When we hear the word “political”, we usually think of parties, elections or governments. But there is a broader sense of the political: the way power relations are organised, from the family to social institutions — who has a voice, who stays silent, who feels entitled to exist as they are, and who learns to adapt in order to survive.
In this sense, psychotherapy is a deeply political act.
This idea runs through the Gestalt approach to psychotherapy, as developed by the Perls and by later theorists. Psychotherapy is not confined to relieving an individual of their symptoms. It invites us to examine the power relations within which our experience was formed, and to ask: how did I learn to see myself this way?
From “this is how I am” to “this is how I learned to be”.
One of the most important gifts of psychotherapy is that it questions what we have learned to regard as natural or self-evident.
How often does someone say:
“I’m too sensitive.”
“I can’t set boundaries.”
“It’s always my fault.”
“I’m not good enough.”
Gestalt psychotherapy does not treat these phrases as innate truths. Instead, it explores the experiences and relationships out of which they were born.
The question is no longer “What is wrong with me?” but:
“Within which relationships did I learn that I have to exist this way?”
This shift is decisive. It does not remove personal responsibility, but it frees us from self-blame. It helps us see that much of what we experience as “personal flaws” are creative adjustments to environments in which they were once necessary for psychological survival.
No one is formed alone
According to Gestalt field theory, a person is not understood as an isolated existence standing apart from their social environment. We belong simultaneously to multiple fields: the family, the school, the neighbourhood, work, society, culture and institutions.
Like concentric circles, these fields interact continuously. The values, fears, expectations and rules of the larger systems run through and shape our most personal experiences.
So it often becomes clear in the therapy room that an individual symptom is not exclusively individual.
Chronic guilt, the difficulty of saying “no”, the fear of rejection, or the sense of having no right to express anger are often not personality traits but products of particular relationships and social conditions.
Power is not only outside us
We often perceive power as something external: a parent, an employer, an institution, the state.
Psychotherapy, however, reveals something deeper. External power relations can gradually be internalised. The voice that once criticised us becomes our own inner critical voice. The rules that were once imposed from outside go on operating even when the people who imposed them are no longer present.
This is how what we often call internalised criticism, internalised shame or internalised oppression comes about.
Psychotherapy makes this process visible.
Guilt and shame as relational phenomena
In Gestalt, shame is not understood as a purely individual emotion but as a deeply relational phenomenon. It arises when a person fears that, if they reveal what they truly are, they will cease to be accepted. Their experience is of being exposed as inadequate, defective or unworthy in the eyes of others, and of the relationship or the sense of belonging being under threat. Shame thus works as a powerful mechanism regulating conformity, differentiation and the effort to maintain connection with others.
Guilt can work creatively, when it mobilises us to take responsibility for our actions. In many relationships, however, it also becomes a means of maintaining connection: “If it’s my fault, perhaps the relationship can be saved.” In such cases, taking on excessive responsibility can feel psychologically safer than acknowledging that an important relationship was hurtful or unjust.
These feelings regulate belonging, conformity and differentiation within human groups. They are not born in a social vacuum.
Why is it so hard to differentiate?
One of the most emblematic experiments in social psychology is Solomon Asch’s conformity study (1951, 1956). Participants were asked an extremely simple question: which of three lines was the same length as a reference line. The correct answer was obvious.
However, before the real participant answered, all the others (who were confederates of the researchers) deliberately gave the same wrong answer.
The result was striking. A large proportion of participants conformed to the group, even though they could clearly see that the answer was wrong.
The experiment does not show that people cannot see reality. It shows that often the real question is not “What do I see?” but:
“What will it cost me if I say what I see?”
The need to belong can become stronger than trust in our own experience. In this sense, conformity is not simply a cognitive error. It is a relational phenomenon.
When the field changes, behaviour changes
The most hopeful finding from the variations of Asch’s experiment is that conformity was not inevitable. One small change in the field was enough.
When there was even one person who disagreed with the majority, rates of conformity dropped dramatically. The same happened when participants could answer privately, without public exposure.
Resistance, then, does not depend only on courage or strength of character. It also depends on whether there are relationships that allow differentiation without the fear of rejection.
This is one of the most important messages of psychotherapy too. The therapeutic relationship creates the conditions in which trust in our own experience can gradually coexist with belonging, instead of one having to be sacrificed for the other.
Psychotherapy as a space of freedom
The therapeutic relationship can work as a space where a person tries out something they may never have had the chance to live:
Saying what they really think.
Expressing anger without losing the relationship.
Disagreeing without being abandoned.
Setting a boundary without feeling they are being bad.
Acknowledging their needs without feeling selfish.
In other words, acquiring new relational experiences that gradually transform the way they exist in the world.
Psychotherapy is not neutral about human dignity.
It does not necessarily produce politicised people, nor does it dictate particular ideological positions. But it cultivates something deeper.
It increases sensitivity to injustice. It reduces tolerance for violence and for manipulative relationships. It helps us distinguish when a demand is reasonable and when it violates our boundaries. It strengthens the capacity to bear conflict and difference without losing ourselves.
And above all, it helps us recover trust in our own experience.
The most substantial political act
Psychotherapy does not directly change institutions or social structures. What it does change is the way people relate to themselves, to others and to power. Awareness allows them to recognise what they had until then been repeating automatically, and to choose a different stance towards it.
It moves a person from self-blame to awareness, from passivity to choice, from silence to finding the right words.
And each time someone stops regarding as normal a relationship that diminishes them, recognises that their experience has value, and finds the courage to take a position towards what oppresses them, it is not only their personal life that changes.
Slowly, the field they live in changes too.
Perhaps this, in the end, is the deepest political dimension of psychotherapy: it does not change the world through slogans or ideologies. It changes the people who inhabit it. And every person who stops living in fear, shame and silence alters, however imperceptibly, the field of relationships they live within. Perhaps this is where every substantial social change begins.
You can watch Asch’s classic conformity experiment here:
