Continuing Education Course

Recent years have seen growing interest in the intersection of psychoanalysis and the environment, driven in part by the mental health consequences of climate change, including climate anxiety, ecological grief, and solastalgia. Much of this contemporary work, however, remains disconnected from Harold Searles’s pioneering text, The Nonhuman Environment in Normal Development and in Schizophrenia (1960). Searles, who worked alongside Frieda Fromm-Reichmann at Chestnut Lodge treating borderline and schizophrenic patients, developed a groundbreaking account of the role of the nonhuman environment in psychological life. His book offers remarkably prescient insights into how human relationships with the natural world shape development, psychopathology, transference, and defensive processes. Searles also explores the psychological benefits of a healthy sense of kinship with the environment and raises important questions about cultural attitudes toward nature. This course uses Searles’s work as an introduction to environmental psychoanalytic theory, providing a clinically rich and experience-near foundation for understanding this increasingly important field.

Learning Objectives

• Describe Searles’s concepts of the nonhuman environment in personality development.
• Explain the role of the nonhuman environment in psychosis, neurosis, and transference.
• Discuss the cultural and clinical implications of Searles’s theory of the nonhuman environment.

CME/CE Accreditation

ACCME Accreditation Statement
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and Western New England Psychoanalytic Society. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

AMA Credit Designation Statement
The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 9 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Disclosure Statement
The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME's identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support.

This program is being reviewed for Continuing Education Credit Hours by the National Association of Social Workers, CT. Once approved, it will meet the continuing education criteria for Social Work Licensure renewal, Marriage & Family Therapist Licensure renewal, Professional Counselor Licensure renewal and Licensed Psychologist Licensure renewal.

A Certificate of Attendance for WNE Programs can be used to fulfill CE requirements for CT Psychologists.