Climate, Psychology and Change

Reimagining Psychotherapy in an Era of Global Disruption and Climate Anxiety

Psychology in times of ecological collapse.

“This is more than a book. It is a treasure of radical ideas and profound insights. It is a book of wisdom!”

—Satish Kumar

Climate, Psychology, and Change reckons with the ways power, colonialism, capitalism and our innocent seeming familiar perceptions impact our myriad crises - while shaping Western psychology as we know it. Our society’s ‘normal’ is profoundly unwell and our familiar ways of being reflect the same unsustainable systems that erode our ecosystems, accelerate global destruction, and extract our humanity. Moving towards healing means evolving the way we think about who we are.

Editor and climate psychologist Steffi Bednarek co-created an anthology unlike anything you’ve read before: a necessary response, an urgent appeal, and a fearless look forward at how we care for ourselves and others, eyes wide open, with compassion and skill in an uncertain world.

Order your copy of the book today.

  • Within Western paradigms, psychotherapy is seen as a way to bring a distressed person back within the realm of the familiar. But our collective “familiar” is fragile, built on dominant norms that accelerate global destruction, extract from our communities, and erode our futures.

    We can no longer think of therapeutic practice as bringing clients back to baseline “normal” when our normal is profoundly unwell. Instead, we need to evolve therapy. Climate, Psychology, and Change brings together a diverse group of psychologists and mental health practitioners calling for a sea change.

    Editor and climate psychotherapist Steffi Bednarek makes the case for a regenerative disturbance to the commons of our profession—an urgent and insistent call to action that meets the sobering realities of our moment with profound hope for positive change.

    Essays explore topics like:

    ⦿ What decolonizing therapy and re-visioning the field could look like

    ⦿ Using therapeutic tools to respond to trauma

    ⦿ What psychologists can offer movements for social change and climate justice

    ⦿ How to navigate unhelpful responses to climate emergency

    ⦿ Fostering individual and community resilience

    ⦿ Nurturing creative solutions to our complex and intersecting crises

    Holistic and intersectional, this collection reckons with the ways in which relationships of power, colonialism, and capitalism both reflect and inform the discipline of psychology as we know it. With the inclusion of essays written by clinicians from the Global South, Climate, Psychology, and Change is a collection unlike anything you’ve read before: a necessary response, an urgent appeal, and a fearless look forward at how we care for ourselves and our clients, eyes wide open, with compassion and skill in an uncertain world.

Endorsements

  • "Climate change is a systemic problem with geophysical, technological, economic, political, and ethical dimensions, among others. The in-depth exploration of our climate crisis from a mental-health perspective, offered in this book, will be an important contribution to an urgently needed dialogue."

    Fritjof Capra, author of The Web of Life, co-author of The Systems View of Life

  • “ A broad range of perspectives are brought together in this collection of marvellous essays showing that the human soul cannot be healthy on a sick planet. The healing of the anima mundi and the healing of the human soul depend on each other. This is more than a book, it is a treasure of radical ideas and profound insights. It is a book of wisdom! The Editor, Steffi Bednarek has woven a garland of great thoughts which will inspire the reader to look at the world and see it as an interconnected whole."

    Satish Kumar, Founder, Schumacher College and Editor Emeritus, Resurgence & Ecologist

  • "Nothing is what it seems, the symptom is not the problem, psychology is not just psychology. There is a necessary blurring that brings transcontextual combining into every moment of life. The response is not a strategy, but rather a shifted ecology of perception. As this era unravels the stitchery of so many destructive illusions woven tightly into the last several centuries, new questions are surfacing. The familiar is a trap of traps wrapped and soaked in separations that perpetuate the existing habits over and over again. There is so much possibility just waiting but it looks nothing like it used to. This beautiful book leaves nothing behind.

    Nora Bateson, filmmaker, educator, and author of Combining

  • "This powerful collection explores how psychotherapy can help us face the unfolding reality of climate change, focusing on a wide range of crucial questions including how we can build communal containers to help us hold our grief, rage and fear, and how we can learn to stay with the unknown, reacting to the world as it emerges rather than pushing for premature solutions. An extraordinary and hugely timely book."

