Politics versus psychotherapy

Abstract

Totton's (2006) edited book The Politics of Psychotherapy: New Perspectives provides a selection of arguments for the link between the domain of politics and psychotherapy that ground the journal Psychotherapy and Politics International. This paper provides a response that articulates the relationship between those two domains. The world of psychotherapeutic politics meshes all too well with my own personal predisposition to split and squabble, only to be able to define a position by way of what it is against. There are at least two ways to play this game, which this paper explores.