Being a graduate from 3 years of studying psych and with an active experience of mental illness, I can say that no amount of studying theory and doing therapy+ taking meds for years helped me realize the root of my problems and my worth as a human. more than Marxist analysis. I live to be a part of the revolution, and as long as psychotherapy reinforces the client to believe in themselves and to accept the realities of it is what it is, it will never achieve its job of liberating the person. There is a need for psychology to gain a Marxist perspective, more so from modern day leftists in the mental health field.
A lot of the early history of psychiatry was explicitly about controlling “deviants” rather than actually helping them integrate. Turns out bipolar people don’t need any more of those dubious meds than they actually need the financial security that Kanye West has to not go homeless due to having a crisis. I wince whenever I hear any lib propping up pop positive psychology nonsense such as “gratitude journals” for people who have way more reasons to be angry than to be grateful. But I’ve ran into some pretty “woke” professionals who actually fully endorsed tackling social issues and focused mostly on dealing with (self-)harmful personal behaviours. Stuff like blaming oneself for external issues or how to deal with irrational stuff like paranoid thoughts. They usually were from the CBT branch, though I’ve also met some trashy CBT professionals so YMMV. I guess it helps in my country that psychology is usually taught more alongside history and philosophy rather than medicine.
I also have serious issues with anything related to capitalist medicine because no one in their right mind would think that the best solution for vulnerable/disabled/sick/injured people should be to profit from them. Not only it is immoral but professionals then have to fight against their own class interests of income if they want those people to be able to leave the care eventually. Not to mention that so long as private healthcare exists, it will try its darnest to privatise or discredit public healthcare, and there should be no competition on the business of saving lives. This is why the pearl clutching over some imaginary plan from Sanders to abolish insurance in the USA actually made his campaign look even better than it was.
Edit: It’s possible you have like-minded comrades even in your classes. Organisation is always the first step!
Ohh! I posted this because one of my batchmates quoted a meme post of a client complaining he doesn’t want to work and to die (with the therapist asking them to accept it), by saying the OP of the post is bigoted??? and talks about how the biopsychosocial model is the most effective right now, etc. Like, it doesn’t matter if IT IS BEING REGARDED AS THE MOST EFFECTIVE right now, because it still doesn’t mean its doing the job. As someone else above pointed out, humanistic Rogerian psychotherapy, postive psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, existential, CBT, no other school as it is right now will be able to effectively claim to FIX a person’s material reality while actively NOT accepting the exploitation of the people
Killing all humans will reduce mental illness to zero, checkmate communists.
I agree that “fixing” people needs the social aspect and CBT by itself hasn’t helped me much, but my current therapist is both CBT and a Marxist so it helps. I hope some Marxist therapy branch catches on eventually. As for psychiatry, at the very least the entire process should be free. No person should have to choose between food and meds that may mess with your appetite.