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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n A little more than eight years ago, I made my debut as a staff writer for Impulse, <\/em>the monthly electronic newsletter of the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies. The piece was titled \u201cPsychological Post-Mortem of the Midterm Elections.<\/a>\u201d It viewed the topsy-turvy political environment from President Obama\u2019s election to his midterm \u201cshellacking\u201d just two years later through a psychological prism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Interweaving attachment theory, neuroscience, and Melanie Klein\u2019s notion of development, I noted that it was as if President Obama were trying to govern a paranoid-schizoid nation from a depressive position (non-therapists will have some idea what I mean by this by clicking on the link to the earlier piece).<\/p>\n\n\n\n A little more than eight years ago, I made my debut as a staff writer for Impulse, the monthly electronic newsletter of the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies. The piece was titled \u201cPsychological Post-Mortem of the Midterm Elections.\u201d It viewed the … Continue reading
Based on Nancy McWilliam\u2019s commentary on the pitfalls befalling therapists who operate from their own depressive personality styles, I also drew parallels between how President Obama related to congressional Republicans and well-meaning therapists who attempt to work too flexibly with hostile clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My debut caused a minor furor within NCSPP, some of whose members wanted me and the editor to resign. Instead, the powers that be quickly removed my 400+ words from the site and issued an apology. Back then, electoral politics was largely viewed as having no place in psychotherapy. Fast forward to today. Is there a psychotherapeutic organization or office that hasn\u2019t been infused with politics?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The enormous uptick in anxiety and depression therapists encounter has been dubbed \u201cPost-Election Stress Disorder.\u201d Clients routinely talk about re-triggered personal traumas such as sexual assault, family ruptures brought on by political disagreements, or how they can no longer bear their like-minded loved ones\u2019 incessant obsession with Trump. A client who had never breathed a word about politics sent me a photo of a bumper sticker that said, \u201cElect a Clown, Expect a Circus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Outside of our consulting rooms, heated debates rage among mental health practitioners over the ethics of opining about Donald Trump\u2019s mental health, and whether a duty to warn trumps formerly sacrosanct neutrality. The American Psychoanalytic Association renounced the \u201cGoldwater Rule\u201d (the American Psychiatric Association still upholds it). The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President<\/em> was a New York Times bestseller. When William Doherty, professor, therapist, and founder of Citizen Therapists for Democracy, published an online manifesto declaring Trump a unique threat to America’s mental health, more than 3,800 therapists signed it. Classes and seminars about practicing in the current political climate and combining activism with psychotherapy have proliferated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As is often said in the new era, \u201cThis is not normal.\u201d The same could be said for the changes in the field of psychotherapy in the years since I wrote my piece. We have fruitfully begun to question the whole concept of \u201cnormal,\u201d societally and professionally. There are dangers and opportunities. But one thing is clear: The personal is not only political–it is also psychological. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"