This paper sprung from my personal experience of an aspect of psychoanalytic practice that is increasingly being recognized and afforded serious consideration: namely: that patients’ socio-political milieus accompany them into the consulting room. The majority of my patients occupy a cultural space similar to my own, bringing with them views that are broadly progressive. But others do not. One of my patients is a privileged white heterosexual male who supports white supremacist movements because he feels marginalized by his school’s overemphasis on diversity and intersectionality. Another patient who, as a proud, fairly sophisticated political outsider, has concluded that the corona virus is a hoax designed to line the pockets of powerful figures within political-medical-industrial complex. A strongly religious patient feels that she has no choice but to align with politicians and groups who support pro-life.

As I try to broaden the scope of my work to encompass the ever noisier social-political dimension of my patients’ lives, I am feeling both discomfort and confusion—and this at both ends of the similarity continuum. In the case of patients with whom I’m aligned, I wonder whether the attitudinal collusion that we are implicitly (sometimes explicitly) enacting is masking some unconscious dynamic in one or both of us. With patients who occupy positions contrary to mine, I often feel a loss of authenticity as I strive to bracket my subjectivity to the end of providing a holding experience. And there is also uneasiness with regard to the value-laden nature of issues within the socio-political realm—i.e., the fact that peoples’ positions are invariably grounded in fairly immutable convictions about right and wrong. It’s not that I regard ethics as being outside the scope of therapy—it is unquestionably my personal code of ethics that guides me in maintaining a consistent stance of empathy and care toward each of my patients; likewise, there is an ethical responsiveness that reverberates dyadically during moments of mutual recognition. Yet in the socio-political sphere, the foregrounding of ethics, which I see to be unavoidable, seems fraught. Nothing could be less in the spirit of relational self psychology than a dissection, comparison, or critique of differing value systems.

What follows is not a road map for addressing socio-political concerns analytically. It is rather a very personal exploration of how I understand difference, as well as a consideration of the attitudinal and behavioral implications that follow from the understanding I put forth. It is, in a sense, an effort, at an abstract level, to put my own socio-political house in order, thereby creating a platform from which to more comfortably think about and engage with my patients’ real-world concerns. So far I have not much to report. My hope, however, is that I will start hearing a few less irate “How could they??!!” exclamations and a few more genuinely curious “Why do they??” questions. Ultimately, I would hope to bring into the intersubjective space a moral or social third that would permit unobstructed movement between the socio-political, the intersubjective, and the intrapsychic.

A contextualist view of truth: The world and each discrete object in it is an immense and unfathomably complex tapestry consisting of delineated areas that are suffused within and between by an infinite number of interwoven strands. No human being can apprehend or comprehend the totality of this densely interconnected matrix. It is a fluid tapestry, such that in addition to being composed of threads, it is also configured by networks of rivulets, or tributaries, that both separate and converge. Some of its elements are glaringly obvious, while others are so small as to be invisible. It is, additionally, a three-dimensional tapestry with each of its areas having deep historical projections. It’s easy to look at some portion of the world tapestry myopically without registering its complexity. One might see, for example, one country as a pure white thread and another as an evil black thread. But alternately, one could look through a broader lens and/or a lens with magnification in an attempt to fully contextualize what is apparent on the surface. This would require consideration of the myriad of historical, transgenerational, cultural, cross cultural, racial, political, social, intrafamilial, environmental, economic, and emotional variables that have converged to form the uniquely textured patternings that have fashioned the individuals, societies, and nations originating within them.

