Many of us, deeply troubled by the uncertain political future of this country (or by other social stressors, like the environmental crisis), don’t know where to get relief from our suffering. Some work on acceptance, or emotional regulation, or rely on medication. Others may find talk therapy helpful in altering negative thought patterns. But what if these approaches are only partially successful, or merely address the surface symptoms?
Psychotherapy presents itself as a treatment that reaches deeper into the core causes of our psychological struggles, but is it really suited to dealing with political and social stressors?
People tend to think of psychotherapy as a treatment geared towards personal problems and internal conflicts—and for good reason. When Freud first created the field, he focused on the nuclear family rather than on society more broadly, and his concern was with anxiety aroused by conflicts between our unconscious drives and the forces of repression that forbid their expression. For Freud, psychic distress arose out of an internal crisis around who we are and who we want to be.
Today, following Freud, we still tend to define anxiety as an internal condition, often persistent and free-floating, in contrast to stress,........