Unsymbolized Anxiety, Affective Contagion, and Anti‑Nuclear Activism: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation

Introduction

Anti–nuclear-energy activism has often been driven by intense fear of catastrophic risks – fears that, on the surface, resemble the panic and mistrust fueling anti-vaccination movements. In both cases, we see communities gripped by worst-case scenarios (“nuclear meltdown will poison the world” or “vaccines will destroy our children’s health”) that persist regardless of scientific evidence. For example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine campaigner, spent years pushing to shut down a New York nuclear plant by “throwing every scare-mongering worst-case scenario at the wall, regardless of its plausibility or scientific merit,” much as he did with debunked vaccine-autism theories. Superficially, one might dismiss such movements as “hysterical” reactions. But a deeper psychoanalytic look reveals more complex dynamics at play – dynamics of unsymbolized anxiety and affective contagion that propagate through groups, bypassing reason.

Modern psychoanalytic thinkers prefer terms like “unsymbolized anxiety” (after W.R. Bion’s nameless dread and Dominique Scarfone’s work on unrepresented states) and “affective contagion” (after André Green, Jean Laplanche, Brian Massumi, and others) to describe these phenomena. These concepts shed light on how raw, unprocessed affect – free-floating dread that has not been translated into words or rational thoughts – can spread within a community. Unlike the antiquated label of “hysteria,” which pathologizes and often dismisses such reactions, unsymbolized anxiety emphasizes that the fear is real but lacks a symbolic narrative, making it hard to reason with. Affective contagion captures how this visceral fear transmits from person to person, almost like a virus of emotion, as people unconsciously pick up on each other’s anxiety, amplifying it in a feedback loop.

This essay will interpret anti-nuclear-energy anxiety through these lenses, drawing explicit parallels to anti-vaxxer belief systems. We will structure the analysis through multiple psychoanalytic frameworks – Freudian (fetishism and denial), Lacanian (jouissance and rejection of the Symbolic), Kleinian (splitting and the paranoid-schizoid mode of thinking), and post-Freudian object relations (narcissistic injury and the false self). Each framework offers a different vantage on why anti-nuclear activists might cling to catastrophic narratives and mistrust evidence. Along the way, we critically engage Jon Mills’ book The End of the World and his invocation of the death drive – the notion of an unconscious wish for destruction – questioning whether we truly need this drastic concept to explain anti-nuclear sentiment, or whether more grounded mechanisms (like anxiety and group dynamics) suffice. We will also discuss how Zion Lights, a former Extinction Rebellion spokesperson, came to compare anti-nuclear-energy anxiety with anti-vaxxer panic, and how her very public defection from anti-nuclear activism illustrates what can happen when affective attachments are confronted by symbolic authority (in her case, scientific consensus on energy and climate).

By unpacking these layers, we aim to provide an in-depth, psychoanalytically informed interpretation of anti-nuclear activism’s emotional underpinnings. The goal is a conceptually rigorous yet accessible analysis for an educated reader, illuminating how unconscious fears and collective feelings can shape ostensibly “rational” environmental positions. Before concluding, an annotated bibliography of contemporary psychoanalytic sources will be provided, guiding further reading on nuclear anxiety, environmental panic, and social affect.

The Freudian Lens: Fetishism and Denial in Nuclear Fear

At first glance, anti-nuclear activists present themselves as champions of life and safety, opposing a technology they believe could cause mass death. Yet a Freudian lens reveals how denial and fetishism might underlie some of these convictions. In Freudian theory, denial (Verneinung) is a primitive defense mechanism that refuses to recognize an unpleasant reality, while fetishistic disavowal (Verleugnung) is a more complex defense in which an unacceptable truth is simultaneously acknowledged and refuted through a substitute belief or object (the fetish). Freud described this paradoxical state in his essay on fetishism: the fetishist “knows very well” that reality is one way, “but nonetheless” behaves as if it were another. In other words, part of the psyche accepts the truth, while another part denies it, using a fetish object or idea to negotiate the anxiety.

How does this apply to anti-nuclear activism? Consider the case of environmentalists who fully accept the reality of climate change and the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, yet vehemently reject nuclear energy – even though authoritative scientific bodies (like the IPCC) include nuclear power in pathways to net-zero emissions. We often find an implicit split knowledge: activists intellectually know that climate catastrophe is real and that cleaner energy is needed, but many disavow the fact that nuclear energy is one of the solutions. The “fetish” in this context can be the symbol of “nuclear danger” itself. All the diffuse anxieties about technological risk, radiation, and apocalypse become fixated on the object “nuclear power,” which is treated as an unthinkable evil – a taboo – even when evidence suggests it may be safer than continued fossil fuel use. By fixating on the fetish of “nuclear = catastrophe,” activists find a focus for their free-floating climate anxieties, effectively concretizing and externalizing their dread.

This mechanism resembles Freud’s classic example of fetishism. Just as the fetish object for the young boy both denies and acknowledges the traumatic truth of maternal castration (allowing him to avoid full panic by pretending the mother does have a phallus, in the form of a fetish object, even while knowing otherwise), the anti-nuclear activist both knows that we live in a dangerous warming world that demands solutions, and “not-knows” it by denying the one solution that violates their emotional comfort. They insist “we must solve climate change, but not with that”. This split stance – knowing that nuclear is a potent low-carbon energy source, yet dogmatically rejecting it – is a form of true Freudian disavowal: a “knowing and not-knowing at the same time”.

Denial also plays a more straightforward role. The notion that a nuclear reactor could operate in one’s community may stir unconscious terrors (of invisible radiation, of another Chernobyl or Fukushima). Rather than tolerate this anxiety, a person may employ denial by insisting that such a reactor is inherently unsafe and must be kept away at all costs. Here the individual denies the complex reality (that well-regulated reactors have excellent safety records, for instance) and replaces it with a simplified false certainty (“if a reactor is built here, it will explode or give us cancer”). This defensive certainty helps ward off the nameless anxiety that nuclear technology evokes. Psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe, discussing climate change responses, noted that disavowal involves acknowledging reality but minimizing its significance, akin to a person saying “Yes, it’s there, but it doesn’t count”. In anti-nuclear activism, we sometimes see the reverse: acknowledging the climate crisis but minimizing the significance of facts that challenge their fear (such as the relatively low risks of nuclear power or the dangers of alternatives). It is a selective disavowal that protects an underlying emotional narrative.

Freud’s later work also introduced the concept of the death drive (Thanatos) – an innate pull toward destruction or a compulsion to repeat traumatic events. Jon Mills in The End of the World invokes this idea, suggesting that humanity might be under the sway of a “collective unconscious death wish” driving us toward self-annihilation. One might be tempted to interpret extreme anti-nuclear stances through this lens: perhaps the activists, under the banner of “safety,” are unconsciously aligning with a destructive force that ironically makes us less safe (e.g. shutting down nuclear plants leads to higher carbon emissions and climate risk). However, as we shall discuss later, we might not need to leap to the death drive to explain these dynamics. Simpler Freudian mechanisms like disavowal of death anxiety can suffice. As Mills himself notes, following Freud, “our disavowal of death is precisely what makes us so fearful of it”. In anti-nuclear activism, we see a profound fear of death (whether personal or planetary) that is disavowed and channeled into a concrete crusade. By refusing to consciously countenance the real, statistical facts of nuclear risk (which might actually allay some fear by showing it’s manageable), activists remain in a state of heightened fear – a fear of death that is made all the more powerful by being unacknowledged as their own psychic fear. The disavowed death anxiety returns in the form of an external persecutor: nuclear energy.

In summary, the Freudian view illuminates how anti-nuclear activists may unconsciously employ denial and fetishistic disavowal to cope with overwhelming anxiety. The nuclear threat becomes a fetish-object representing dread, simultaneously drawing attention and veiling the deeper fear. They “know” on some level that society needs nuclear solutions and that not every radiation exposure means annihilation, but they “know” this not – instead, they cling to the catastrophic belief as a way to avoid a more nebulous terror. This split in belief, and the outright denial of disconfirming reality, offers emotional relief at the cost of factual distortion. It’s a trade-off that Freud would recognize as a classic neurotic compromise: a symptom (in this case, absolutist anti-nuclear stance) that mediates between unacceptable truths and the psyche’s demand for safety.

