to the next crisis.