The Letter, Issue 70, 2021, pages 13-26
A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Anxiety and Protesting
Dorothea Hyneck
This article investigates the link between two apparently very distinct recent phenomena: the increasing levels of anxiety among young people and their growing participation in protest movements focusing on climate change. The article begins with a broad discussion of Lacan’s theory of anxiety and claims that protest movements can be interpreted as a form of acting out that helps in dealing with anxiety. By referring to the capitalist discourse, the article then explores why in recent times so many young people experience anxiety: the removal of limits which characterises capitalism in the twenty-first century, makes it very difficult for the youngest generations to find a lead. Protests against the inaction on climate change and the related self-imposed limitations, promoted to preserve the environment, can therefore be interpreted as a way for these youngest generations to deal with the anxiety provoking limitlessness of the twenty-first century.
Keywords: Anxiety, protests, acting out, capitalism, limitlessness, the new psychic economy.
Introduction
Over the recent decades, the Western world has faced a steep rise in anxiety, especially among its youngest generations. According to the Irish My World Survey 2,[1] half of the population in the 12-19 age bracket reports levels of anxiety ‘outside the normal range’. But why is anxiety so prevalent among the young generation, and how does this relate to other trends observed in recent years in our society?
In 2018 a young girl, called Greta Thunberg, began protesting every Friday on the steps of the Swedish parliament against policy makers that were not taking climate change seriously enough. Soon other students joined her and the movement they initiated, called Fridays for Future, quickly gathered support from millions of students across the globe. They took to the streets to push policy makers to take concrete action against climate change. But is this movement and its global success just about fighting climate change, or are there also other underlying drivers?
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