The Lacanian Lens: Jouissance and Rejection of the Symbolic Order

Moving from Freud to Lacan, we shift focus from the content of beliefs to the structure of desire and enjoyment in anti-nuclear activism. Lacanian psychoanalysis introduces two key ideas relevant here: jouissance (a term meaning excessive, transgressive enjoyment that goes beyond the pleasure principle) and the Symbolic order (the domain of language, law, and consensus reality, often personified as the “big Other”). Anti-vaxxer and anti-nuclear movements can both be seen as deriving a certain jouissance from their defiant positions, while also rejecting the authority of the Symbolic (such as scientific consensus or governmental assurances).

First, consider jouissance. At first blush, one would not think there is any “enjoyment” in being terrified of radiation or vaccines. Indeed, activists would insist their crusade is motivated by concern and suffering over looming danger. However, psychoanalysis teaches us that unconscious enjoyment often hides within repetitive fear and outrage. There is a kind of emotional intoxication in the moral righteousness and the doomsday drama. Members of Extinction Rebellion, for instance, describe the adrenaline rush of protests, the passionate camaraderie of a rebellion aiming to “save the planet,” and even the emotional highs of apocalyptic prophecy. Lacan’s concept of jouissance refers to the strange satisfaction humans can get from going to excess – even if it is painful or frightening. The collective panic about an imagined catastrophe can paradoxically be thrilling. It offers a feeling of purpose (every day is doomsday, so every day I must fight heroically), and it can allow the expression of aggression and libido in socially sanctioned ways (shouting slogans, gluing oneself to a gate, etc., all in the name of a higher cause). This is not to trivialize activists’ sincere fears, but to note the undercurrent of drive satisfaction that can infuse such movements. Anti-vaccine groups similarly report a sense of community and “being alive” through their shared crusade – an affective reward that keeps members engaged despite ostracism by mainstream society.

Lacanian theory would say that this jouissance comes from a transgressive refusal of the ordinary bounds of the Symbolic. The Symbolic order – epitomized by scientific consensus, medical authorities, government regulations – tells us that vaccines are safe and effective, that nuclear power has statistical safety and is needed for climate mitigation. To the activist, these Symbolic assurances often feel like a dismissal of their lived anxiety. Rather than accept the Symbolic diktat, they derive a counter-cultural satisfaction in saying “No, the experts are wrong – we feel the truth.” This is a form of what Lacan called “rejecting the Name-of-the-Father,” meaning the refusal of the paternal metaphor that underpins the social order’s authority. In practical terms, it is a distrust and rejection of the authorities and institutions that make up consensus reality (be it the government, the UN’s scientists, or the nuclear industry regulators). By rejecting mainstream authority, activists step into what Lacan calls the Imaginary or even the Real: they prefer the immediacy of their own experience, images, and affects to the mediated, abstract knowledge offered by the Symbolic.

For example, consider how anti-nuclear activists often give primacy to visual and emotional evidence – pictures of the Chernobyl or Fukushima accidents, personal anecdotes of cancer cases – over dry statistics about radiation doses or climate modeling. This privileging of image and affect is an Imaginary mode of relating to the issue (concerned with how things appear and feel). The Symbolic mode, by contrast, would be reading and trusting peer-reviewed studies and risk assessments. Many activists openly scorn such studies as propaganda or “not seeing the real truth.” In Lacanian terms, they experience the official scientific narrative as an attempt to impose a symbolic castration – an attempt to tell them “your fear is irrational, you must defer to the big Other (science) who knows better.” This can be experienced as an insult or an alienation from one’s own intuitive sense. So they refuse that castration, effectively “foreclosing” the Symbolic truth. (Lacan used the term foreclosure for the psychotic mechanism of rejecting a fundamental signifier, which then returns in the real – one might analogize that by rejecting the “nuclear is safe” signifier, the unspeakable specter of radiation returns as an omnipresent terror in their reality.)

The result of this Symbolic rejection is that the anxiety cannot be fully talked through or resolved in the social consensus; instead it circulates as infinite jouissance of the trauma. The activist’s worst fears (e.g. a child dying of leukemia from fallout, or a global nuclear winter) become a source of both nightmare and fascination – an ultimate Thing that both repels and magnetizes their desire. They can neither let it go nor fully rationalize it, so it fuels a kind of passionate intensity. Notice how Extinction Rebellion campaigns often had apocalyptic slogans (“Billions will die” or “Our children won’t have a future”) that, while horrifying, gave the movement a dramatic urgency. Zion Lights herself, when she was a spokeswoman for XR, delivered dire warnings on television of mass death, which went beyond what climate science could support. Such proclamations have a theatrical, fantasmatic quality – they are scenes of ultimate horror that also confer a special role on those who speak them (as prophets of doom). Lacan’s idea of jouissance helps explain why these movements sometimes escalate their claims to extreme levels: there is an enjoyment in pushing the envelope, in saying the unsayable “truth” that “they” (authorities) allegedly won’t admit. It’s a form of inherent transgression; the more the Symbolic authority (e.g. a BBC interviewer or a scientific report) says “that’s not accurate,” the more pleasurable it may be, in an unconscious way, to assert it – because it asserts the primacy of the activist’s own narrative over the Official Story.

This dynamic is very much parallel in anti-vax communities. Many parents in those communities describe how listening to official medical advice felt cold and dismissive, whereas sharing personal stories of alleged vaccine harm in Facebook groups felt validating and emotionally real. They frequently speak of “waking up” from the “lies” of Big Pharma – a phrasing that suggests a Lacanian awakening from the symbolic dream into a “realer” reality of visceral truth. Yet, as some Lacanians have noted, sometimes we wake from a nightmare only to continue dreaming it in another form. By rejecting the common reality, these activists risk trapping themselves in a closed loop of their own fears and fantasies. They enjoy a sense of liberation (“We alone see the danger! We are the righteous ones!”), but that enjoyment comes with the price of social fragmentation and factual distortion.

Another Lacanian concept, the big Other, refers to the supposed entity who is believed to “know” and enforce the rules. In science-trusting society, the big Other could be considered the scientific consensus itself – the repository of what is accepted as true. Anti-nuclear and anti-vax movements are often explicitly anti-Other in this sense: they define themselves against the mainstream narrative, casting authorities as either ignorant or conspiratorial. This gives the group a strong identity (we who do not believe the Other’s lies) and simultaneously provides an outlet for aggression. We see many activists demonizing scientists, regulators, or industry experts as corrupt or evil, which is a way of justifying rejecting their symbolic authority. It also adds to the jouissance of the struggle – there is enjoyment in having an enemy to fight (even if that enemy is the consensus reality). This dynamic can be self-reinforcing: the more the outside world criticizes the movement as irrational, the more the members bond together and take pride in their outsider status (a phenomenon sociologists note in anti-science movements).

In summary, the Lacanian lens highlights that anti-nuclear activism is not just about what people fear, but how they organize their desire and belief. There is an unconscious jouissance in playing the role of savior in an imminent apocalypse, in defying authority, and in embracing one’s own fear as truth. And there is a clear rejection of the Symbolic order – a refusal to grant legitimacy to established expert knowledge or societal reassurances. While this can energize a movement and give participants a profound sense of meaning, it also locks the movement in a tense relationship with reality. Much as anti-vaxxers rejected medical science during COVID and found a kind of thrill in being “against the system,” anti-nuclear activists may derive a deep (if unacknowledged) satisfaction from being the Cassandra figures warning of doom and fighting the powers that be. Lacan would caution, however, that when one rejects the Symbolic, one is often overtaken by the Real – in this case, the unmediated terror of extinction that no facts can ameliorate. The next section, with a Kleinian perspective, will delve more into how those terrors are managed by splitting the world into absolutes.

