Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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Academies of hope: Making radical hope a reality
Full text linkThis article, based on a talk given to The First International Online Seminar on the Person-Centred Approach, October 10–11, 2021, has three main aims. Firstly, to remind us of Rogers’ indefatigable commitment to cultural transformation, humanisation, and peace. I suggest that these are defining aspects of the origin story of the person-centred approach (PCA), which in recent decades has retreated from this focus in favour of increased attention to person-centred and experiential psychotherapies as methods of psychotherapy and counselling. Secondly, I describe how this cultural transformation project is still at work in the 21st century, showing up in a wide range of transformative initiatives which extend the basic ideas embedded in a person-centred philosophy into what some identify as an emerging counterculture. Thirdly, I urge the PCA community to revisit and re-engage the social transformation agenda at the heart of the approach, to collaborate and organise ‘academies of hope’, and to become advocates and activists for the creation of life-centred cultures before it is too late
'London: Peace on Earth' and 'War & Peace'
No full textComposition with pigeon-wing & abalone; photograph.
Poem
Israeli psychotherapists and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Full text linkThis paper discusses the positions taken by Israeli analysts and therapists vis-àvis the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Israeli-Arab relations, in the context of their attitude to political and social issues. The history of this topic is traced for the past few decades and attention is paid to the influence of the conflict on actual analytic and therapeutic processes, to the dilemmas posed by analysts’ open expression of political views, and to efforts to reach psychoanalytic insight into the dynamics of the conflict. The author believes that political issues unavoidably influence individuals’ lives, cannot be avoided in analytic discourse, and their working through can ultimately deepen and enrich clinical work
Being a 'barefoot therapist' in a time of war: Offering support to traumatised and tortured children and adults
Full text linkIn 1976, as a poet of 30, I was responding to the murder of President Allende in Chile in 1973 and the attacks on women protesters fighting the regime of Pinochet. I was profoundly affected by the realisation that while one group of similar-minded people could be joyously on holiday, just a short geographic distance away, a similar group could be facing unbearable trauma. Professionals working in a time of upheaval can sometimes take a dissociative defence in exaggerating the difference in their lives compared to the lives of those they are trying to help. Working with extreme trauma in a range of countries can break down those defences so that we see the commonality in the human condition. Whether religious or not, this is best expressed by the 16th century phrase ascribed to John Bradford, ‘there, but for the grace of God go I!’. The wish to blame the other for their hurricanes, floods, wars, and torture is significant. Even secular insurance companies do not insure against ‘acts of God’
White therapists grappling with racist comments in therapy
Full text linkTherapists can be seen to have a moral obligation to use their power to work against social injustice. Engaging with the dialogue of privilege and oppression in relation to race is one example of this. Since responses from white people in being named as privileged can sometimes lead to defensiveness and frustration, a challenge is posed in how to respond to this in therapy. This article suggests that understanding the intersectionality of privilege and oppression in all individuals facilitates the opportunity for more nuanced discussion. It proposes that tools such as the Multicultural and Social Justice Counselling Competencies approach could be used to enable clients to explore their own white privilege. A fictional case example of a white, gay man who is HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)-positive is presented and discussed in order to exemplify this proposal
An ideology of erasure: Interphobia in right-wing extremism: A call for intersex-affirmative therapy
Full text linkThe discrimination faced by intersex people plays a major role in their life, including therapeutic and psychological settings. Thus, the range and expression of interphobia is crucial for therapists and practitioners to understand as part of an inter-affirmative therapeutic approach. The article examines the writings of key proponents the German-speaking extreme right, with the understanding that many of these interphobic ideas hold true for society at large. By analysing seven interphobic strategies used by the extreme right, we understand how their narratives about intersex people continue to propagate a two-sex hegemony. The seven strategies are: ignore, deny, pathologise, employ paternalism, conjure up the polarity of man and woman, make direct attacks, and functionalise completely different issues to further their political agenda. The article explores the intrinsic entanglement of interphobia with racism, antisemitism, nationalism, social Darwinism, two-sex ideology, heterosexism, cissexism, and sexism and it is also a reconstruction of relevant discourses in sexology, psychology, and gender studies. I advocate for an understanding of human development that is non-hierarchical and therefore does not value any particular expression of human bodies over any other. Pathologisation and ‘fixing’ is contraindicated to healing and resilience, and if therapy is to be inter-affirmative, it needs to accurately reflect the interphobic lived realities of clients’ lives
CBT: The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami: Managerialism, Politics, and the Corruptions of Science (Book review): By Farhad Dalal (Routledge, 2018)
No full textAbortion and reflections on racial justice
Full text linkOn June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States dismantled federal protections for access to abortion, allowing a cascade of state laws that criminalize pregnant people, their healthcare providers, and other supporters. Through a racial justice lens, this article examines abortion rights as a demand for reproductive freedom. Psychotherapists on the frontline, listening to girls’ and women’s stories of sexual trauma, are encouraged to see our work in a historical and political frame
Therapeutic reflections on the ‘pandemic’
Full text linkThis article attempts to think through the many, often contradictory aspects of the present ‘pandemic’, with a view to arriving at a cogent notion of what ‘psychotherapy’ would mean under these circumstances. It begins with a note on the hermeneutic meaning of ‘prejudice’ and how this applies to the present article, and then proceeds to a consideration of the relevance of the idea of ‘mass psychosis’, informed by Leonard Shlain’s characterisation of the 16th century witch hunts in western Europe, in the course of which more than half a million women were executed as supposed ‘witches’. This suggests a parallel with today’s manifestation of what is arguably a mass psychosis, induced by endemic fear of lethal contamination, fed by global governmental responses (prescribed by the World Health Organization) to the alleged ‘pandemic’ caused by this pathogen. Aspects of what might be called the current ‘vaccine tyranny’ are investigated, as well as the nature of a ‘mass psychosis’, which is explored from various perspectives (including Lacanian psychoanalysis), before attention shifts to the issue of appropriate psychotherapy, with recourse to the thinking of Julia Kristeva on ‘revolt’ and Lacan on the ‘revolutionary’s choice’