Politics–Not What You Had in Mind!

Abstract

Often psychotherapy and politics are considered antagonistic to one another, detached and even clashing. Conventional perceptions of these two domains also place them at two opposing ends of an absolute dichotomy: one private and the other public; one abstract—related to the psyche or mind—and the other real and concrete; while one is mainly marked by emotion and empathy, the other is dominated by power and interests; one is perceived as altruistic and the other as serving the motives of either individuals or a power group; and so on. It is then no wonder that many therapists think that politics is other people’s business and that they had better stick to their own “clean” work in therapy. At the same time, people who engage in political activity do not usually set great store by psychotherapy, the views it tries to promote or its modes of action. These then, it would seem, are two separate domains, alien to one another and functioning in a manner that clashes with each other’s means or objectives. This way of thinking is apparently the outcome of the many years of psychodynamic hegemony in the psychotherapeutic discourse and of dogmatic versions and offshoots of it. Even today, dichotomous views regarding psychology and politics are predominant in the psychotherapeutic community. Many psychotherapists are reluctant to have anything to do with politics or its associated therapeutic and social activities. They shy away from (and at times wholly avoid) the term wherever it concerns their work.