Tag: smartphones

Should your therapist have an interest in politics?

The question of whether therapists should engage with politics has grown more urgent in recent years. The world outside the consulting room has become louder, more divisive, and increasingly polarised. The rise of misinformation, the mainstreaming of extremist ideologies, and the deepening fractures in civic discourse have all conspired to push the boundaries of what we consider “political.” Inevitable, this environment seeps into the therapy room and into the words and silences of patients and the quiet reflections of therapists. To some, staying politically neutral in such a climate feels almost complicit. To others, stepping into political territory risks alienating the sacred space of therapy from its true purpose: to focus on the psyche, not the state.

Therapy is, by its nature, an intimate and private encounter. It is one of the last refuges from the noise of the world. People come to therapy not to hear their therapist’s worldview but to understand their own. The patient’s pain, conflict, or confusion must take center stage. Even the most well-meaning political commentary from a therapist risks turning therapy into something didactic or morale. It may subtly push a patient toward compliance with the therapist’s values, rather than helping them excavate and inhabit their own. For some practitioners, this traditional boundary is sacrosanct: it ensures that the work remains rooted in the patient’s inner life, not in the fleeting urgencies of external events.

But to believe that politics can ever be fully excluded from therapy is, perhaps, naive. Politics is not confined to governments or elections; it is woven into the fabric of everyday life. A patient’s anxiety about their future may be entangled with economic insecurity. Their feelings about intimacy and identity may reflect the influence of systemic oppression. In such cases, to ignore the political dimensions of their experience risks misunderstanding the forces that shape their suffering. The therapeutic process may feel incomplete, even hollow, if it fails to acknowledge the patient’s lived reality in its entirety.

Yet, for therapists to directly engage with politics raises thorny questions. Whose politics? In a world where truths are contested and misinformation proliferates, what authority does a therapist have to declare what is real or right? The therapist’s role is not to guide a patient toward a particular ideology but to foster their capacity for self-awareness and independent thought. To impose a political narrative risks replicating the very dynamics of control and disempowerment that therapy seeks to undo.

Conflicts of Choice.

The idea of conflicts over unacceptable aspects of the self is a central part of the psychodynamic point of view. In relation to our internal worlds Freud borrowed the word ‘dynamic’ from the study of physics to convey the idea of two conflicting forces producing a resultant third force which acts in an opposing direction.

Any attempt to understand the basis of human behaviour must consider the issue of our motivation in relation to the conflicts that arise within our inner selves. Dramatists, poets and artists have explored the fields of love and hate, destructiveness and hedonism long before science turned its attention to these issues. There are many types of innate behaviour, from simple in built reflexes promoted by survival and learning to more complicated patterns built up over our childhood. In Western society our needs are generally no longer driven by our struggle for food and water, but a constant motivator is our desire to relate and for love. In our choice driven society this creates enormous conflict within our psyches.

In relation to relationships there is now a dilemma. Choice implies some conflict. When we break up with someone we might be told ‘there are plenty of fish in the sea’. However, these days these fish really are at our finger tips….on Tinder, Grindr and the many other apps and dating websites. Committing to someone with so much choice is now hard, even impossible. The conflict is always present –with one eye wandering, we want perfection and possibly the next ‘like’ may be that perfect match. Choice. We think opportunity is good. We think the more chances we have, the better. But everything becomes watered-down. Never mind actually feeling satisfied; it can now feel difficult to understand what satisfaction actually looks like, sounds like, feels like. We’re one foot out the door, because outside that door is more. We are unable to see who’s right in front of our eyes asking to be loved, because no one is asking to be loved. We long for something that we still want to believe exists. Yet, we are looking for the next thrill, the next jolt of excitement, the next instant gratification.

Is our constant need to distract ourselves to bombard ourselves with stimuli an indication of our inability to face the conflicts inside our own mind? Is that what makes us miserable? Why we feel dissatisfied? We wonder why nothing lasts and everything feels a little hopeless. Because, we have no idea how to see our lives for what they are, instead of what they aren’t. How can we be expected to stick something out, to love someone when we struggle to love ourselves?

In a world filled with tantalising options perhaps the way to true love is to put our phones down for a moment and take time to consider the people that exist in our lives already.