The Kleinian Lens: Splitting the Atom – and Everything Else – into Good and Bad

Few theoretical frameworks illuminate the black-and-white thinking in activism as well as Kleinian psychoanalysis. Melanie Klein’s work, and that of her followers, describes early infancy as dominated by the paranoid-schizoid position, in which the psyche splits experience into all-good and all-bad elements and projects badness outward as a way to manage anxiety. As we apply this lens, anti-nuclear-energy activism shows hallmark features of splitting, projection, and primitive anxieties reminiscent of the paranoid-schizoid mode. In fact, one of Klein’s prominent students, Hanna Segal, wrote directly about the fear of nuclear war in the 1980s, observing that the nuclear threat often leads people (and policymakers) to resort to denial and splitting as defense mechanisms.

In the context of anti-nuclear activism, splitting manifests in the portrayal of nuclear energy as an unalloyed evil while its alternatives (especially “natural” or renewable sources) are idealized as pure good. All the “bad” – danger, toxicity, greed, unnaturalness – is concentrated in the signifier “nuclear.” Meanwhile, all the “good” – safety, cleanliness, moral purity, harmony with nature – is concentrated in whatever is opposed to nuclear (be it solar panels, wind turbines, or simply the absence of nuclear development). This dichotomy oversimplifies a complex reality, but it provides psychological relief. By splitting, the individual or group can locate the source of anxiety entirely outside the self (and even outside the things they favor). Nuclear power becomes a container for projection: into it they dump diffuse fears of death, contamination, and technological hubris. Once “all bad” is dumped into the nuclear container, the things they identify with (say, the environmental movement itself, or renewable energy) can be maintained as wholly good, unsullied by doubt or danger.

Melanie Klein called it the paranoid-schizoid position because the person in this mode experiences paranoid fears (a sense of persecutory threat from the outside) and uses schizoid splitting to handle those fears. We can see this in how some anti-nuclear activists might genuinely feel persecuted by the very existence of a nuclear plant, even one far away or well-regulated. It’s as if the nuclear establishment is an actively malevolent force out to harm life – an imago of a persecutory breast or mother (in Kleinian terms) that is poisoned, threatening to invade one’s body with radiation. The emotional intensity of these feelings can seem puzzling if we look at the dry facts (most nuclear plants operate without incident, emissions are contained, etc.), but not if we understand that to the unconscious, nuclear technology has become a symbol of the devouring, death-dealing force. It carries projections of the “bad breast” or “bad parent” that inflicts suffering.

At the same time, the movement itself often takes on the role of the “good breast” – nurturing, life-protecting. Many activists speak of Mother Earth in almost sacred terms, casting themselves as her defenders. In Kleinian development, the infant gradually moves to the depressive position, recognizing that the same mother can be both good and bad, and that the loved object can have frustrating aspects. In a sense, maturity means integrating ambivalence. But in the throes of anti-nuclear fervor, such ambivalence is hard to hold onto. The specter of nuclear catastrophe is so frightening that tolerating any goodness or usefulness in nuclear technology feels impossible – it would blur the boundary that keeps the anxiety in check. Thus, integration is resisted; the split remains absolute. Nuclear must be entirely damned (“nuclear = apocalypse”), and renewable energy must be entirely idealized (“natural = salvation”), even if practical critiques of renewables exist.

We see evidence of this splitting in public discourse. For instance, when Zion Lights began to openly advocate nuclear solutions, her former colleagues in Extinction Rebellion reacted with fury and rejection, calling her a traitor and even a “climate denier”. This reaction is telling: because Zion embraced a bit of the “bad” (the nuclear element) as possibly good, she herself was re-categorized from good to bad in the group’s eyes. In other words, the split worldview had to be maintained by ejecting her – she was now seen as contaminated by the bad object and thus became a bad object herself to be expelled (much as an infant in paranoid-schizoid mode might suddenly regard a formerly loved object as wholly dangerous if it associates with the persecutor). The language of “shill” and “traitor” hurled at her exemplifies splitting at the group level: the group could not integrate her nuanced stance, so they split her off and projected bad intentions onto her (“she must be corrupt or deluded”). This is classic group splitting: to preserve the purity of the cause, any dissenting or moderating voice is cast out and demonized.

Projection is another Kleinian mechanism at work. Activists often accuse pro-nuclear scientists or industry officials of nefarious motives – greed, callousness, even genocidal intent (“they don’t care if people die, they just want profit” etc.). While certainly industry and government are not saintly, the caricature of absolute evil intent often reveals projection of the activists’ own aggression. The movement may harbor intense rage – at governments for inaction, at the world for being unsafe, even at the public for not listening. However, acknowledging one’s own aggressive impulses or capacity for harm is difficult. It feels more righteous and coherent to imagine that all aggression lies with the enemy (the nuclear industry or complicit authorities). Psychoanalyst Hanna Segal pointed out that in the face of nuclear war threat, people tended to project aggression onto the “other side” (e.g., each superpower sees the other as the mad one) and idealize their own side as purely defensive. Similarly, environmental activists project destructive impulses outward: they (the pro-nuclear actors) are the destroyers, we are only protectors. Any hint that activists’ actions might also cause harm (for example, increasing reliance on coal when nuclear plants shut down, leading to pollution and climate damage) is typically met with denial or rationalization – it doesn’t fit the split schema.

The paranoid dimension of this stance is also notable. Paranoid not in the colloquial sense of “crazy,” but in the Kleinian sense of feeling persecuted by an external threat that is partly a projection of internal anxieties. Anti-nuclear activists often feel they are a small band of aware people fighting a vast, dangerous conspiracy of nuclear interests. They fear not only radiation, but also cover-ups and lies. In some cases this spills into true conspiracy theories (e.g., claims that all world governments are suppressing the truth about a massive death toll from a nuclear accident, or that scientists are bribed to lie). The structure is akin to what Klein observed in young children (and psychotic patients): when overwhelmed by fear and rage, the mind may create an external persecutor who is attributed almost diabolical powers. This eases the confusion of free-floating dread by giving it a face – but that face is partly a mirror of the self’s disowned emotions.

Importantly, Kleinian theory doesn’t cast judgment on these defenses as “stupid” or “bad”; it sees them as early and primitive, but understandable under extreme anxiety. The threat of mass radiation poisoning or nuclear annihilation is so unthinkable that it regresses even otherwise rational adults toward paranoid-schizoid modes of thought. In the paranoid-schizoid position, nuance is a luxury one cannot afford; survival seems to demand stark choices. So it is with anti-nuclear activism at times: accepting any nuanced information (say, that radiation has dose thresholds, or that newer reactor designs are safer) feels like “giving in to evil,” because the person is, at a deep level, still feeling like a vulnerable infant facing an all-good or all-bad world scenario.

Understanding this can foster empathy: these activists are, in a sense, attempting to manage unbearable anxiety using the most available tools in the psyche’s arsenal. The tragedy, however, is that these same tools perpetuate the anxiety. By refusing to see any good in the “bad object” or any bad in the “good object,” they cannot integrate their fear into a realistic perspective. The nuclear threat remains an absolute catastrophe in their mind – perhaps even exaggerated beyond actual probability – which means they live in continual, gnawing dread as if under constant threat of annihilation. This is precisely the situation Klein describes for the infant who cannot yet reconcile good and bad: the bad (hungry, angry) experience is felt as an annihilating force, because the infant hasn’t grasped that the good can return or coexist.

We can also consider the role of reparation versus destructive impulses. In Kleinian theory, when one moves to the depressive position, one feels guilt for one’s own aggressive destruction and then wants to make reparations to the damaged good object. If environmental activists could see that perhaps their blanket opposition to nuclear might actually be harming the fight against climate change (the ultimate good object of a livable planet), they might feel a depressive position guilt and attempt reparation (maybe reconsidering nuclear). Zion Lights’ transformation can be seen in this light: she realized that by demonizing nuclear, her movement was inadvertently causing more harm (by enabling fossil fuel continuance), which led her to a painful reevaluation and a wish to repair the situation by advocating nuclear – essentially trying to fix what she and her comrades had “broken” by their previous stance. The vicious reaction she received shows the difficulty the group had in moving to a depressive position; they preferred to maintain the split (that she was now all-bad) rather than experience shared guilt that perhaps they too had contributed to worsening emissions by opposing nuclear. Accepting that would entail grief and guilt (depressive feelings), which the rigid split defends against.

