Clinical encounters with children in the Trump era

ABSTRACT

There is an emerging research and conceptual literature on the impact of the 2016 United States election of Donald Trump on the psychoanalytic psychotherapy process; however, the focus of this growing body of literature has been primarily with adults. Issues related to the election of Donald Trump, and the current political climate, also continue to arise in clinical encounters with children. These moments highlight the complexities of intersectionality, intersubjectivity, power dynamics, and self-disclosure. This article describes several clinical scenarios with American youth – reports from the front lines of a new political reality – drawn from the perspectives of trainees learning psychodynamic therapy, a private practitioner conducting an assessment for a young asylum seeker, and a school psychologist working in a private school for children with learning disabilities. We consider the fears and preoccupations that arise among children and their caregivers and the feelings that are provoked in the clinician, both in response to their clients and to the election itself. Traditional psychoanalytic paradigms of limiting self-disclosure and maintaining the therapeutic frame are challenged by the intensely personal nature of contemporary politics. This paper explores a contemporary phenomenon – the tension between therapeutic attending to internal experience and symbolisation, repression, and integration, while also considering a harsh, political external reality – through the lens of centuries of psychoanalytic work conducted in the face of war, trauma, and oppression. Children and adolescents who present for treatment or other forms of clinical intervention require a flexible therapeutic approach that acknowledges their unique position in history and the ways in which their distress is exacerbated by real and perceived political threats.

KEYWORDS:

• Child psychotherapy
• 2016 election
• Donald Trump
• psychodynamic psychotherapy
• self-disclosure

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to the thoughtful comments provided by the reviewers of this manuscript. We are especially grateful for the guidance offered by Debbie Hindle whose familiarity with the American context was enormously helpful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All vignettes presented in this paper are composites of several cases, presented with pseudonyms, in order to protect the confidentiality and anonymity of the children and their families.

2. sThese stickers are commonly given out at polling places in the United States to encourage more participation in the electoral process. Many Americans wear them or display them prominently, such as in this example where the sticker was placed on the back of the therapist’s phone.

3. The ‘we’ here refers to the authors of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tracy A. Prout

Tracy A. Prout, PhD, is Associate Professor at Yeshiva University’s Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology where she is principal investigator for several studies of Regulation Focused Psychotherapy for Children, a manualized psychodynamic treatment for children with externalizing disorders. She is in private practice in Garrison, New York and volunteers with HealthRight International conducting assessments for asylum seekers.

Leore J. Faber

Leore J. Faber, PsyD, is a school psychologist at the City and Country school in Manhattan, NY. She is also in private practice where she treats children, adolescents, and young adults with anxiety, depression, and trauma.

Emma Racine

Emma Racine, PsyD, recently graduated from Yeshiva University’s Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, after completing her clinical internship at Montefiore Medical Center. She will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University in Fall 2019.

Rebecca Sperling

Rebecca Sperling, MS, is in her final year of the Clinical-School Psy.D program at Yeshiva University's Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology. Rebecca will begin her doctoral internship at Lincoln Hospital in New York in Fall 2019.

Rebecca F. Hillman

Rebecca F. Hillman, PsyD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology at The Quad Preparatory School, a school for twice-exceptional children in New York, NY. She received her doctorate from Yeshiva University's Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology.