When the Wind Comes Sweeping Down the Plain: Embracing Atmospheric Interrelatedness

Abstract

This article expands the frame of psychoanalytic consideration to include the environment as a relational context and conceptualizes the potential psychological impact of natural disaster, in this case the devastating tornadoes that struck central Oklahoma in May of 2013, as being a sudden sense of estrangement from one’s empathic atmosphere and the loss of any textured understanding of what will come next. By drawing from psychoanalytic complexity, intersubjective-systems, self psychology, and Native American perspectives, I articulate a deeply interrelated view of existence, inclusive of and emphasizing a total relational atmospheric context. I then demonstrate that therapeutic responsiveness at the community level serves powerfully reunifying psychological functions in the immediate aftermath of such catastrophes due to its experiential reassertion of an empathic (human) atmosphere, which underscores the value of actively embracing interrelatedness and of psychoanalytically informed engagement at these and other frontiers beyond the usual treatment situation.