In sum, the Kleinian perspective reveals anti-nuclear anxiety as a group manifestation of early defensive processes: splitting the world into a battle of pure good versus pure evil, projecting inner fears and rage onto an external enemy, and clinging to idealizations to avoid despair. It explains the often observed inflexibility in these debates – why evidence tends not to change minds. The evidence is filtered through a psychological need to keep the dreaded object purely negative. Changing one’s mind would mean collapsing the split, which initially increases anxiety (like an infant’s terror when realizing the good and bad mother are the same person – a very disorienting moment). Yet, as psychoanalysis also shows, only by moving past splitting can one truly master fear. As long as “nuclear” carries the entire shadow of unsymbolized dread, the fear remains as large as the projection. Helping individuals or groups toward a more nuanced view – seeing some good in nuclear or some flaws in their preferred solutions – is delicate, because it invites depressive anxiety, but it ultimately can reduce paranoid anxiety. We will later see how Zion Lights’ journey involved exactly this: tolerating ambivalence and nuance, and thereby finding a more constructive (if lonelier) stance.

Next, we turn to post-Freudian perspectives, examining how issues of identity – narcissistic needs and the false self – can further explain the tenacity of anti-nuclear (and anti-vax) belief systems.

The Post-Freudian Lens: Narcissistic Injury and the False Self in Environmentalist Identity

Beyond the drives and defenses we’ve discussed, psychoanalytic theorists in the post-Freudian tradition (such as Kohut, Winnicott, and others) highlight the role of self-esteem, identity, and authenticity in human psychology. Anti-nuclear activism is not just an ideology; for many, it becomes a core part of their identity – a cause through which they derive personal meaning and community validation. This opens up the analysis to concepts like narcissistic injury, narcissistic rage, and the true vs. false self, which can shed light on how people react when their beliefs are challenged, and why they sometimes cling to positions even in the face of contradictory evidence.

Narcissistic injury refers to a blow to one’s self-image or dignity. In the context of belief systems, when someone is deeply invested in a cause, their ego becomes entwined with it. If evidence suggests that the cause might be misguided or the person’s approach has been wrong, it’s not just an intellectual problem – it feels like a personal attack or humiliation. For example, imagine a long-time anti-nuclear campaigner who has prided themselves on “protecting the public from harm.” If confronted with data showing that shutting down nuclear plants led to worse harm (more air pollution, more carbon emissions), the person might experience this as a shattering contradiction: Could I have been championing the wrong thing? Have I, in my attempt to do good, actually done bad? For someone whose self is strongly invested in being a savior, this thought is extremely painful – it strikes at their narcissistic self-concept. Psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut noted that when individuals suffer a narcissistic injury (a fracture in their grandiose self-image or ideals), they often respond with narcissistic rage or defensiveness rather than calmly changing course, because the ego tries to restore its pride.

We saw a clear illustration of this in the Zion Lights episode. When Zion publicly shifted to support nuclear energy, many of her former peers in the movement responded not with curiosity or self-reflection, but with outrage and character assassination. This suggests they felt her change as a betrayal – not just of a political stance, but of the group’s self-concept. Extinction Rebellion and similar groups often rally around being the truth-tellers and righteous defenders of Earth. Zion’s defection implied that the group might be wrong on a key aspect (nuclear power), which is a narcissistic injury to the collective ego. Instead of considering her points, key figures lashed out with labels (“shill,” “traitor,” “denier”), which is a classic narcissistic rage response: attack the source of injury to reassert one’s own virtue. By denigrating Zion, they attempted to invalidate the threat she posed to their self-image (now they could say, “She’s just a sellout; we remain the true, pure activists”). This maneuver protected their narcissistic ideal of being the unimpeachable good guys, at the expense of reality-testing.

On an individual level, many activists likely feel a sense of personal betrayal when confronted with pro-nuclear arguments or any suggestion that their stance is irrational. It’s not merely a debate about facts – it’s tangled with their sense of being a good person. To admit error would wound their pride and possibly make them feel shame. Thus, psychological defense mechanisms – denial, rationalization, or doubling down – kick in robustly. A parent who was anti-vaccine and then loses a child to a preventable disease may face a similar narcissistic injury; some tragically hold even tighter to denial rather than face the guilt, because the guilt is too crushing to the self. In anti-nuclear activism, one might similarly see an unwillingness to revisit beliefs after events that challenge them (for instance, if a country successfully decarbonizes with nuclear energy and saves lives, it’s easier for the anti-nuclear ideologue to ignore or dismiss that case than to integrate it and feel regret for opposing such life-saving measures).

The concept of the false self, developed by D.W. Winnicott, is also useful here. The false self is essentially a persona or way of being that a person adopts to comply with external demands or to shield the vulnerable true self from disruption. In a strongly ideological group, individuals can develop a kind of group-aligned false self. They learn which feelings and thoughts are acceptable and which are forbidden. For an environmental activist community, expressing fear about climate and anger at nuclear power is rewarded (you fit in), whereas voicing doubt (“maybe nuclear isn’t so bad?”) is punished or shunned. Over time, members may suppress their independent thinking or any ambivalence, presenting a conformist front. This is the false self adapting to group norms. The true self – which might have nuanced views, personal experiences, or uncertainties – gets tucked away because it might conflict with the collective stance.

Zion Lights’ account in “Climate Activism Has a Cult Problem” (2023) essentially describes this phenomenon. She recounts how within Extinction Rebellion, people were “brainwashed” into performing outrageous stunts and adhering to dogma in the name of saving the planet. When pressed on a TV program about solutions to replace fossil fuels, Zion “wanted to say nuclear energy, but couldn’t” because it would violate the role she was supposed to play. Her true thoughts (nuclear might help) had to be hidden; she was expected to embody the false self of the movement (only talk about the crisis, not the controversial solutions). This shows how the false self operates: out of a need for acceptance and purpose, one sacrifices personal authenticity. Winnicott would warn that living by a false self can lead to feelings of emptiness, pressure, and even covert depression, because the true self isn’t being expressed.

For many anti-nuclear activists, their activist persona might function as a false self that protects them from confronting deeper fears or desires. It can be comforting to have a predefined role (“warrior against nuclear evil”) – it channels one’s anxiety into socially recognized actions, providing structure. But if the person begins to doubt or individuate, the false self starts cracking. This can be accompanied by intense anxiety or identity confusion. Leaving a tightly knit activist group can feel like losing one’s entire support system and purpose – a kind of death of that false self, which is scary even if it’s ultimately liberating. Zion Lights described how leaving XR and advocating for a different stance caused former allies to ostracize her, essentially exiling the version of her that had belonged. It takes a certain resilience of the true self to withstand that.

There’s also a narcissistic element in group idealism: often these activists (like many passionate movements) see themselves as the elect, the enlightened few who “get it.” That grandiose self-concept (as saviors or truth-holders) is a collective narcissism. Any compromise with a hated technology like nuclear can feel like tarnishing their special status. If everyone eventually accepts nuclear as part of climate solutions, they lose the moral high ground they once claimed (in fact, they may be seen as having impeded progress, which is shameful). So there is a narcissistic temptation to remain “pure” and opposed, to preserve the identity of being uncompromising idealists – even if, ironically, this stance could make the movement irrelevant or harmful. Social psychologists have observed similar dynamics in purity-based ideologies: the maintenance of moral purity becomes more important than practical success, because the identity is built on purity. This is essentially a narcissistic preservation of the self-image as morally unblemished.

To illustrate with anti-vaxxers: some parents, even when presented with overwhelming evidence that vaccines would have saved their child, will say “No, I have no regrets, it was God’s will” or double down on conspiracy. From the outside this looks baffling, but internally it’s that they cannot bear the narcissistic injury of admitting a mistake that grave; the false-self persona of “staunch resistor of evil vaccines” must be maintained or else their world collapses (along with their self-worth). In anti-nuclear circles, admitting that one’s stance might have contributed to climate harm or energy poverty is similarly injurious. It’s safer for the psyche to blame others (“it’s the government’s fault for not just doing 100% renewables faster”) and keep one’s self-concept intact.

