{"id":2226,"date":"2019-01-08T12:09:06","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T20:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shrinkstaging.lorriegoldin.com\/?p=2226"},"modified":"2019-01-08T12:09:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T20:09:10","slug":"then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/?p=2226","title":{"rendered":"Then and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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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


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":"

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 →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Then and Now: When politics enters the psychotherapy room","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,8,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","category-personal","category-psychological"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2F8Ch-zU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2226"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2232,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226\/revisions\/2232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}