About this episode

The episode features an interview with Joseph Scalia III discussing his book on the intersections of environmentalism, psychoanalysis, and education.

Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education (Routledge, 2025) provides insight into the antagonism and disputative dialogue present in contemporary discourse. Our guest for this interview, author Joseph Scalia III, Psya.D. is a psychoanalyst, environmental activist, and Co-Director of the Institute for a Democratic Psychoanalysis. Co-authored with Lynne Scalia, Critical Consciousness is of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and to readers interested in the psychological aspects of dehumanization, competition, and opposing group identity. Taking a broad, pluralistic psychoanalytic perspective, the authors shed light on how and why ideology and conflict have infiltrated education, environmentalism, and psychoanalysis. This book unpacks forms of indoctrination and rejection of new ideas in environmentalism, considers the desubjectification of the human in mental health "services," and assesses how the educational world needs leaders who can articulate unspoken educational aims that perpetuate inequalities, hidden oppression, and their pathogenic effects on disenfranchised groups. This book takes account of the…

People in this episode

Host: Ben Greenberg

Guest: Joseph Scalia III

Topics covered

• environmentalism
• psychoanalysis
• education
• ideology
• conflict
• dehumanization

Keywords

• critical consciousness
• psychoanalysis
• environmental activism
• education
• indoctrination
• group identity
• mental health

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Institute for a Democratic Psychoanalysis, Routledge

Books & works: Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education

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