Shame and the Question of Responsibility

I am in disbelief twice over. The incomprehensibility of a “President Donald Trump” is a waking nightmare. Unlike other times of personal stress in my life when work has been a respite, my consulting room is a cauldron of anger, anxiety, and sadness. There is a dance that emerges—contain the others’ anxiety by acknowledging—as a reality in the room—that I, too, share a degree of anxiety. Otherwise, I become a rigid container risking projecting my own anxiety into the patient. Avoid the premature move to genetic interpretations—it will risk creating a wishful illusion that it is all or only about the transference.

But what about the Trump supporter? As I said, I am in disbelief twice over. A long-standing patient is out of town, and we are having a phone session some days after the election. I had seen him for many years in twice-weekly psychotherapy and then weekly treatment. He presented after his wife made a suicide attempt and his feelings of not feeling—“being like cardboard”—gave rise to feelings of guilt in being “cut off” from his wife, an increased recognition of his anger—and slowly increasing tolerance and pleasure in feeling his feelings and permitting closeness to others. He expresses regret he had not entered treatment before his sixth decade of life—it has made a big difference for him. A neurotic, obsessional man—a “good man”—with a good treatment outcome.

He voted for Trump. I did a double take, relieved we were not face-to-face. “He’ll do something different and, Trump was right, Hillary is a crook.” Furthermore, he canceled his New York Times subscription—their “biased reporting” repulsed him. He moves on to more pressing issues—his efforts to get closer to his wife are frustrated by her occasional drinking excesses and her wedded attachment to the idea of suicide (in identification with her father).

I thought I knew this man and I am judgmental … also impotent. I didn’t see this coming—within our country and within him. His preference for Trump is no