Addressing political and racial terror in the therapeutic relationship

Political and racial terror have important implications for the process of psychotherapy. This type of trauma can have unique effects on individual psychology and the larger social context of patients' lives that are distinct from other types of interpersonal trauma. Several intrapsychic processes, such as one's experience of mirroring, fear of annihilation, identification and internalization of aggression, the collective remembering of trauma, and subsequent mourning, are transformed through one's experiences of political and racial terror. Clinical illustrations of 2 patients treated in psychotherapy before and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, elaborate these effects of political and racial trauma. The implications of addressing these types of traumatic experience in psychotherapy, including issues of therapeutic neutrality, are discussed.