I attended the LA Art Show just before the pandemic and was fascinated by pictures that looked like one thing from a distance but became something entirely different or more ambiguously complex when viewed from a different position, in a different light, or at a more granular level. Similarly in the world: It’s possible to see that embedded in a black thread are points of light and in a white thread pockets of darkness. Light and darkness, good and bad, do not reside as pure forms in circumscribed entities – rather they are distributed broadly among and within all nations, all societies, and all individuals. (This is the theme that has dominated great theater since the days of Greek tragedy, and today seems to dominate the plethora of dramatic series that are churned out for streaming – I’ve been watching “Ozark” and am fascinated by the mind bending juxtaposition of good and bad within the two main, husband and wife, characters.) I would not deny that at the individual level there may be some pure black threads: Trump, Netanyahu, Orban, Bolsonaro, Maduro, Duterte, etc.—sociopaths and power junkies in general (while conceding that not everyone would second my choices), and possibly some pure white ones (Jesus?, Mother Teresa?). But certainly there is nothing even approaching all good/all bad at the group or societal level.

The implication of this view of humankind is twofold: First, the divergent values, beliefs, and attitudes that drive the actions of a group or an individual have deep and tenacious roots. They also possess a logical structure when viewed from within the multifaceted contexts that gave rise to them. Heidegger talks about “thrownness,” the idea that where people land in the complex tapestry of human existence is not a matter of personal choice. People touch down somewhere and that somewhere constitutes, in Heidegger’s words, their “situatedness,” the place or “Dasein” that shapes their being. People are overdetermined by factors that enshroud them from the moment they enter the world; people are deeply embedded in thick contexts. This view does not equate to relativism, i.e., the idea that there is no good or bad, right or wrong, since all values, beliefs, and attitudes are contextually defensible. Individual and communal lives need to be guided by ethical principles, and people should promote, even fight for, what they regard as right and just. Fortunately, at the highest level of abstraction, in all corners of the tapestry, there is a fair amount of universal agreement on what constitutes virtue—on balance, evolution favors cooperation over destruction. It is rather at the level of real world application that unreconcilable differences regarding ethical conduct predictably emerge: Country or individual X believes that country or individual Y doesn’t deserve justice; X believes that justice for Y would be a threat to X’s survival; Y espouses views that are antithetical to those of X; and on and on. What has to be understood, as impossible as it may seem to an outsider allied with one side or the other, is that both parties really and genuinely believe in the moral correctitude of their positions, this because of the invisible hand that completely outside of awareness has molded their perspectives.

A second implication of the world as tapestry is that at the collective level no group, society, or country is a monolith. An analogy can be made between the multiple topographies that make up the world tapestry and the distinct geophysical ecosystems that comprise the earth. Both have deep structural roots and are enduring. Yet both display abundant variability at the micro level—i.e., different kinds of plants flourish in the same soil; different personalities are seen in siblings from the same family. One might ask, how is it possible for so much heterogeneity to spring from solid substrata that have been laid down over millennia? It is here that it becomes useful to think of the tapestry’s strands as rivulets, which, at the proximal level, are ever flowing, ever fusing, and ever reconfiguring. Thus, human variability occurs as a consequence of the fluid, uneven, interactive, often random, confluence of countless formative variables and events that imprint themselves on people’s lives. Among these would be temperament, race, childhood experiences, educational experiences, cross-cultural experiences, survival concerns, socio-economic status, . . .. (The list of contextual influences is unending.) If this conceptualization has validity, it offers a strong argument against the tendency to “lump”—that is, to regard people who identify with a group, country, party, movement, or institution as necessarily being homogeneous. We can’t say blacks (Latinx, Jews) are _____; conservatives (Democrats) are _____; Trump supporters are _____; people who attended Duke (other university) are _____ (which is not to deny that some may actually be ‘_____’).

Finally, what are the implications of a fully contextualized worldview for the conduct of moral life on a day-to-day basis. I believe it means the following:

Knowing: It would be wise, I think, to exercise restraint in making unequivocal “truth assertions,” i.e., insisting that that the way we see something (a person, an event, a conflict . . .) is the way it is. Better to venture deeper into that part of the tapestry, peel away the layers, try to see the core contextual factors that have produced whatever entity, occurrence, or state of affairs we are characterizing. We could be open to the possibility that there may be unseen factors (factors, perhaps, that are impossible to see), which, if we knew them, might alter or at least cause us to refine our view. This is not to say that people should never make truth assertions without full knowledge. It is our ability to think inferentially, to connect dots without access to every data point, to which our species owes its survival and achievements; and it is only through the formulation of truth assertions that we are able to bring order to the manifold of our perceptions and experiences. Yet because truth assertions are always to some degree subjective, it would seem wise to preface them with a personal qualifier: “I think . . .,” “it looks to me like . . .,” “I could be wrong, but . . .”—and to regard them as provisional as we endeavor to complexify our understanding.

