Integrating political-societal concerns in psychotherapy

Despite growing publicity and public concern about the serious nature of the nuclear, societal, and environmental problems in our increasingly globally conscious world, and despite the fact that a majority of psychotherapists share this concern, most psychotherapists state that their patients never mention such matters in psychotherapy. Some possible reasons for this scarcity of discussion in psychotherapy are offered. These include the often unstated understanding that political-societal matters are not to be discussed by patients in therapy, therapists not hearing such content or hearing it only as a way of talking about early, intrapsychic fears, therapists' concerns about influencing their patients, the fear of talking about "ordinary death" much less the death of all life now and in the future via nuclear or environmental disaster, and the impact of modern Western civilization's overemphasis of individualism on much of psychotherapy theory and practice. An approach in which questions about political-societal concerns are raised early in treatment is described and discussed. The results of this approach include an increased dialogue about death, the meaning of life, and connectedness to the world of others.