‘“Son,” My Father Said to Me, “Someday This Will All Be Yours”’: The Clinic, the Climate and a Future

Abstract

In this paper we explore the challenges that climate change poses to humanity, including its urgent challenges for systemic thinking. We are critical of orthodox familial approaches to systemic thinking. Instead, we wish to be alert to the complexities we have to face, complexities that are larger than the clinic. These complexities force us—as clinicians—to recognise and take responsibility for the fact that the clinic is not a neutral or ironic position from which to explore possibilities but is itself affected and threatened by an environment that is larger than its scope. Part of the challenge we have ahead is to accept that the picture is not a pleasant one and that it is simply too late to believe in an innocence and in a path to ‘recovery’ if only we all ‘hug trees’. It seems timely to address climate change from this standpoint, in order to remind ourselves of what we have left behind when exploring systemic thinking as family conversations, as well as alerting us to what lies ahead in terms of the challenges of living a life: a far more degraded earth, an earth that is less forgiving and generous in the face of our arrogance. This paper will explore insights from Bateson and, using concepts developed by Deleuze and Guattari, will try to make some inroads into the sombre prospect we have ahead in terms of caring for this earth and addressing foundational issues of sustainability for ourselves as living organisms. We will explore the role that the clinic has ahead of itself in such challenging times.