It would seem absurd to ask monks or rabbis to instruct others without having ever meditated or prayed, and yet, Iāve never once been asked to develop my own meditation practice before leading mindfulness exercises for patients. True collectivism may also upend todayās clinical norms; deep embeddedness within community is tricky in neoliberal frameworks of individualism, privacy, and fees for service. In the face of social crisis, spiritual leaders and their congregations often come together, making political use of their collective positionality; therapistsāespecially when trained to be neutralāsometimes struggle to articulate the place of their political convictions in their work, let alone their solidarities with one another in a shared goal of collective healing. Without more deeply engaging the sacredness of our work, psychotherapists risk becoming obsolete in the task of repairing the social and psychic wounds we are allegedly supposed to remedy.
A reevaluation of how we see mental illness is also necessary. Healing, as defined in typical clinical frameworks, often looks like productivity and compliance. Alternative definitions of thriving that emphasized spiritual rather than clinical modes would instead involve reducing alienation, increasing historical and political consciousness, and helping patients connect with sources of meaning that transcend shallow consumerist markers. This might include asking patients to consider questions about ancestry, the meanings of oneās life, and of course, community. It would likely include somatic therapiesālargely siloed from psychology and psychiatry because of academic rigidity and the hegemony of the white, conservative American Psychiatric Association and its Diagnostic and Statistical Manualāthat help repair the toll that oppression takes on peoplesā bodies and nervous systems. And, as many radical therapists started to argue in the ā60s and ā70s, it would likely involve significant time in groups, learning from shared exchange and collaboration. Freud allegedly believed that if we all received analysis, eventually oneās friends would be able to take on the role of the analyst and we could analyze each other, much in the way observant Jews studying together in yeshiva could understand and lay claim to ancestral teachings as a community.
