Climate Trauma: Toward a New Taxonomy of Trauma

Abstract

The disarmingly innocuous term "climate change" expresses a psychosocial defense mechanism that prompts us to recoil when we consider the implications of climate science. When viewed honestly through the lens of traumatology, this deepening existential crisis presents an entirely new, unprecedented, and higher-order category of trauma: Climate Trauma. What is unique about this category of trauma is that it is an ever-present, ever-growing threat to the biosphere, one that calls into question our shared identity: What does it mean to be "human" in the Anthropocene? Because it is superordinate, Climate Trauma is continually triggering all past traumas - personal, cultural, and intergenerational - and will continue to do so until such time as it is acknowledged. Climate Trauma provides the missing narrative explaining our dissociated unresponsiveness to the climate crisis, and suggests an alternative approach to effecting the kind of fundamental societal change needed to remedy our collective dissociation. The first steps toward effecting this kind of ambitious sociocultural change are naming the disorder and reforming the taxonomy of psychological trauma.