Judging: What to do when people or entities put forth views or act in ways that we regard as unethical or fallacious, when they go against some central tenet of what we see to be right or true. Acts that are appalling to me (but are clearly not appalling to everyone) are rife at all levels of the social fabric: Trump is subverting our democratic system of governance; Republicans are condoning Trump so as to not lose the support of his base; police in our country are prejudicially unleashing violence on blacks; a Republican Senate sees fit to deny a second round of assistance to a virus stricken nation; scientific knowledge is being repudiated; asylum seekers are being denied entry to our country; children of immigrants have been arbitrarily separated from their parents and placed in inhumane physical environments; strongmen like Bolsonaro and Maduro are decimating their countries; Israel, a putative democracy, is inflicting untold suffering on the people of its occupied territory, Gaza; China is committing cultural genocide against its Uyghur ethic minority. On moral grounds I simply must stand in strong opposition to each of these actions and to each of their individual or collective perpetrators. My principled self screams “wrong,” “unjust,” “destructive,” “selfish,” “cruel.” I vociferously denounce the perpetrators and regard them in the most negative possible light, labeling them as self-serving, power hungry, bigoted, crazy, grandiose, . . .. Yet while some of them are certainly deserving of such spiteful descriptors, this is not the case for all.

So what, then, is my best course of thought and action in the face of such crucial disagreements? The first step, I think, is to recognize that having and holding firm to an ethical stance does not preclude understanding the factors that motivate those who hold an opposing view. And why, I might ask, when I know I’m not going to forfeit or compromise my position, would I even want to understand the basis for a position that I regard as a morally indefensible? The answer can be put simply: Understanding my foe, while likely not dissuading me from my values, beliefs, and attitudes, might at least remove some of the vitriol from my version of the conflict, thereby softening the contempt and rage that gnaws at me. And a secondary benefit, although certainly not assured, would be a recognition that a thoroughgoing understanding of the fears and aspirations of the opposition could open the way to a resolution that would satisfy the legitimate needs and value commitments of both sides (more on this in the next section).

A word on how understanding of those who are diametrically “Other” to me is to be obtained. Here we come back to the overarching theme of this paper: context. Simply put, I would need to dialogue with adherents of views I oppose. By adherents I don’t mean the strongmen, the psychopaths, the power seekers—the people whose faces serve as the mastheads of movements, but rather the movement’s followers—the crew members, the everyday Joe’s. I would need to query them without prejudgment. I would need to come to the discussion from a place of genuine curiosity and express a real interest in what they have to say. My aim would be to arrive at some understanding of the deep contextual matrices (transgenerational, social, educational, environmental, emotional, . . .) in which the values, beliefs, and attitudes of these alien Others were forged. I would be ever cognizant of the fact that my personhood is similarly a product of a contextual matrix, albeit a different one. What I would mostly find from this exercise is that, despite my characterization of their views as wrongheaded, these Others are neither bad, ill-intentioned, nor sadistic. While from afar and through a lens of disagreement, they look like solid black threads, I would start to perceive them as complexly organized in comprehensible ways. The take-away is that understanding, contextualization, and complexification can cast the world in a different light and open avenues for mutual recognition, empathy, and negotiation. (I should say, parenthetically, that contextual understanding can also be obtained through close study of unbiased historical, philosophical, and cultural writings.)