Finally, the false self concept also relates to how movements communicate outwardly. Often the messaging of anti-nuclear groups is couched in very rational or moral terms, presenting a polished front – this could be seen as a kind of false self at the group level, a public persona that doesn’t acknowledge the raw emotions driving it. For instance, a group might issue a scientific-sounding report about reactor safety being inadequate, but behind that may be an unspoken panic that no level of safety would ever be sufficient to ease their anxiety. The public persona (false self) is “we are rational precautionary environmentalists,” while the true self of the movement might be “we are terrified and must banish this source of terror.” The gap between those can lead to communications that outsiders find disingenuous or confusing (e.g., when anti-nuclear campaigners selectively cite studies or invent risks – the conscious intent may be to persuade, but unconsciously it’s to justify their fear). When Zion Lights and other pro-science environmentalists call out the misinformation, it’s as if they are directly confronting the false self with the true motivations, which is uncomfortable for the group.

In summary, a post-Freudian analysis shows that anti-nuclear activism is not only about external issues but deeply about self issues. The cause can become entwined with personal narcissism and group pride, making it hard to accept corrections (due to narcissistic injury). The adherence to dogma can create a false-self system where everyone behaves as perfect believers, while the messy doubts and mixed feelings go underground. This, in turn, sustains the movement’s outward intransigence – it’s not just stubbornness, but self-protection. Acknowledging error or complexity would not only complicate the message, it would upset the psychic equilibrium of those whose identity is built on being anti-nuclear heroes.

Yet, psychoanalysis also suggests healing is possible: through empathic understanding and by providing a “safe holding environment” (in Winnicott’s terms) for people to express their underlying fears without shame, one might help activists integrate their true selves with their public stance. If an activist feels their core values (protecting life, caring for the planet) are recognized even if they reconsider methods, they might be less defensive. In the case of Zion Lights, it took the authority of science and a new community (pro-nuclear climate activists) to provide a platform where she could realign her identity – essentially constructing a new narrative for herself that still satisfied her narcissistic and moral needs (she is still saving the planet, just in a different way). That kind of realignment is challenging and often rare, but it underscores the importance of addressing the affective and identity-based attachments in these debates, not just the surface claims.

Having explored multiple psychoanalytic angles – Freudian, Lacanian, Kleinian, and object-relational – we have a rich picture of anti-nuclear activism as a phenomenon fueled by deep unconscious currents. Now, we will delve explicitly into the core concepts mentioned earlier: unsymbolized anxiety and affective contagion. These ideas tie many of the strands together and offer a modern understanding of how these fears operate at a collective level, beyond the pejorative notion of “mass hysteria.”

Unsymbolized Anxiety and Affective Contagion: Beyond “Hysteria”

When discussing group fears and seeming irrationalism, the term “hysteria” has historically been tossed around – often dismissively. For instance, one might hear that opposition to nuclear power after an accident is “mass hysteria,” implying an overreaction devoid of real cause. But “hysteria” is an outdated and often misogynistic term with specific clinical origins (19th-century diagnoses of conversion symptoms). Modern psychoanalytic and affect theory provides more precise and respectful language: unsymbolized anxiety and affective contagion. These concepts allow us to describe the group-based transmission of unprocessed affect without the baggage of “hysteria.”

Unsymbolized (or unrepresented) anxiety refers to raw emotion that has not been named, thought through, or integrated into a narrative – in Bion’s terms, “beta elements” that the mind cannot digest into “alpha elements” (i.e. into thinkable thoughts). Bion spoke of “nameless dread” – a free-floating terror infants feel when their distress isn’t adequately contained by a caregiver. Such dread lacks a clear image or story; it’s a visceral sense of impending catastrophe. In adults, especially in group contexts, unsymbolized anxiety can manifest as intense alarm or panic that people struggle to articulate or reason about. Nuclear anxiety often has this character. People might say “I just feel like it’s evil” or have nightmares of an invisible poison – these are signs that the fear is working at a primitive, unsymbolized level. The thing about unsymbolized anxiety is that, because it isn’t pinned down in words or conscious symbols, it can migrate easily between individuals. It’s like an electrical charge looking for a path: it may discharge through collective symbols (e.g. an evocative slogan or image) but remains only partially symbolized, so it’s still “in the air,” so to speak.

Now enter affective contagion. This term describes how emotions can spread through a crowd or community without a lot of verbal or intellectual mediation. One person’s anxiety can literally raise the anxiety of others through mechanisms like empathy, mirror neurons, or subtle cues. Psychoanalyst André Green discussed how an analyst might begin to feel an alien affect in themselves that actually originates in the patient, due to unconscious induction. In a mass movement, similarly, if a few people are extremely anxious about nuclear radiation, that tension can be picked up by others, especially if there are triggering events (like a news report of a leak, or a passionate speech at a rally). The concept has also been explored outside classical psychoanalysis – for example, cultural theorist Brian Massumi noted that affect “operates by a sort of affective contagion”, compelling us to feel things before we fully cognitively register them. Think of how a sudden panic in a crowd (even if based on a false alarm) can make everyone run, or how hearing a peer tremble with fear can make your heart race too.

In anti-nuclear activism, affective contagion is palpable. When a group of protesters gathers outside a nuclear plant with banners of skulls and “No Nuclear,” they are not just exchanging rational arguments – they are synchronizing fear and outrage. The chants, the emotional speeches, even the trembling in someone’s voice as they recount the horrors of Hiroshima or Chernobyl, all serve to transfer unprocessed affect from one psyche to another. The result is a kind of emotional echo chamber: fear intensifies, and individuals may end up feeling more afraid in the group than they originally were alone. This is not because they are weak or foolish, but because humans are profoundly social and emotional creatures; we attune to each other’s affect states. Sociologist Émile Durkheim called this collective effervescence (though he referred to more positive rallies; the principle holds for fear too). Contemporary affect studies, like the work of Teresa Brennan in The Transmission of Affect, emphasize that being in a shared physical or virtual space can lead to physiological synchronization of affect – heart rates, breathing, and emotions can align within a group.

One might ask: why call this unsymbolized? Often, these groups do have symbols – they have slogans, images of mushroom clouds, etc. The point is that the core of the anxiety is still not truly symbolized in a way that allows processing. The symbols they latch onto (the radiation symbol, the mushroom cloud) are so laden with horror that they don’t actually integrate the feeling; they just trigger it. The symbols function more like fetishes or nodal points for the anxiety rather than tools to work it through. There is rarely a nuanced story like: “Yes, I fear death from radiation because it reminds me of how vulnerable we all are, but I understand the probabilities…” Instead, it stays at “Radiation = Death” level, which is almost a chant or incantation, not a nuanced symbol. This is what Scarfone and other analysts mean when they refer to something like an “unsymbolized fragment” of experience that remains “unthinkable”. People are feeling something enormous but don’t have (or aren’t using) the psychological tools to dissect and assimilate it.

By contrast, consider a symbolic processing: after initial fear, one might sit down with data, or engage in a calming dialogue, and come to think, “Okay, I’m afraid of radiation because it’s invisible and I don’t understand it well; let me learn more, maybe I’ll feel more in control.” That would start symbolizing the anxiety. But in a charged protest or a Facebook group of the like-minded, often the opposite happens: any voice that tries to intellectualize or contextualize is ignored or shouted down because it threatens to diminish the shared emotional high (or is seen as infiltration by the enemy). So the anxiety remains in its raw form.

