Fragile identities and consumption: the use of “Carbon Conversations” in changing people’s relationship to “stuff”

A number of writers (for example Hamilton, 2004; Layard, 2005; O. James, 2007) have explored the proposition that high levels of material consumption do not lead to a contented population. It is also clear that the economic growth that feeds these levels of consumption is unsustainable. (See for example Daly, 1977; Jackson, 2009; Victor, 2008). Changing this state of affairs is likely to be difficult however. Insights from psychoanalysis and psychotherapy suggest that, even without the demand for economic growth and the pressure of advertising, the relationship between identity and “stuff” may be too complex to allow a simple rejection of the “affluenza” lifestyle.