The Over‐Determination of the Political: A Response to Schmid

Abstract

The critique of the practice of psychotherapy offered by Schmid (2012/2014) calls upon the notion of politics as “the consequence of an image of the human being” (p. 4) as being pivotal in arguing for the inherently political nature of (person‐centred) psychotherapy. Following Carl Rogers, Schmid also locates human suffering in the alienation that people experience in their everyday social lives. In responding to Schmid's argument I suggest that his analysis is over‐determining of the role of the political in our lives, and in the work of psychotherapy. I also argue that it is useful to conceptualise the realms of the political and the psychotherapeutic as “relatively autonomous” from each other. This view is advanced with reference to the work of Jacques Rancière and Judith Butler. Through the work of Rancière a more complex understanding of the political is put forward, and with reference to Butler a social theory of vulnerability is advanced. These two theorists allow for an opening up of the concept of the political beyond what Schmid proposes, as well as offering a social and moral account of human vulnerability.