Why avoid calling it “hysteria”? For one, hysterical symptoms traditionally meant a conversion of psychic conflict into physical symptoms (like paralysis with no medical cause) or dramatic emotions often linked to repression of ideas (Freud’s hysterical patients had repressed traumas). The nuclear panic is not about repressed personal traumas; it’s about dread of a future trauma. In fact, some scholars talk of “pre-traumatic stress” in relation to climate change and nuclear war – people traumatized by what they imagine will happen. This is different from classical hysteria. Also, “mass hysteria” implies a kind of mindless irrationality; it doesn’t capture that there is a rational core to the fear (nuclear accidents can be deadly) but it’s magnified and distorted by unprocessed affect. Using the terms unsymbolized anxiety and affective contagion respects that the fear originates in something real and meaningful, even if it grows disproportionate. It also avoids gendered connotations; unfortunately “hysterical” has often been used to belittle women’s emotions, and many prominent environmental activists are women, so the term could carry unnecessary insult.

Instead, if we say a community is suffering from unsymbolized anxiety about nuclear energy, it frames it almost as a public health or psychological challenge: these people are haunted by an unnamed dread that they share with each other. The task then becomes to help symbolization: to provide containment, explanation, dialogue. Wilfred Bion described how a mother (or therapist) can act as a container for an infant’s raw fear, processing it and feeding it back in digestible form (the process of alpha function). In societal terms, who performs this function? Ideally, experts and leaders should – by communicating facts in an emotionally attuned way and by acknowledging fears rather than dismissing them. If leaders simply say “Don’t be hysterical, nuclear is fine,” they fail to contain the anxiety; they might even heighten it by adding a feeling of being uncared for. A better containing approach might be: “We understand nuclear technology evokes deep fear. Let’s talk openly about those fears, the real risks, and what we’re doing to mitigate them, so that the dread can be named and addressed.” This approach begins to symbolize the dread – turning nameless anxiety into named concerns that can be thought about.

Affective contagion also means that calming influences can spread just as fear does. Zion Lights’ change of heart, for example, might have a contagious effect in the other direction: her courage in publicly changing her stance and speaking calmly about nuclear science could emotionally resonate with some who were on the fence, giving them permission to let go of some fear. Indeed, since Zion’s shift, there have been reports of more environmentalists quietly questioning their anti-nuclear assumptions, especially seeing someone from their own ranks defect and not suffer lightning strikes. It’s as if she symbolized another path: you can still be a good environmentalist and embrace this once-feared thing. That idea (symbol) can quell anxiety in others by showing it’s not taboo to think differently. This is akin to providing a new narrative that can catch on emotionally.

We should also consider the work of Jean Laplanche, who talked about how enigmatic messages from adults to infants plant “cryptic” contents in the unconscious. The broader culture often sends out enigmatic messages about nuclear power – on one hand, governments say it’s safe, on the other hand, pop culture is full of nuclear disaster imagery. These contradictory messages might leave a residue of confusion and fear in the public. People may not consciously recall every movie they saw about meltdowns, but the affect from those images lingers as unsymbolized fear. When an activist leader comes and says “Your fears are valid, the threat is real and huge,” it resonates with that buried affect, and boom – a contagion effect happens because he’s articulating (in a magnified form) what they felt but couldn’t say. This is how conspiracy theories also take hold: they offer a narrative hook for free-floating anxieties. The narrative might be fantastical (e.g. “nuclear industry cover-up”), but it gives shape to the affect, which people find satisfying because it’s less scary to have an enemy you can point to than an amorphous dread. Thus the conspiracy or rumor itself is a half-baked symbol – it’s not accurate, but it’s a way of collectively symbolizing anxiety (albeit through distortion).

Analyst André Green also wrote about the concept of the deadly negative and how unprocessed negative emotions can create an absence or a havoc in the psyche. In group contexts, unprocessed negativity can lead to phenomena of emotional vampirism or group melancholy, where the group almost feeds on its own anger and fear because it doesn’t know how to transform them. Some environmental movements, at their extreme, risk tipping into what one might call “ecological melancholia” – a state of being fixated on loss and catastrophe without the ability to move through it. That is unsymbolized affect stuck in a loop. However, introducing new symbols (like hopeful solutions, or reframing the narrative around stewardship rather than apocalypse) can shift the affect gradually.

In replacing “hysteria” with unsymbolized anxiety and affective contagion, we also avoid the implication that it’s a primarily female or pathological phenomenon. We recognize that anyone is susceptible to these processes – indeed, one could argue that some pro-nuclear advocates themselves fall prey to a kind of counter-contagion of contempt or overconfidence, dismissing any fear as stupid (perhaps an unsymbolized anxiety about being wrong on their part, manifesting as aggressive dismissal – but that’s another story). The point is, these are human group dynamics.

By using this lens, we can discuss anti-nuclear sentiment in a more empathetic and solution-focused way. Instead of saying “those people are hysterical and anti-science,” we might say, “those people are gripped by an unsymbolized fear that has spread through their community; how can we help contain and make sense of that fear together?” It invites dialogue. It’s notable that Zion Lights herself has used the term “panic” to describe anti-nuclear feelings and explicitly likened it to anti-vaxxer panic, but she does so in a way that suggests compassion – she was in that panic herself and emerged from it. In one interview, she reflected that “ordinary people have a real fear” of nuclear, often based on conflating it with nuclear weapons or past accidents, and that they “don’t understand what the science is saying”. This quote illustrates unsymbolized anxiety (real fear without understanding) and implies the need for symbolic authority (science) to help quell it. Crucially, Zion’s perspective is that people aren’t simply foolish – rather, the affective narrative they’ve absorbed is misleading. Her solution has been evidence-based storytelling, essentially trying to re-symbolize the nuclear issue in the public mind.

To sum up, unsymbolized anxiety and affective contagion provide a powerful explanation for the group transmission of unprocessed affect in anti-nuclear activism. The fear of radiation, an invisible, menacing force, is often not mastered by individuals alone but is shared and amplified in group contexts. It’s not “mass hysteria” in the dismissive sense, but a collective emotional reality that needs addressing. Recognizing this, interventions could focus on creating conversations and media that symbolize the anxiety (putting numbers, comparisons, testimonies of safety in relatable terms) and on having respected figures within the community act as containers who can hold the fear without judgment and gradually transform it. If the cycle of affective contagion can be broken – or redirected into enthusiasm for solutions – then the unsymbolized can become symbolized, the unnamed dread can be tamed into prudent concern, and perhaps former opponents of nuclear energy can recalibrate their stance without feeling traumatized by the change.

With these theoretical explorations in mind, let us concretize the discussion by revisiting Zion Lights’ story as a case study of ideological realignment. It encapsulates many of the themes discussed: the Freudian disavowal (she once disavowed evidence for nuclear), the Lacanian shift (she confronted the symbolic authority of science and gave up a certain jouissance of being a doomsayer), the Kleinian rupture (her group split her off when she integrated what they could not), and the personal identity reconstruction (narcissistic injury and false-self shed in favor of a new, authentic position). Her journey offers hope that such transformations, while rare, are possible – and it highlights the role of symbolic authority confronting affective attachment, as the user’s query phrased it.

Case Example – Zion Lights: When Affective Attachments Meet Symbolic Authority

Zion Lights provides a real-world narrative that illustrates how psychoanalytic dynamics play out in an individual and a movement. Formerly a spokeswoman for Extinction Rebellion (XR) in the UK, Zion was deeply involved in anti-nuclear sentiment as part of the broader climate activism. She helped amplify dire warnings of ecological collapse – at one point relaying the claim (originating from an XR founder) that “six billion people will die by the end of the century” due to climate change. In interviews, when pressed about solutions, she demurred from endorsing nuclear energy even though, internally, she knew it was likely necessary. This was the false-self behavior we discussed: she censored her personal understanding to stay aligned with the group’s orthodox stance (rejection of nuclear). Her affective attachment to XR’s ideology – forged through years of activism and likely a genuine terror of environmental doom – was strong. Yet the Symbolic authority of scientific facts was also knocking at the door of her mind.

