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Sunday, November 15, 2026 · 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PT (1:30 to 3:00 p.m. ET) · 1.5 CE credits · $65
What happens when a patient’s politics walk into the consulting room? Many clinicians feel uncertain or anxious when patients bring political material into a session. Some stay on the surface, fearing they’ll impose their own values. Others aren’t sure how to work with it therapeutically, so they treat politics as an intrusion or a distraction. The result is that important psychological material goes unexplored, and patients may sense that parts of their inner lives are off-limits. Drawing on detailed clinical material, Dr. Abbasi offers both theoretical grounding and practical technique for engaging political material clinically. She makes the case for analytic neutrality of the curious, engaged kind, not the distancing kind, that deepens the patient’s self-understanding and respects the patient’s autonomy.
Learning objectives
Identify the theoretical foundations that support the inclusion of political discourse as legitimate analytic material, rather than as resistance to discussing other matters or contamination in the therapeutic relationship.
Apply techniques of benign curiosity and exploratory inquiry when patients introduce political beliefs and values, while maintaining awareness of the clinician’s own countertransference and potential biases.
Distinguish between the therapeutic exploration of a patient’s political beliefs and the imposition of the analyst’s own ideological position, and use this distinction to enhance clinical effectiveness and patient autonomy.
About Dr. Abbasi
Aisha Abbasi, MD, is a psychoanalyst whose clinical practice spans three decades and six states. She was educated as an analyst at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute (MPI), where she was a Training and Supervising Analyst until 2023. She serves numerous psychoanalytic foundations in a variety of roles, including Geographic Rule Training and Supervising Analyst and National Faculty at the Florida Psychoanalytic Center, Supervising Analyst and Consultant for the Developmental Pathways Program at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and Consulting Supervisor at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. She is the author of The Rupture of Serenity: External Intrusions and Psychoanalytic Technique and co-editor of Privacy: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms.
Sunday, November 15, 2026 · 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PT (1:30 to 3:00 p.m. ET) · 1.5 CE credits · $65
What happens when a patient’s politics walk into the consulting room? Many clinicians feel uncertain or anxious when patients bring political material into a session. Some stay on the surface, fearing they’ll impose their own values. Others aren’t sure how to work with it therapeutically, so they treat politics as an intrusion or a distraction. The result is that important psychological material goes unexplored, and patients may sense that parts of their inner lives are off-limits. Drawing on detailed clinical material, Dr. Abbasi offers both theoretical grounding and practical technique for engaging political material clinically. She makes the case for analytic neutrality of the curious, engaged kind, not the distancing kind, that deepens the patient’s self-understanding and respects the patient’s autonomy.
Learning objectives
Identify the theoretical foundations that support the inclusion of political discourse as legitimate analytic material, rather than as resistance to discussing other matters or contamination in the therapeutic relationship.
Apply techniques of benign curiosity and exploratory inquiry when patients introduce political beliefs and values, while maintaining awareness of the clinician’s own countertransference and potential biases.
Distinguish between the therapeutic exploration of a patient’s political beliefs and the imposition of the analyst’s own ideological position, and use this distinction to enhance clinical effectiveness and patient autonomy.
About Dr. Abbasi
Aisha Abbasi, MD, is a psychoanalyst whose clinical practice spans three decades and six states. She was educated as an analyst at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute (MPI), where she was a Training and Supervising Analyst until 2023. She serves numerous psychoanalytic foundations in a variety of roles, including Geographic Rule Training and Supervising Analyst and National Faculty at the Florida Psychoanalytic Center, Supervising Analyst and Consultant for the Developmental Pathways Program at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and Consulting Supervisor at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. She is the author of The Rupture of Serenity: External Intrusions and Psychoanalytic Technique and co-editor of Privacy: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms.