Psychotherapy & Politics International

Editorial

Karen Minikin, David Pavón-Cuéllar — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The racism you know is not the racism we experience

Stephen Abdullah Maynard — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:09:42 +0000

This article articulates some of the complexities of the interrelationship of Islamophobia and racism that are present in life and therapeutic work with Muslim clients. It addresses the political context of the intersectionality these factors bring to Muslim mental health and therapeutic work with Muslims, contextualising their mental health inequalities in Western hegemony in the UK. In this, it explores the choices diverse Muslim clients make as to what they bring to the therapeutic relationship in the context of the above. It further suggests that counsellors and therapists of colour may use their awareness of intersectionality to work to develop rapport with diverse Muslim clients in this context.

What’s ‘wrong’ with my names?

Yoyo King-Yin Chan — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:14:14 +0000

Using the story and experiences of microaggression relating to the names of a trainee counselling psychologist from a racially minoritised background, this article attempts to illustrate how easy it can be for therapists to practice in ways that produce additional and intense distress in the form of microaggressions enacted by therapists unconsciously. To understand this, the author reflects upon and challenges three assumptions commonly held by counselling and psychotherapy professionals, namely, that: (1) therapists are aware of the impact of Eurocentrism; (2) therapists behave and work in a non-discriminatory manner; and (3) therapists embrace the values of social justice. The article ends with some proposals for how to incorporate simple social justice and anti-oppressive actions into practice, and a reminder to always examine and acknowledge one’s privilege, power, and limitations inside and outside the therapy room.

(Un)Safe spaces

Jada Brown, Saafi Mousa — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:20:55 +0000

Clinical psychology is traditionally a profession that is dominated by White, socioeconomically middle-class women. It took worldwide protests, campaigns, and initiatives following the murder of George Floyd to convince the field of psychology to finally acknowledge and admit its historic and present role in the reproduction of institutional racism. As part of this, Health Education England developed an anti-racism action plan for all doctoral clinical psychology training organisations to prioritise addressing and redressing inequality, inequity, and oppression within the field. As one initiative, a Safe Space for global majority trainee clinical psychologists was developed on a clinical psychology training programme to provide these trainees a ‘safe’ community of support in an unsafe profession. Using thematic analysis, this study explores how global majority trainees experience the Safe Space as a feature of their clinical psychology training. Findings demonstrate the difficult, racialised experiences of these trainees, but also the importance of having groups like the Safe Space to create a sense of belonging and to provide material support and practices that enable them to navigate and challenge an oppressive training environment. It raises some questions for clinical psychology training programmes in how they are currently supporting marginalised groups, and the steps being taken to dismantle Whiteness.

Empowering a feminist clinic

Flor de María Gamboa Solís, Adriana Migueles Pérez Abreu — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:26:16 +0000

In the context of psychoanalytic practice, the relevance of challenging gender oppressions in modern subjectivities relies on engaging in meaningful dialogues with feminism. Drawing from our academic background in teaching psychoanalysis, gender studies, and feminism, as well as our experience as private practice analysts, this article presents ideas and reflections on an ongoing project—a feminist clinic in Michoacán, Mexico. The clinic’s goal is to uncover and challenge gender system oppressions that affect modern female subjectivities, with a particular focus on how gender-based violence shapes these experiences. The article is divided into three sections. The first section provides a historical account of the feminist clinic project, highlighting its social and political context. The second section explores the tensions and fluctuations between psychoanalytic theory and feminist activism, considering the contemporary struggles faced by women impacted by gender-based violence. It investigates how psychoanalysis and feminism can complement each other to create effective intervention strategies against women’s oppression. The third section analyses the potential of the feminist clinic project as a tool for both academic pedagogy and psychoanalytic clinical training, offering a new path to feminist activism called ‘subjective activism’.

A foreclosed clinic, ‘Tiresian’ clinic, and violence against trans people

Hada Soria-Escalante — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:29:55 +0000

This article ponders on reflections from clinical work undertaken with trans individuals in contexts of acute violence and social exclusion, conditions that permeate the vast expanse of Mexican territory. It addresses the importance of a model of clinical work required to support transgender people suffering from social violence, by examining two contrasting clinical positions based on some Lacanian frameworks: a ‘foreclosed’ clinic, and its counterpart, a ‘Tiresian’ clinic. This article explores the implications of the therapeutic setting as a safe space amid the violence suffered by trans individuals, as well as the importance of recognising the consequences of the encounter between identity and life or death decisions in environments of extreme violence.

