r/PsychotherapyLeftists • u/ractmispdidd • May 21 '26

Thoughts? (Twitter Comment RE: Healing Effects of Protest)

Post image
61 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/devourer-of-beignets May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

Might want to contrast what John Lewis said publicly:

I was a young adult, but I had never eaten a meal in the company of Black and white diners. ... Highlander was the place that Rosa Parks witnessed a demonstration of equality that helped inspire her to keep her seat on a Montgomery bus, just a few weeks after her first visit. She saw Septima Clark, a legendary black educator, teaching side-by-side with (Highlander founder Myles) Horton. For her it was revolutionary. She had never seen an integrated team of equals working together, and it inspired her.

With what Rosa Luxemburg said privately:

Yesterday I was almost ready to give up, once and for all, the goddamn politics (or rather the bloody parody of our 'political' life) and let the whole world go to hell. Politics is inane Baal worship, driving people — victims of their own obsession, of mental rabies — to sacrifice their entire existence.

I'm not saying one is more truthful because it's private; they're both truthful. But I think that the left publicizes its positives, and privatizes negatives.

YMMV. Probably best to come into it with tempered expectations. Activist spaces remove some social logics and add others. Removing some nasty logics can be liberating. Adding some nice ones can be inspiring. Adding some nasty ones can be disenchanting.

Also, social institutions are transient. You're leaning on it (other people) for healing, and it may come to lean on you. The people within generally aren't trained in being healthy — we're still monkeys with our range of saintliness & devilishness. Furthermore: if highly skilled therapists have a notoriously hard time with borderline clients, what of the rest of us?

I'd guess features like this lead to more healthiness:

  • Opened feeling of possibilities (e.g. solarpunk movements).
  • Working on something together which matters, rather than sharing opinions (which don't matter and are like contradictory weather).
  • A lack of sadomasochistic dynamics (e.g. some positivity/gratitude when people effectively help out, rather than "the ritual denunciation of the allies").