Therapy, Personal Change and Struggle

Abstract

Our concern in this and the following chapter is to formulate ideas on the nature and implications of a politically conscious mental health practice. We have argued that personal and political change are intertwined, although neither is reducible to the other, and that therapy can be linked to politics through its exploration of the roots of action and emotion. In practice, however, it often privatises experience, hiding individual unhappiness without challenging the social structures that have given rise to it, and without encouraging links between individuals sharing the same distress. While this is an easy criticism to make, it is less obvious what the alternatives are, and it is with the aim of exploring this question that this chapter analyses examples drawn from our work in terms of both their psychological and political significance. The themes that emerge are further developed in Chapter 5.