Therapy versus life

I’m in the midst of an experiment, an unintentional one. My recent post, “Pity the Trump voter,” mentioned a ‘violently angry’ Trump fan. This has been a very dedicated client, over a year’s work, not weekly but regular, where trauma shouted, cried and snotted out of him each session. I said, though, that the deepest childhood pain was never reached. Grief could never replace rage. We never talked politics: Our status of mutual respect left that aside. But recently, I felt that I could not be quiet any longer. I attached to a text-message this article in the NYT by Timothy Egan: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/opinion/kamala-harris-trump.html. My text-message was:

I am sure we should not discuss politics, but I am also sure we are in the midst of a crisis. I propose that we exchange one article each. I will read an article if you want to send me one. That would be the only leakage into politics. I could come up with a “psychological” rationale for asking you to look at this perspective, but I won’t annoy you with that. I will, though, mention that I have always (since age 17) been more libertarian than any other affiliation, and have never thought of myself as a liberal or Democrat.

His reply text referenced, in disgusted terms, Bill Clinton’s infamous encounter with Monica Lewinsky, Obama being a “Muslim sympathizer,” the death toll statistics of the common flu and tuberculosis relative to covid, which was China’s fault, etc., etc. I rejoindered:

That’s about as long as an article! But if you find one, I’ll read it. One problem is, there are numbers that can be cited to bury all of the politicians . . . because they’re politicians! Another is, people like any given politician not because of the facts, but because of their feelings. And how do you prove which feelings are the “right” ones? Trump actually meets the criteria for two of the most dangerous personality disorders (Narcissistic and Antisocial, which is known as sociopath or psychopath). Some people hate that, others are indifferent to or like that. How would you change anyone’s mind when it’s their feelings that make their decision?

Obviously I was acting the therapist, perfunctorily – or disingenuously – accepting that “all feelings are feelings are valid,” but in truth leaving him with these possible questions: Are all feelings valid? Is it fine to love a psychopath?

I don’t know how he’ll answer these questions, or if he’ll ask them of himself. I may have lost a client. If not, I can imagine his parts of the next conversation: Is it so bad to like a psychopath? Are those diagnoses meaningful? He might so need to maintain his emotional homeostasis that he would say, irrationally: “But the policies are right, despite coming from a sociopath. I’d like them even if Hillary Clinton had come up with them.” I’d then be forced to say: “No, you wouldn’t. You’d hate them because they came from a woman, a liberal, a Hillary. Look at all the Republicans who five years ago would have despised any American who cozied up to Vladimir Putin. Now they are fine with Putin, because Trump is. If Trump changed his mind today, his base would u-turn with him without thinking. You know this to be true.”

Maybe I ruined a therapy relationship. Maybe it would be worth it, to say what needs to be said about this foul president. Worth it even therapeutically, to give a good person, my client, access to wrong information, wrong feelings, inside his head.