Being on the Cusp: Facing Psychological Impasse
Introduction
If we can imagine water molecules being aware of being at a phase transition from the solid crystals of ice to slowly melting into liquid, we could imagine their trepidation at this loss of structure. In this writing I make the conjecture that our culture is in just this type of transit, a cusp in which both little and everything seem to be happening. I explore the psychological challenges of facing difficult truths as thick with tricky dilemmas that hold the complexities of the climate emergency, the possibility of non-being with the sixth great extinction along with the psychopathology of our dissociated western reality. Intrinsic to these dilemmas are symbolic and literal death. These are ruptures of the abnormal ‘normal’, the false world, we inhabit; how dying before we literally die may give permission for being in and with the cusp we are navigating, so catalysing a transformation of our cultural reality.
Link to article published in Unpsychology
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