Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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Editorial
Full text linkThere could hardly be a more appropriate time to launch this journal. Global politics demonstrates with chilling immediacy the relevance of concepts from across the whole spectrum of therapeutic approaches – trauma, denial, dissociation, splitting, projection, the shadow, dreaming up and many more
Ranting during the pandemic: Online contributions to our online world
Full text linkThis contribution from ‘the Front Line’ comprises a selection of YouTube and other videos that the author has made during the past 6 months in the context of the coronavirus pandemic
#TherapistsConnect: Our voices are stronger together
Full text linkThis paper explores therapists' use of social media, including the author's reflections about the potential risks and benefits to therapists, and their work. These reflections are discussed in the context of the author's own social media use, as a therapist, which includes establishing #TherapistsConnect, an online community of therapists from around the world. Therapists' use of social media and their online presence can be part of a broader political process, which can help address issues such as therapist isolation, and challenging harmful narratives around therapy. The author argues for the importance of reflective practice when engaging with others on social media, and establishing an online presence as a therapist
Psychotherapy in an age of stupidity
Full text linkDrawing on Plato, Husserl, and the work of Bernard Stiegler, this paper diagnoses our era as the age of stupidity; an era in which psychotherapy is increasingly playing a subservient role to the ideology on neoliberalism. By reconfiguring and subverting its role, however, psychotherapy can provide the Winnicottian transitional space for the creation of anamnesis, or recollection, and the re-creation of autonomous and cooperative thought and practice
Confronting racism in counselling and therapy training—Three experiences of a seminar on racism and whiteness
Full text linkIn this paper, a counselling and psychotherapy tutor and two therapists who have recently completed their training, one student of colour and one white, engage in a reflective, experiential process following a taught session on race and whiteness in the therapy room. The authors explore their own processes within and since the session in a reflexive, conversational format, candidly self-examining and confronting their experiences, including the more difficult ones. Through this process, the authors discuss the political implications and shortcomings of such training, both within this specific training context and the profession as a whole. The authors contend that the counselling and psychotherapy professions and the training provided to enter them are increasingly being challenged in contemporary society to look beyond traditional assumptions about the superiority of white, middle class, and Eurocentric values and norms in the curriculum and teaching. They conclude by offering both context-specific and general recommendations for training courses and practitioners to address the shortcomings in provision
Here is my heart: A reflective response to ‘Indigeneity in Europe’
Full text linkIn response to the three peer-reviewed articles in this special issue, this reflective piece begins with the author, a Māori woman with Celtic ancestry, acknowledging and claiming her indigenous skin—and, more broadly, an indigenous body of knowledge. The article responds to the articles by Sisalli, Van Werde, and Bagge and Berliner firstly by making connections with them; and secondly, through taking a step backwards into the author's own genealogy in order to suggest certain moves forwards for indigenous health and well-being. Finally, it ends with some comments about Western paradigms and Māori narratives
Another Freud for the left: Our group psychology and the analysis of ourselves
Full text linkFreudian social theory is criticised for misconceiving groups and crowds by psychologising, depoliticising, dehistoricising, familiarising, and naturalising them. Other authors are questioned about a misconception of the masses through their psychopathologisation in Mackay and Taine, their criminalisation in Sighele, and their infantilisation or primitivisation in Le Bon, Flores Magón, and Ortega y Gasset. These authors, and Freud himself, are rehabilitated by considering, with Reich, that their ideas are suitable for certain fascist and neo-fascist groups with authoritarian, patriarchal, familiarist, and anti-political tendencies. Such tendencies are contrasted with the distinctive ones of the leftist masses, which are reconstituted from what was taught by Hobbes and Spinoza, Marx and Engels, María Talavera, Federn, Canetti, and Freud himself. When ‘our’ socialist and communist masses resist their slide to the right, they appear intrinsically fraternal, horizontal or egalitarian, feminine and matriarchal, and centred on the ‘us’ and not on the ‘ego’
The challenge of security and accessibility: Critical perspectives on the rapid move to online therapies in the age of COVID-19
Full text linkThis article offers some critiques of the rapid move to online therapies in response to the restriction of movement and in-person psychotherapeutic and psychological practice, imposed by necessary responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The critique is informed by concerns about the security of online therapeutic practice; informed by, but not restricted to, legislation and practice in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, it includes cultural perspectives regarding healthcare provision, specifically with Pacific communities in Aotearoa New Zealand and, more broadly, with regard to disadvantaged and vulnerable clients and communities throughout the world. The article offers a framework that accounts for the challenge of making practical, culturally appropriate, and therapeutic decisions about the security and accessibility of online therapeutic practice
‘Stay a while with your own ones’: A reflective commentary on ‘indigeneity in Europe’
Full text link‘Stay a while with your own ones’: A reflective commentary on ‘indigeneity in Europe