Lumping: When we stand against something, and especially when we feel helpless to counter it, we tend to see the opposing side as a unified force—a monolithic bastion. It naturally looks that way, since what we see from afar is a solid edifice aligned against us, not discrete parts of it. Yet, if we look more closely, it becomes apparent that while the bastion’s constituents share the same perspective, they may be doing so for different reasons and with different degrees of commitment to the stated cause. I was able to demonstrate this after the U.S. presidential election when I was dismayed by the fact that nearly half the voting population voted for Trump. So in an effort to shed some light, I undertook a very roughhewn breakdown of results on the Republican side by voter demographic and salient issue. What I found was that there was very little homogeneity among Trump voters. The voting bloc appeared to consist of diverse segments, each picking different fruits off the Trump tree according to relevant personal concerns and needs—with one standout segment, which, irrespective of Trump’s specific offerings, was enamored of the trunk itself. Although such diversity within groups and perspectives is surely the case more generally, there remains a human propensity to blame and condemn entire populations. Thus, there are people who have contempt for “Jews” because of what they regard as the Jewish state’s predatory and inhumane actions leveled toward Palestinians. I have an acquaintance who once, in my presence, refused to shake the hand of a man wearing a Yarmulke and regularly makes disdainful snorting comments when he drives by synagogues (“fortress,” “they only allow Jewish children to attend their school!”). Nothing could be more detrimental to mutual human understanding, recognition, and respect than the arbitrary assignation of worth or legitimacy according to defined categories of ethnicity, religion, nationality, socio-economic status, education, occupation, or political affiliation. Going back to the tapestry metaphor, if we zero in on any portion of the surface at the smallest scale possible, we can see how, at the micro level, contextual variables are foundational in determining people’s organizing principles and life trajectories. Factors such as parental attunement; destabilizing and/or growth promoting early childhood experiences; interpersonal, educational, and cross-cultural influences; and many others converge and interact in highly variable ways to produce a wide range of individual differences—this despite uniformity at a higher level of abstraction.

Variabillity nested within ostensible uniformity is, I think, the key to creating a process that could potentially produce negotiated resolutions to the big box conflicts plaguing our country and the world. Such a process would start, again, with dialogue, and would again prioritize understanding as foundational. But to achieve its more ambitious goal of mutual recognition and negotiation, dialogue would selectively involve those who have an inclination for perspectival thinking, i.e., the capacity to inhabit another’s mind to the end of grasping at least the contours of that person’s subjective experience. Ultimately, the focus should be on emotions rather than facts and conclusions. Yet, the dialogue would predictably start with strong assertions from both sides about what’s going on and how best to fix it. This, hopefully, would be followed by discussion and increased understanding of the differing life contexts that have given rise to the opposing viewpoints. Then drilling down deeper, the discussion would descend to the realm of emotions. Specifically, discussants would talk about their fears, dreads, and hopes—the immediate threats that hover over their lives, dissolution of the world as they know it, annihilation by their adversary, and yearnings for an existence that would be less fraught.¹ Now, once the two sides have slogged through a laborious airing of their differences to finally come to rest on a shared emotional bedrock, they have entered a place of mutual recognition. They recognize that they are really no more than human and that it would behoove them to think together about what negotiated course of action might relieve them of their collective angst. Admittedly, this roadmap for conflict resolution could well be faulted for being overly idealistic, something akin to a happy ending fairy tale. Yet, I think many would agree that it represents a more promising approach than the perpetuation of remedies resting on doer-done to polarities that can at best produce zero-sum outcomes. If not a solution, it could at least mitigate rage, blame, and scapegoating through an understanding and acceptance of difference grounded in an appreciation of formative contexts.

¹ The fears that feed conflicts are often evident on the surface. Israelis, with their deeply internalized legacy of persecution, carry an ever-present fear of attack and obliteration—Palestinians also fear destruction, in their case, based on their experience of sustained Israeli aggression. Fears are also recognizable as determinative of support for Trump. Among those I was able to identify were feared occurrences such as job loss, identity diffusion, anarchy, and erosion of Christian values.