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So, ive been thinking about how my trauma effects my politics. This may shock some of you, but a lot of my radicalizing experiences were pretty fucking traumatizing. Resistance is part of how i cope, how i keep from killing myself, how i get up in the morning after all the shit I've survived. I am under no illusions that I am emotionally healthy.

But that doesn't just go one direction. How do we define and explore the pathology of boot licking, of continued obedience, of feeling perfectly fine and like it's 'just another day and wow yeah something scary must be on if the US marines are deployed down the street, i hope they get the bad guys soon!'?

Because this is a dangerous delusion. It is blatantly and violently counterfactual. So what the fuck? Pathologically stable attachment? Hypersucceotability to delusion?

How do we figure out what a healthy person and healthy context for them to exist in would even fucking look like?

I don't just want to call the pathologically compliant names here¹. I want to figure out what breaks a person like this so we can fucking fix it. I want theories with actual utility in something adjacent to the situationist tradition.

¹'boot licker' is perfectly suitable and requires no further theorizing. Not that I don't also want to call them that.

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[-] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 19 hours ago

That last bit is valid, but it's a tool legitimized by real shit that feels ungood and needs some remedy. Im all for a new therapy, but I do think something shpuld exist, whether it's the village shaman who offers you mushrooms or a person with a couch who asks you to talk about your feelings.

[-] TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Oh, well that exists! I forgot about that part of your post.

Marxist psychotherapists use Lacanian psychoanalysis to encourage class consciousness, and I suppose the "disorder" they're treating in this case is referred to as "interpellation."

As an anarchist, I personally have some pretty strong (negative) feelings and opinions about this modality, but it sounds like what you're looking for


Edit: I just remembered we're in an anarchism comm lol

Here's why I don't like it (copied and pasted from something I wrote before):

The focus on dense theoretical frameworks and language/symbolic structures as mediators of subjectivity tends to obscure rather than clarify real mechanisms of power and oppression as experienced by individuals, alienating clients who urgently need practical tools for self-determination and mutual aid within oppressive systems.

More importantly, it seems to inherently reproduce hierarchical, institutionalized patterns within therapy itself, where the therapist positions themselves as an expert interpreter of ideology, rather than facilitating liberatory, horizontal therapeutic relationships.

As practiced within Marxist-influenced circles (as seen on r/leftistpsychotherapists) it appears to be less about empowering individuals or communities, and more about intellectualizing oppression in ways that ultimately sustain elitism and social control mechanisms rather than dismantling them.


Granted, I'm in a position where the only people coming to me for therapy are already radicalized. If I worked with libs/fascists, I might be motivated to find a way to implement Lacanian psychoanalysis in a way that feels less elitist

Edit 2: I'm embarrassed to say I never bothered to look into this from the other side and lowkey just assumed I was alone in this. Check this out! https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/saul-newman-anarchism-and-psychoanalysis#toc3

this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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