Can Lacan’s conception of the subject cast light on addiction?

Bert Olivier — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:34:32 +0000

The present article attempts to demonstrate that Jacques Lacan’s notion of the human subject provides the conceptual resources to come to a better understanding of addiction—a particularly intractable phenomenon, judging by the number of theoretical approaches to it. The structure of the subject in terms of the three ‘orders’ of the ‘real’, the ‘imaginary’, and the ‘symbolic’, according to Lacan, is briefly discussed as a necessary backdrop to the discussion that follows. It is argued that, because the ego is for Lacan an imaginary construct, one would look in vain to it for ‘ego stability’ to overcome addiction, and that it is to the ‘je’ (‘I’) of the symbolic that one should turn instead. The function of desire, and its relation to excess, are noted, before exploring the latter concept in relation to jouissance in two contexts. The first relates to jouissance, trauma, the ‘real’, prohibition, and transgression, and the second to jouissance, repetition, masochism, and the death instinct. These articulations of jouissance are subsequently employed to arrive at formulating possible therapeutic interventions, which are then, in turn, related to the role of the ‘talking cure’ in the symbolic register. To conclude, the question of power relations in political terms, and the implications of living in a capitalist society are briefly indicated.

Leadership style and foreign policy

Rinata Terkulova — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:38:16 +0000

This article aims to demonstrate the potential of measuring decision-making in foreign policy from a distance by examining the leadership traits of political figures. The methodology employed is the leadership trait analysis proposed by Margaret Hermann and implemented through ProfilerPlus software to analyse Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade in Ukraine in 2022. In this study, Putin’s leadership is systematically analysed using one of the most comprehensive methods of assessing leadership styles, namely, leadership trait analysis. The study compares the results of Putin’s conceptual complexity score, derived from his responses to direct questions during various interviews with both domestic and international media, with a reference group of 214 world leaders identified by Hermann. The findings suggest that Putin’s leadership exhibits lower cognitive complexity. This reduced conceptual complexity appears to have influenced his foreign policy behaviour during the Ukrainian crisis. The study demonstrates that Putin’s foreign policy choices in 2022 were significantly influenced by this individual trait, which is associated with his constricted black-and-white worldview. Consequently, the study emphasises the significance of Putin’s personal characteristics in shaping foreign policy and provides a systematic assessment of how measuring from a distance can elucidate the behaviour of high-level political leaders.

Palestine: A genocide

Agustin Palmieri — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:43:39 +0000

Based on its material conditions—objective and subjective—the current mode of social production promotes a particular kind of existence that perceives itself as a helpless thing, thrown towards a dark destiny from which there is no way out. As Jameson (2009) stated, it is easier to imagine the end of everything than the end of capitalism. In this sense, the Palestinian genocide can’t help but be thought of as an acute symptom of global capitalism and the fight to the death for leadership of the new geopolitical map and the world civilisational process. Therefore, all our ‘psy’ practices must be thought of in the light of a series of theoretical and ethical-political frameworks that make compossible (Badiou, 2002) a matrix of critical insight that, at the same time that interrupts the automatisms of the social, allows us to think about psychopolitical discontents as complex forms of psychic and subjective suffering that precede and exceed the bourgeois ideological sphere of the familial and the private individual.

The reverie of resistance

Stephen Sheehi, Lara Sheehi — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:46:59 +0000

In this short piece, we discuss the importance of reverie, a psychoanalytic concept, but also, a central logic in sumud. Using direct testimony from Palestinians in Gaza and freed political prisoners, we conceptualize how reverie affirms Palestinian life, willfulness, and resistance against the backdrop of settler colonial violence and, currently, active genocide.

Revolutionary psychoanalysts with Palestine

Ian Parker — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:49:35 +0000

This piece was prepared for a Red Clinic online meeting ‘Palestine Solidarity: Speak Out/Talk Back’ which took place in October 2023. The Red Clinic is a collective of communist mental health workers. This piece addresses psychoanalytic questions of the internationalist space we inhabit, the place of contradiction in our conception of the world, and the importance of time in our understanding of historical events.

Emancipation and its discontents

Sophie Mendelsohn — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:51:44 +0000

Based on two ‘anecdotes’, I seek to highlight the limits of emancipation in contemporary Jewishness from two different angles, and how psychoanalysis takes this into account: on the one hand, in relation to the identification required of diaspora Jews with the State of Israel, and on the other, in relation to the assimilation that has been imposed on many diaspora Jews.