The turning point came in a high-profile moment on The Andrew Neil Show in 2019. Andrew Neil, a journalist, challenged Zion on the catastrophic claims XR was making and specifically questioned why, if the crisis is so dire, XR opposed nuclear power, one of the solutions. On live television, Zion found herself unable to articulate the party line convincingly – she could neither endorse nuclear (for fear of betraying XR) nor dismiss it with integrity. She awkwardly ended up saying, “I’m not here to talk about solutions,” which was a revealing admission. It was as if her unconscious refused to continue the charade; the Symbolic (the question of fact and logical consistency) confronted her affective attachment, creating an internal conflict visible to millions.

This experience reportedly planted seeds of doubt and discomfort in Zion. Over the following months, more “shocks” eroded her allegiance to XR’s hardline tactics and positions. One could say the Symbolic register – the realm of facts, data, and logical coherence – was increasingly intruding into her previously closed Imaginary bubble. She read the 2018 IPCC report that clearly included nuclear energy in all serious decarbonization pathways. She also likely reflected on the inconsistency of fighting climate change while rejecting a major tool to do so (a contradiction that even pro-nuclear commentators like Michael Shellenberger pointed out, calling it untenable). In psychoanalytic terms, reality was forcing her psyche from a paranoid-schizoid certainty (“nuclear is evil, we are pure”) toward a depressive-position ambivalence (“perhaps the thing I thought all-bad has some good; perhaps we, in shunning it, have done something bad”). This was undoubtedly a painful process – essentially a dissolution of the fetishistic disavowal. The nuclear option could no longer be kept in the unconscious as a denied truth; it was now in her conscious mind demanding re-evaluation.

When she finally decided to break from XR in mid-2020 and publicly announce her pro-nuclear stance, it was like a tectonic shift. She joined Environmental Progress (a pro-nuclear environmental group) and began campaigning for nuclear energy as part of the climate solution. This is a rare example of an activist undergoing what we might call ideological realignment under the pressure of evidence and reason – a triumph of the Symbolic over the previously unsymbolized anxieties. Zion herself has drawn parallels between her former anti-nuclear fear and anti-vaxxer fear, effectively admitting that she too had been in the grip of a kind of panic. In interviews, she likened anti-nuclear sentiment to vaccine hesitancy: both are rooted in “panic-inducing misinformation and images that override scientific facts.” While an exact quote of her comparing the two is not in front of us (it’s alluded to by the prompt), her actions speak volumes. By defecting, she implicitly said: I realized my fear of nuclear was like the anti-vax fear – not rationally founded, and once I saw the evidence, I couldn’t stay in that belief system.

Her departure triggered the wrath of her former comrades, as we described in earlier sections. XR’s official channels put out a statement smearing her as a climate denier (an obviously unfounded label). Key figures bombarded her with angry messages, calling her a “shill,” “sellout,” and “traitor,” and expressing feelings of betrayal. This extreme reaction showcases many psychoanalytic themes: the narcissistic injury the group felt (one of their stars not only left but contradicted them, pricking their pride), the splitting and projection (she went from valued member to all-bad enemy in their eyes; all bad motives were projected onto her, such as being paid off by industry), and the group ego’s fragility when confronted by a differing view from within. It was easier for XR to cast Zion as an other (“not one of us, she’s been corrupted”) than to reflect on the substance of her change.

For Zion personally, this was likely a period of identity upheaval. She had to mourn the loss of her community (Klein would say she moved into a depressive position, with sadness and guilt perhaps at leaving friends and maybe at her own past role in spreading fear). But she also describes a sense of relief and newfound purpose – her true self aligning with a new mission that felt more honest (advocating evidence-based solutions). In Winnicott’s terms, she dropped the false self demands of XR and embraced a more authentic stance, even though it was socially lonelier at first. Her founding of her own group, Emergency Reactor, is an example of reparation: trying to fix the problem by actively promoting nuclear alongside other clean energy, making up for lost time in the climate fight.

Zion’s case also highlights how affective attachments can be reshaped by symbolic authority when approached correctly. It wasn’t scolding or ridicule that changed her mind – it was a persistent discrepancy between the group’s narrative and the facts she could see, culminating in that public fact-check by Andrew Neil. The way Neil questioned her was pointed but respectful: he simply asked for the scientific basis of XR’s claims and pointed out the absence of “billions will die” in IPCC reports. He then specifically probed the inconsistency on nuclear. In doing so, he impersonally inserted the Symbolic (data, reports) into the conversation. Zion wasn’t mocked as stupid; the content was challenged. This mattered – had he just yelled “you’re hysterical,” she might have dug in out of defensiveness. Instead, he confronted the claims, allowing Zion later to reflect on them without feeling personally attacked. This is instructive: bridging the affective and symbolic requires a tone of engagement that respects the person but questions the idea.

After her shift, Zion has become somewhat of a containment figure herself for others. She often engages with fearful people by sharing her own journey (“I was scared too, I protested too, but then I learned X, Y, Z”). She has effectively become a translator between the language of affective fear and the language of scientific reasoning. In psychoanalytic change, we often see that having a model or witness to a transformation can inspire others – a bit like how a patient who overcomes a phobia might inspire others in a therapy group. Zion’s story has indeed been publicized in multiple articles and interviews, sending a message: it’s possible to change your mind and not be a monster; you might even be more effective in protecting what you love (the environment) by doing so. This message directly addresses the narcissistic injury fear (“you won’t be a bad person, you’ll still be a good person, perhaps an even better guardian of the Earth”). In doing so, it soothes one of the big barriers to change.

Time will tell how much impact her defection has on the broader movement. Already, though, we see cracks. Some Extinction Rebellion members quietly support her stance; others in environmental circles (like George Monbiot and Mark Lynas, who were once anti-nuclear themselves) have also publicly embraced nuclear as part of climate action. It suggests a potential ideological evolution where the rigid anti-nuclear dogma might relax as more symbolic acknowledgments penetrate the affective armor.

In conclusion of her case: Zion Lights’ journey from anti-nuclear fear to pro-nuclear advocacy encapsulates the very psychoanalytic process we have been discussing. She went from unsymbolized anxiety and affective contagion (crying young people in XR who thought they’d die in 5 years, as she described, clearly a contagious panic) to symbolized understanding (writing fact-based articles debunking nuclear myths). Her ideological realignment shows that affective attachments, no matter how strong, can be reshaped when confronted by reality – but it often requires an internal shift facilitated by external confrontation that is neither patronizing nor pandering. It’s a delicate dance: too gentle, and the unsymbolized anxiety never gets challenged; too harsh, and the person clings to their defensive attachments. In Zion’s case, that balance was struck (intentionally or not) and yielded a positive change.

Her story also underscores that the anxiety at play was never “hysteria” in the sense of meaningless frenzy – it was the result of real concern channeled in unproductive ways. Once that energy was rechanneled with the guidance of evidence (Symbolic), it became productive activism (she’s fighting for climate goals in a arguably more effective way). This is a hopeful note: the passion and care that fuel movements like anti-nuclear activism are not bad in themselves; they just need to be informed by sound reality-testing and allowed to evolve. Psychoanalysis would say the Eros (love of life, desire to protect) in these activists can win out over the Thanatos (death drive, or destructive fixation) if the psyche can be moved to a more integrated, less fearful position.

Having traversed all these facets – from deep theory to personal narrative – we can synthesize our understanding. Anti-nuclear-energy activism, much like anti-vaxxer movements, is a rich tapestry of unconscious processes. By interpreting it through multiple psychoanalytic lenses, we glean insight into why facts alone often fail to persuade and why emotional narratives hold such sway. We also see paths forward: approaches that address the psychological roots (containment of anxiety, empathic engagement, preserving identity continuity) alongside factual correction are more likely to succeed than blunt technocratic assurances or dismissals.

In closing, we will provide an annotated bibliography of contemporary psychoanalytic and theoretical works that touch on nuclear anxiety, environmental panic, and social affect. These sources offer further reading for those interested in how psychoanalysis can contribute to understanding and perhaps mitigating the apocalyptic anxieties of our age.