    Rebecca Henderson , University Professor at John and Natty McArthur, Harvard University

  • "The climate crisis is the greatest physical crisis we've ever faced as a species, but maybe the greatest metaphysical crisis too: as our assumptions about the present and future, about safety and risk, about individuality and solidarity are upended, it is bound to be both psychologically hard and psychologically rich--and as these intriguing essays make clear, some of the finest minds in the world are thinking through the problems and arriving at powerful answers."

    Bill McKibben, Author, Environmentalist, Educator, Activist, founder of Third Act

  • "Steffi Bednarek has curated a collection of texts that asks extremely important questions about what psychotherapy might look like beyond its mainstream individualistic, anthropocentric, and Western/colonial frameworks. Without providing definitive answers, this book invites the readers to consider how the focus on individual mental health and wellbeing is preventing us from recognizing how our current inner cognitive, affective and relational infrastructures are tied to the collapsing infrastructures that surround us. Climate, Psychology and Change is an invaluable companion to those interested in who we can be once we process the difficult lessons of modernity dying within and around us."

    Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, author of Hospicing Modernity

  • "Climate, Psychology and Change is an exquisitely crafted deep dive into the profound uncertainties we must face in these times of climate breakdown. The editor’s intention to ‘bring regenerative disturbance to the commons of our profession’ is well-fulfilled. This is a prophetic book, necessarily disturbing, articulating many necessary paradoxes. It is a catalytic gift to the psyche professions and beyond."

    Judith Anderson, Jungian Analytical Psychotherapist, Chair of Board of trustees Climate Psychology Alliance

  • " As we ponder the climate crisis — how we could have let ourselves get to this point and what we can do about it, the voices of mental health professionals have often gone missing. Until now. For those seeking new ways to understand and take action, there are answers. In ‘Climate Psychology and Change’, renowned authors share their knowledge, passion, and experience, bringing the psychological components and complexities of our climate predicament out of the shadows. And as important as numbers are, even more telling is their recounting of the root of the climate crisis - the crisis of the human spirit. This book tells that story, and more. "

    Lise Van Susteren, Psychiatrist

  • "Climate, Psychology, and Change is an urgent and necessary response to the most critical emergent questions of our time. Steffi Bednarek and the contributors offer a bold vision that reimagines the role of psychotherapy and widens the ways we think about what it means to be human. Not only does the book equip us with the skills to help clients navigate climate anxiety, eco-distress, and disruption, but it asks us to stretch our imagination beyond the assumptions of an outdated worldview. The authors move our focus from the care for the individual to practices that are grounded in collective action. This beautiful book illustrates how to meet this moment with care and grace, even as we look toward uncertain futures."

    Britt Wray, PhD, Director of CIRCLE at Stanford Psychiatry and author of Generation Dread

  • "For well over a century, psychology has tried to help us better adjust to what is. In this book, a refreshing diversity of psychologies asks us to realize that being well-adjusted to “what is” is in fact deadly. If before we were challenged to grow up, this book offers the container that will help us break down. It shows us that healing our personal traumas was never a big enough lens for the incipient pain inside and around us. It reads to me as if — in these pages — psychology itself comes into its own maturity; as if it could be the true elder, the trustworthy guide, that so much of humanity needs to make it through this dangerous, painful passage toward a saner, wiser world."

    Susanne Moser, Ph.D, Founder, The Adaptive Mind Project and Director, Susanne Moser Research & Consulting

Contributors

Media

Featured
Steffi Bednarek reads from the book “Climate, Psychology, and Change”
Steffi Bednarek reads from the book “Climate, Psychology, and Change”

Short interview and reading of extracts from Haweatea, Holly Bryson, and Inna Didkovska.

Book Launch - Watch the Recording
Book Launch - Watch the Recording

Steffi Bednarek invited book contributors Bayo Akomolafe, Nora Bateson, Thomas Hübl and Francis Weller to meet with Caroline Lucas, James Vaccaro and Deepa Mirchandani to discuss key themes of “Climate, Psychology and Change”.