I’ve been noticing a shift. As therapy language increasingly enters politics, therapists are no longer only seen as clinicians, but as moral voices, people who are expected to interpret events, take positions, and guide others toward what is psychologically “right”.

But what happens to the therapeutic stance when psychological insight becomes moral certainty? This raises a broader question about therapist’s political opinions and the role they are increasingly expected to play in public life.

Recently I read a Substack piece by the well-known couples and intimacy therapist Esther Perel. Written in the wake of protests surrounding ICE in Minneapolis, the essay reflected on the importance of neighbours. It did not remain centred only on the tragedy of civil breakdown, but drew on her childhood memories of neighbours warning families of Nazi raids. In this, she made a striking claim: “intimacy is not only romantic; it is civic.”

In doing so, she moves from the attachment between therapist and patient in the consulting room to a call for collective solidarity with strangers.

It has taken me some time to formulate what I think about this, but I will attempt it here.

Neutrality and Activism in Psychotherapy

First some context. There has long been a divide within psychotherapy regarding the relationship between the individual and the collective. When Sigmund Freud was working in Vienna, he was clear that a psychotherapist should hold what he called evenly suspended attention. This technique allows the therapist to attend to everything that emerges, not only what is said, but what is communicated more indirectly, without imposing their own expectations, ideology, or direction. To do so would interrupt the fragile process of free association, through which a person can explore their inner world, conflicts and fantasies.

Perel on the other hand refers to Ignacio Martin-Baro who comes from a tradition called “liberation psychology”. This tradition sees things very differently than the classical psychoanalysts. Their view is developed in the context of political violence in Latin America and and has influenced much of contemporary social justice–oriented therapy. From their perspective, mental health problems in oppressive societies are normal reactions to abnormal circumstances. Taking a political stance therefore becomes part of therapeutic responsibility; neutrality risks becoming complicity. This is what the expression, “silence is violence” captures. 

This tension — between neutrality and activism — has never fully been resolved within psychotherapy.

And it’s not the first time that psychotherapeutic traditions have looked outside to the wider world to understand how the therapeutic endeavour itself could be the perpetrator. R.D Laing sought to humanise the psychotic experience, believing that his patients with schizophrenia were having a normal psychological adjustment to a dysfunctional social context.

Both perspectives contain validity. Mental health must reflect on the social and cultural forces that shape our understanding of suffering, normality and wellbeing. It would be naïve to imagine that the individual exists in isolation from their environment, culture, and past.

We are also living in a radically different world to the one our ancestors inhabited — increasingly shaped by technology, systems, and what the philosopher Jacques Ellul described as “technique”. How could this not influence the psychological malaise many people experience: a sense of atomisation, disconnection, and loss of rootedness.

At the same time, the idea of a single, jointly recognised “system” as the root cause of suffering is far less stable than it appears. People differ widely in how they define such systems, and these definitions often reflect ideological assumptions rather than shared reality.

I have also seen how certain forms of “social justice therapy” can sometimes reduce individuals to simplified categories, including identity-based frameworks that risk overlooking personal agency and complex lived experiences. Patients who might otherwise benefit from therapy can feel mis-seen, or turn away entirely.

Are Therapists Ever Truly Neutral?

Another common argument is that no therapy is neutral. 

This is partly true and I have written about non-neutrality in therapy here. Every therapist is shaped by culture, personal history and worldview. But neutrality in the therapeutic sense does not mean the absence of influence, it refers to a particular stance throughout a process.

A therapist aims to meet the patient with curiosity rather than certainty, without imposing allegiance or ideology. The same therapist may be perceived by one patient as conservative and by another as permissive. The point is that interpretation belongs to the patient, not the therapist.

This is very different from the therapist taking a defined moral position. And this is the tension between neutrality and activism.

Splitting and Moral Certainty

In the classical training, therapists are taught to hold complexity and resist splitting, a psychological concept that refers to a defence mechanism where the world is divided into good and bad.  

To tolerate ambivalence requires psychological maturity. When we lose that capacity, we reach for simpler narratives. If the other is entirely bad, they can be dismissed. If they are complex, we must grapple with discomfort, grief and contradiction. It’s why the price of wisdom is often pain.

