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This study addresses how issues of politics, class, and the environment both impact and occur in the therapy situation, and it further attempts
to demonstrate how clinicians may be made aware of the complex interplay of psychic and social reality. The work emerged from the contributions of Section IX (“Psychoanalysis and Social Responsibility”) of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association. Most of the contributors to this volume are members of Section IX.
Not unlike most edited books, and particularly ones in which the majority of papers have been previously published (such as this one), the contributions are uneven and in some cases not well integrated with the topic. It was conceived as a direct result of 9/11, a historical event that has clearly had an impact on all patients. Its usefulness is intended for instruction in treatment centers and institutes, as well as for therapists' use. The editors wish to raise our awareness of class and politics, something they feel has been neglected with the censorship of left-leaning émigrés from Europe following World War II.
The first chapter, by the noted Jungian analyst Andrew Samuels, is very good; his 1993 groundbreaking book was one of the first to demonstrate the importance of politics and class as therapeutic issues.1 Samuels reports an earlier study in which he sent a questionnaire to 2,000 therapists in fourteen professional organizations in seven different counties. When issues of gender, the economy, race, national politics, and violence were brought up in treatment, 78% of the therapists understood that this referred to reality. Over 50% of the therapists said that they discussed politics with their patients. The study was undertaken around the time of the Gulf War, and one can only speculate on the results in a post 9/11, Iraq War period.
An interesting 1994 paper by Muriel Dimen on love, money, and hate explores the financial needs of the analyst and the denial of this need,