Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis by Sally Weintrobe

Author:Sally Weintrobe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-04-07T22:00:00+00:00

22

Regression and infantilization

Wilfred Bion, a psychoanalyst and group analyst, argued, ‘It is possible for a society to be organised in such a way that the majority of its members are psychiatrically disinherited’ (1948). He called this disinheritance ‘spiritual drift’.1 David Armstrong (2014b) pointed out, ‘What [Bion] seems to have in mind is the way in which … a society … can restrict the scope for the development of man’s political appetite’. Bion (1948) had said, ‘We … have to bear in mind the … system … which has allowed him to progress along a path of progressive limitation, without awareness that he was in fact doing so.’

Bion was discussing systems that restrict peoples’ political appetite. People may be actively restricted within all sorts of organizations. Mats Alvesson and André Spicer (2012) writing in the Journal of Management Studies put forward the idea of functional stupidity. They said, organizations can severely restrict cognitive capacity and promote functional stupidity which ‘refers to … a refusal to use intellectual capacities in other than myopic ways’.

One example of a regressive culture was described by the anthropologist and psychoanalyst Elizabeth Menzies Lyth (1988). She was consulted by a hospital on how to address low morale among student nurses. Staff had broken down the nurse’s role into many small tasks, and had each task performed by a different nurse. The result was patients were not being nursed as ‘whole people’. Menzies Lyth hypothesized this work plan was not so much to boost efficiency as to protect nurses from anxiety. It ‘helped’ them stay emotionally distant from their patients.

Menzies Lyth reported that new student nurses ‘felt unsettled, indeed almost assaulted by being deprived of the opportunity to be responsible’ (p. 456). Not yet habituated within this hospital’s culture, the students could see the culture and feel its impacts more clearly than nurses already there. The students rightly felt robbed of their entitlement to care and their entitlement to expect that work would promote not stunt their growth as people.

Menzies Lyth said, ‘[This] social defense system … [forced] the individual to a maturational level below that achieved before entering’ (p. 459). David Armstrong (2014) summarized the situation she described as, ‘[It was] as if … the implicit message is “regress or leave”.’

Mainstream neoliberal culture regresses us, but we have very little option to leave. Also, we may not clearly see the effects of culture on us because we are already in it and habituated to it. It is not easy to find a way to understand a culture’s influence. Menzies Lyth offered this advice:

Try … [looking at the culture2] … as though you were a stranger. Look and listen. You may be surprised and shocked by what you discover. Think for yourself. … The simple answer ‘Think!’ is a difficult one. The more so, since it may mean prising yourself out of depression and discouragement first and finding somewhere a ray of hope to sustain you. … Start slowly, and do it gradually. … Small successes will give you the courage to go on.

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