What concerns me when I see public commentary by influential therapists such as Perel is the risk of reproducing this very dynamic. A moral position is stated about an extremely complex unfolding social dynamic. The narrative risks reducing a complex situation into something more certain, more resolved, than it really is. Therapeutic language is then used to lend authority to that framing. This kind of position can be hugely damaging in the consulting room and we should be wary when it is applied to society or a conflict as a whole. 

When Therapy Language Enters Politics

Psychological language has become the dominant moral language in modern life. Words like: trauma, safety, harm, validation, boundaries, accountability are now not just used in therapy, but across activism, media and political discourse. Instead of arguing about values directly, people frame disagreements in psychological terms. That gives the argument moral authority without appearing ideological. This is what Jonathan Shedler aptly called the “morality project” as opposed to the “psychology project” and it threatens to take therapy away from the project of helping someone understand themselves, to being a crusade of the therapist’s choosing.

This is why the language can feel so seductive, the language of care masks the language of judgement.

Therapy Culture and The Contemporary Moment

A further question arises: should therapists share political opinions at all?

I believe psychotherapists are of course allowed to hold their own views; I myself have an interest in politics and have many of my own opinions. The question is not whether therapists are allowed to hold views. The question is what happens when those views are delivered with the authority of psychological expertise. In an increasingly post-truth era, where facts and reality are shaped by polarisation, algorithmic distortion and competing realities, we need to be more careful than ever about which positions we take.  

A psychologically validated moral position that shuts down complexity and the possibility of holding multiple legitimate perspectives is inherently risky. In this context, the pressure is not to understand, but to take sides. The danger is therefore not silence, but simplification. For instance, I sit with patients all day long who utter views that I don’t personally agree with, some I do, but my patients would not know, because I believe in fiercely protecting their right to express and explore their own viewpoints without having to censor themselves in response to mine. In such a climate, the therapeutic stance, with its emphasis on ambiguity, curiosity and tolerance of complexity, may itself be a necessary counterweight.

What Happens to the Therapeutic Stance?

When free thought is stifled and therapists enter the public sphere as moral authorities, something subtle begins to shift. I’ve written elsewhere about the importance of creativity in the therapeutic endeavour, and what is lost when that space narrows. Moral certainty overtakes curiosity, narrative simplification replaces complexity, sides are declared in moral right and wrong terms. Therapists are called to act and declare rather than hold and witness and when this happens the role begins to change. The therapist moves away from the position of witness and into something closer to a guide, a moral voice, even a kind of authority on how one ought to think and feel.

What’s more the therapist who is absolutely convinced of their righteousness has no thought of the possibility that there may be other legitimate positions. In a different historical context, such as under dictatorship or overt political violence, a more explicitly activist therapeutic stance may be understandable. But in our current moment, defined by polarisation, algorithmic distortion and moral certainty, the therapeutic task may be the opposite: to hold ambiguity rather than resolve it.

What Might Be Lost

The cost of this shift may be deeper than we would like to think. What happens to an individual when we lose the tolerance of ambiguity? When we engage in splitting? When we lose curiosity in the other? We risk then being complicit in the polarisation machine that is silently guiding our lives, the very dynamics therapy seeks to address. 

The real risk then is therapeutic inflation. Therapy is no longer, I am helping an individual understand themselves, but I am guiding society toward psychological or moral truth.

A More Humble Alternative

I would like to end with a reflection from Marie-Louise von Franz:

“The hope to change the world is a childish illusion… One should say one’s opinion, but for the rest fight inwardly… Meet the miracle by working on yourself.”

When therapists enter the public square as activists and moral authorities, they risk abandoning the humility and discernment required of them as therapeutic practitioners.

There is a real danger here of psychological inflation. One no longer remains aware of one’s blind spots, but becomes the one who knows, and as we know, the fall can be great when certainty replaces reflection. We have seen only too recently that those we hailed as moral and spiritual leaders can be corrupted. 

As therapists, we are entrusted with something significant. People come to us in vulnerable moments. That responsibility requires humility.

If we keep our task simple, we avoid overreach: to help individuals integrate shadow, reduce projection, and foster psychological maturity.

Otherwise, we may no longer be acting as therapists at all.

Sophie Frost is a psychodynamic psychotherapist based in Berlin, offering depth-oriented therapy in English, both in-person and online. Her writing explores complexity, ambiguity, and the psychological undercurrents shaping contemporary life.