Freud has written a great deal about negation as a defense mechanism of the ego, perverting or inverting an assertion onto its opposite. Depending on the severity of negation turned outwards, it may betray the onset of psychotic breakdown, given what Freud writes in 1924: “neurosis is the result of a conflict between the ego and its id, whereas psychosis is the analogous outcome of a similar disturbance in the relations between the ego and the external world” (SE 19: 149). With respect to the climate crisis (indeed in the face of any severe crisis, whether it affects individuals or large groups), could this be one of the senses of denialism and the ensuing failure to change problematic behaviors. Persuasion techniques and warnings, even those issued by the scientific community, will then fall on deaf ears, to the extent that the connections between the ego and the external world are not working as they should.

At the same time, in his writings of the 1920s, including the aforementioned paper on psychosis and neurosis, the Dora case, and, of course, the essay titled “Negation,” Freud elucidates a complex interplay between negation and affirmation, a no that is actually a yes and a yes that is actually a no, troubling, among other things, the notion of consent in various areas of life. Sometimes, a negation may provide more fecund grounds for therapeutic change than a very vehement affirmation and agreement with a diagnosis, with the current state of affairs more generally, or with any powerful assertion in particular. So, the acknowledgement of catastrophic climate change can result in strong inhibitions and a fatalistic sense of melancholy.

In my lecture, I will argue that a vital contribution of psychoanalysis to the possibilities of meaningful individual and collective transformation in times of crisis hinges, in large part, on clinical experience and the theoretical treatment of negation and affirmation. How to maneuver around ego defenses? How to speak to the unconscious? How to deal with inhibitions, on the one hand, and with denials—of mortality, of the disturbing forces within and without, of a tendency toward destruction and destitution absolutized? These are among the questions I invite the audience to consider together with me under the title “Crisis and Negation.”

The Vegetal Roots of Freudian Unconscious

It is well known that Freud was greatly indebted to ancient Greek thought and culture, from which he adapted some of the central figures (Oedipus, Electra…) and concepts (eros, thanatos, catharsis). But there is another aspect of influence deriving from Plato and Aristotle that has remained in the shadows, even as it looms large over the entire field of psychoanalysis. Despite Freud’s early search for a purely scientific method in psychology and psychiatry, the very notion of the psyche has borne the stamp of ancient psychology—first and foremost, of the Greek psukhê. Now, the deepest layer of the psyche according to Aristotle is vegetal: it is the capacity for nourishment and reproduction (tô threptikon) characteristic of plants and shared among all living beings.

In this workshop, I propose to start connecting specific aspects of Freud’s psychoanalysis to the vegetal origins of the psyche in Aristotle’s thought. For example, the stages of psycho-sexual development move through the first to the second capacities of tô threptikon; the mechanisms of image formation in dreams (condensation, overdetermination, etc.) follow the dispersed and branching vectors of root growth; the very split structure of the conscious/unconscious subject is formally analogous to the amphibology of plants, who live in two worlds or two elemental milieus simultaneously.

Tracking the oft-times barely recognizable heritage of plant vitality in the unconscious, we may revisit the otherwise familiar psychoanalytic insights and practices from a surprising perspective. What if the unfulfillable but also irrecusable injunction of self-knowledge (likewise inherited from ancient Greece), for which “interminable psychoanalysis” provides methodological grounds, were a path to knowing oneself as deeply vegetal? What if, overall, therapy is meant to integrate the above- and belowground portions of the psychic plants that we are? We will pursue these and related lines of inquiry without forcing them into the easy molds of metaphorical interpretation, focusing instead on analogies of functions and processes.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this presentation participants will be able to:

Lecture: Crisis and Negation. Psychoanalysis and Denialism (of Climate Change and Not Only)

Objectives

1. Examine how psychoanalytic concepts of negation and denial illuminate psychological responses to the climate crisis.
2. Analyze the role of ego defenses in sustaining climate denialism and resistance to change.
3. Assess how psychoanalytic approaches can contribute to overcoming inhibition, fatalism, and collective inaction in the face of ecological crisis.
4. Critically discuss the political implications of climate denialism, including how unconscious defenses may be mobilized within public discourse and policy-making.
5. Explore the potential of psychoanalytic insights to foster collective responsibility and action.

Workshop/Seminar: The Vegetal Roots of Freudian Unconscious

Objectives

1. Explore the relevance of the vegetal vestiges in psychoanalytic thought for rethinking human embeddedness in ecological systems.
2. Apply psychoanalytic insights into unconscious processes (e.g., condensation, overdetermination) to alternative, non-anthropocentric understandings of subjectivity in the context of environmental crisis.

Michael Marder, PhD

Michael Marder, PhD, is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz. His most recent books include The Phoenix Complex (2023), Time Is a Plant (2023), with Edward S. Casey, Plants in Place (2024), Eco-Freud (2025), Metamorphoses Reimagined (2025), with Anais Tondeur, Fiori di fuoco (2025), and Of Joints and Other Articulations (2026). More information at michaelmarder.org.