As one not shy about current events I often get asked how I handle patients sharing their political views in session.
Despite our hyper-partisan times I’ve never had a problem in my private practice with a patient’s politics.
How is this possible when, we’re told, everything is political?
Well, I would argue that in psychotherapy almost nothing is political.[1]Sure, psychoanalysis has a history replete with Freud’s political maneuvering in the early days of psychoanalysis, in which he ousted potential threats such as Adler and Jung. And some of his … Continue reading
The meaning beyond what’s said
As a psychoanalytic therapist I’m interested not simply in what the person speaks—that is, in merely making denotative sense of the words being spoken—but in using this to truly understand the who behind those words.
In the case of politics this involves moving beyond merely what is said and toward deeper considerations of how what is being said helps us learn something more about the other, not so much their views per se but what these views may tell us about the needs and longings within them.
Arriving at this requires its own kind of listening.
Moving past politics
Here we could use two trending examples: a Trump supporter and a person who identifies as woke. If I listen to their views and respond based on their (non-)accordance with my own I have neglected the patient and impaired the treatment.
We may agree or disagree, but if this is what bonds or ruptures us we have a problem. I—we—have fallen into an all too familiar trap and missed a chance at something deeper, more essential.
To mitigate this I need to engage with curiosity.
What compels them toward these ideas? How do these ideas orient them? How do they impact the ways they interface with the world? How do they provide a sense of psychological (dis)order? What do they reveal about the conditions in which they grew up? What might their views reveal about the patient’s impulses, including sadistic and masochistic ones?[2]For example, my own conservatism grows out of a childhood need, still ongoing, for a sense of order in a chaotic home and world, and the sense of security and pride that come from fiscal and personal … Continue reading
The questions that politics provoke, not the politics themselves, are relevant to the treatment.
Agree or disagree?
A few final words are in order here about agreement and disagreement, sameness and difference.
My job is not to agree with patients, or to placate them by affirming a hunch or a hope that we’re similar. Doing so may relieve some anxiety in the room, but it is non-therapeutic as it suggests that love and acceptance are conditional upon things like sameness.[3]Unlike in wokeism, where othering is a kind of sin, in psychodynamic therapy the concept of the other and perceived differences, including in power dynamics, are not presumptively things to be … Continue reading
Nor is it my job to disagree, or to push my own agenda or to “enlighten” them with my point of view.[4]This is akin to narcissism, to making them like me.
A great therapist controls these impulses, opting instead to create a space conducive to further exploration of all that’s presented. Working through this material—the anxiety that comes up around not just difference but sameness and even not-yet-knowing—becomes a vital part of the treatment.
In my consulting room, and I would also hope in others’ too, patients are truly free to share and explore their political views, to be met not with reactive judgment but only a wish toward deeper understanding—not so much of the views, seductive as they are, but of the self.
So, yes, there’s a place for politics in the consulting room, and it’s the job of the therapist to make sure they don’t seduce us.
But that may not be as easy as it sounds. As a college professor of mine once quipped, “If you know you’re being seduced you probably aren’t.”
Featured Image by Alex Radelich on Unsplash
Notes, etc.
| ↑1 | Sure, psychoanalysis has a history replete with Freud’s political maneuvering in the early days of psychoanalysis, in which he ousted potential threats such as Adler and Jung. And some of his early theories were built on chauvinism, which is for many politically charged and which gave us concepts such as penis envy. But Freud’s great contribution is not in the correctness of his theories but in what his myriad theories did to open a dialogue about our human condition in a way that hadn’t been done before. And psychoanalysis is much more than Freud. It is a dynamic field of study, with a robust dialogue that continues to this day, unwedded to strictly Freud’s or anyone’s theories, or to any ideology. |
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| ↑2 | For example, my own conservatism grows out of a childhood need, still ongoing, for a sense of order in a chaotic home and world, and the sense of security and pride that come from fiscal and personal responsibility. It can also move me, if I’m not careful, toward rigidity and control. |
| ↑3 | Unlike in wokeism, where othering is a kind of sin, in psychodynamic therapy the concept of the other and perceived differences, including in power dynamics, are not presumptively things to be corrected as much as explored. |
| ↑4 | This is akin to narcissism, to making them like me. |