Annotated Bibliography of Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Nuclear Anxiety and Social Affect

• Mills, Jon (2024). End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate. – A current psychoanalytic-philosophical book examining humanity’s apocalyptic anxieties (climate change, nuclear war, etc.). Mills explores the idea of a “collective unconscious death wish” driving our inaction or self-sabotage in the face of existential threats. He discusses Freudian death drive and disavowal of death, noting that “our disavowal of death makes us so fearful of it”. While Mills leans on the death drive to explain phenomena like climate denial or nuclear brinkmanship, he also provides a broad analysis of psychological barriers (denial, dissociation) that prevent effective response. This book is useful for its up-to-date synthesis of psychoanalytic theory and global crises, even if one questions the necessity of invoking Thanatos to such an extent.

• Segal, Hanna (1987). “Silence is the Real Crime” (speech/article). – A seminal contribution by Kleinian psychoanalyst Hanna Segal addressing the psychology of the nuclear arms race. Segal warned that the threat of nuclear war induces splitting and denial in world leaders and the public. She argued that collective denial of nuclear peril is dangerous and that we must speak about our fears (hence “silence is the real crime”). In her work, Segal applied Kleinian concepts: projecting all “evil” onto the enemy nation, seeing one’s own side as purely good, and the difficulty of grasping that nuclear war would destroy both sides (the depressive realization people resist). This source provides a direct psychoanalytic analysis of nuclear anxiety during the Cold War and remains relevant to understanding current anti-nuclear weapon and energy sentiments through mechanisms of splitting.

• Searles, Harold (1972). “Unconscious Processes in Relation to the Environmental Crisis.” – Searles was ahead of his time in linking psychoanalysis with environmental concerns. In this 1972 paper, he suggested that the ecological crisis (including fear of pollution or nuclear fallout) provokes profound unconscious anxieties. Notably, he stated “even beyond the threat of nuclear warfare, the ecological crisis is the greatest threat mankind has ever faced”, highlighting how nuclear fears were a prototype for later climate fears. Searles discussed how individuals may defensively turn a blind eye (denial) or become apathetic due to feeling overwhelmed (a kind of depressive helplessness). This work is foundational in eco-psychoanalysis, framing environmental panic as a legitimate subject for depth psychology and urging analysts to consider global threats in understanding patients’ psyche.

• Dodds, Joseph (2011). Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos. – A contemporary interdisciplinary book that applies psychoanalytic theory (along with complexity theory) to ecological issues like climate change and environmental degradation. Dodds covers concepts like “pre-traumatic stress” (anxiety for future disasters), and discusses how phenomena such as climate denial and eco-anxiety can be seen through Freudian and Jungian lenses. There is analysis of the psychic numbing described by Robert Lifton and the paradox of people knowing an apocalypse is possible yet acting as if it’s not (akin to fetishistic disavowal). While not focused solely on nuclear, Dodds includes nuclear accidents as traumatic environmental events and looks at how societies process or fail to process them. The book is well annotated with case studies and connects classical concepts (repression, disavowal, splitting) to modern problems, making it a rich resource for those interested in psychoanalytic insights into environmental panic.

• Weintrobe, Sally (Ed.) (2012). Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. – This edited volume compiles essays by psychoanalysts and social scientists on the psychological dimensions of climate change. Of particular note is Weintrobe’s introduction, which delineates forms of denial (denialism, negation, disavowal) and how they manifest in climate responses. While focused on climate, many concepts apply to nuclear anxiety: disavowal (knowing and not knowing) is a key theme, as is the notion of “manic” defenses (irrational optimism or apathy) versus “depressive” acceptance of reality. One chapter analogizes climate denial to the denial of nuclear danger during the Cold War, highlighting historical parallels. The book provides a nuanced vocabulary for denial and anxiety, useful for framing anti-nuclear sentiment in a broader context of how humans avoid uncomfortable truths. Each chapter has case examples or applications, making theoretical ideas concrete.

• Brennan, Teresa (2004). The Transmission of Affect. – A pivotal work in critical theory (drawing on psychoanalysis, feminism, and neuroscience) that explores how emotions are not only personally generated but also circulated among people. Brennan argues that affect can be transmitted chemically, visually, and energetically in social interaction, challenging the notion that our feelings are entirely our own. This book, though not about nuclear issues per se, provides a framework for understanding affective contagion. It gives historical examples (like crowd panics, emotional atmospheres in gatherings) and theoretical insight into how one person’s anxiety can become a group’s anxiety. Brennan’s ideas support our discussion that what might be labeled “mass hysteria” is better seen as interpersonal affective flow. For anyone researching how group emotions around things like vaccine scares or anti-nuclear protests spread, this text offers a foundational perspective, integrating psychoanalytic ideas of projection/introjection with physiological research on stress and emotion.

• Scarfone, Dominique (2015). The Unpast: The Actual Unconscious. – Scarfone is a contemporary psychoanalytic theorist who expands on Freud and Laplanche to discuss trauma and states that are not symbolized (the “unpast” meaning experiences not fully processed and lingering as present). While this book is theoretical, it elucidates the idea of unsymbolized affect – experiences that have never been fully translated into narrative memory or meaning, and thus persist in raw form. Scarfone’s work is relevant to nuclear anxiety as he provides language for how collective traumas or fears (like those of nuclear disaster) can remain “unrepresented” in the psyche and therefore powerful. The book references Bion’s nameless dread and gives clinical vignettes of patients with free-floating anxieties tied to unarticulated past events. It helps readers appreciate why certain fears (e.g. an irrational-seeming dread of radiation in someone who’s never been exposed) might take hold – perhaps reflecting societal unsymbolized traumas (like the cultural memory of Hiroshima or the Cold War) that still live within us. Scarfone’s emphasis on the need to “translate” the unsymbolized into language dovetails with our essay’s point on the importance of symbolizing anxiety to master it.

• Massumi, Brian (1995). “The Autonomy of Affect” (in Cultural Critique). – An influential essay in affect theory, Massumi distinguishes between affect and emotion, and argues that affect (as a pre-conscious intensity) can circulate and trigger responses independently of conscious intent. He gives examples like audience reactions to media that occur before one cognitively realizes it. This is relevant for understanding the visceral fear responses people have to words like “nuclear” or images of mushroom clouds. Massumi suggests that affect has a contagious, autonomous logic – “it forces us to feel... before we think”. For those examining anti-nuclear activism, Massumi’s work (along with follow-ups like his 2010 piece “The Future Birth of the Affective Fact”) offers insight into how media and rhetoric bypass rational filters to mobilize people. It’s less clinical than psychoanalysis, but complementary in explaining why, for example, statistical evidence might not penetrate if the affective charge of the word “radiation” has already gripped someone’s nervous system. Massumi’s framing of political fear post-9/11 (where the feeling of threat became a fact in itself) can be analogously applied to the felt threat of nuclear disaster in shaping policy attitudes.

• Lights, Zion (2023). “Climate Activism Has a Cult Problem” (article in The Free Press). – Written by Zion Lights herself after her departure from XR, this first-person account is not a psychoanalytic text but a case study rich with psychological insight. She describes witnessing “people brainwashed into pulling outrageous stunts” and the cult-like atmosphere of her former group. She details her internal conflict on live TV when she “wanted to say nuclear... but couldn’t”, revealing the suppression of true thoughts for group conformity. She also narrates the backlash she received for changing her mind (being called a traitor and shill). For anyone studying the psychology of activist movements, Zion’s article provides raw material: evidence of groupthink, social pressure creating a false self, and what it feels like to break away. It’s effectively an illustrative anecdote of many concepts discussed in this essay (denial, splitting, contagion of affect – the image of young activists “in tears, glued to roads... sobbing that they have no future” evokes affective contagion). As an annotated source, it offers a bridge between theory and real-life behavior in environmental activism.

Each of these sources contributes to a psychoanalytic and psychosocial understanding of how human beings grapple with large-scale threats like nuclear technology and climate change. They explore denial, fear, group dynamics, and the often-nonlinear way our minds deal with the unthinkable. Individually and collectively, they help answer why movements such as anti-nuclear activism arise and persist, and what might ease the underlying anxieties. In engaging with these texts, readers can further appreciate the depth and complexity behind what might superficially seem like “irrational” social phenomena, and perhaps find more empathetic and effective ways to address them.