Polycrisis: How can we deal with fears about the future?

Welcome to the age of polycrisis: climate change, war in Ukraine, pandemics, fears of decline. The list goes on. In her book, psychoanalyst Vera Kattermann describes how differently people deal with threatening situations On the sun deck of the Titanic?. The image of the sunken Titanic is intended to clearly show us the impending collapse.

The author uses five questions as a common thread throughout her book, such as: “How can I specify and classify my emotional reactions to current threat scenarios?” She analyzes individual and societal fears that promote extremism and conspiracy myths. She also considers what attitudes a society needs in order to avert a catastrophe or to reshape the world after the collapse. According to Vera Kattermann, hope and orientation are essential for our future viability. This means learning to acknowledge and tolerate ambivalent situations and feelings such as loss of control. According to the author, orientation about one’s own situation creates a kind of meta-perspective as a prerequisite for (self-)reflection.

The author tries to show how such future work could succeed with some sometimes unusual examples. This is how the Crow, an indigenous North American people, found a new direction for their society after the collapse of their culture and their identity as warriors. The joint dream work of men and women played a crucial role in this, in which they imagined a new future without having to design it in detail. However, Kattermann doesn’t have too high hopes. Perhaps, they fear, a deeper willingness to radically redesign could only emerge once the apocalypse has already run its course.

Retreat into private life

While in On the sun deck of the Titanic? Psychologist and market researcher Stephan Grünewald uses many academic terms in his book We crisis acrobats a more accessible language. But he also takes a psychological perspective. He relies on research projects and interviews from the market research institute Rheingold, which Grünewald co-founded.

Numerous people reacted to the many crises by retreating into a private “shire” and into small groups that often hermetically sealed themselves off and no longer accepted other opinions. Overall, however, Grünewald looks to the future with greater optimism. For example, many people regained a sense of self-efficacy during the Covid-19 pandemic – with more or less helpful ideas: be it doing puzzles, spring cleaning the apartment, a game night or streaming television series.

“Stuck up kinetic energy”

Confidence in our own abilities is one of the prerequisites for us to take responsibility and get involved. However, as a society as a whole, the author states, we are stuck in a “damaged kinetic energy” – caused, among other things, by the threatening appearance, the loss of the sense of unity and the lack of future prospects. The blockade could be resolved if it was possible to rebuild trust and connection with other people.

Unfortunately, in both books the role of politics, economics and science is only mentioned in passing. But humanity needs its decision-makers in order to shape a better future.

Why are wars fought?

The editors Stefano Carpani and Ludmilla Ostermann deal exclusively with the major topic of war Was a reset. The first part of the work, written in English, consists of interviews with experts in analytical psychology about the war in Ukraine and the question of why wars are waged. In the second part, psychologists from CG Jung’s school present their theses about the causes of military conflicts.

The range of essays is wide: These range from consideration of whether Russia as a nation is traumatized, to the success of psychotherapy during the time of Argentine state terrorism, to a personal report on an analysis with a Palestinian patient. In his final contribution, the psychoanalyst Stefano Carpani claims: War can be understood as a new beginning for a society. Both world wars can be seen as attempts to restore yesterday’s world and the old values. War threatens when “the loss of dignity/integrity leaves a vacuum in which anarchy arises”.

These descriptions must be assessed critically from a historical point of view. But if you see them as statements on a psychological meta-level, they can be an interesting suggestion. The many Jungian and spiritual terms and considerations are also unlikely to be met with approval by all readers. However, the book does one thing quite well: it vividly brings us closer to the power and horrors of war.

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