Therapy isn’t supposed to tell people what to think. It’s supposed to help them think more clearly.

For more than a century, neutrality was one of psychotherapy’s defining principles. Sigmund Freud urged analysts to serve as a “blank screen.” Carl Rogers championed “unconditional positive regard,” encouraging therapists to accept patients without judgment rather than steer them toward predetermined conclusions. The therapist’s role wasn’t to persuade. It was to understand. That principle has been quietly giving way to something very different.

Today, professional organizations host “emergency support sessions” after elections. In 2020, the American Psychological Association declared racism a public health crisis and urged psychologists to embrace social justice activism. Graduate programs now train students in “anti-oppressive” methods. Columbia University’s social work curriculum aims to help students “understand that anti-black racism and white supremacy are endemic in our systems and institutions.” The message doesn’t stop at graduation. Therapists are encouraged to attend $1,500 “anti-racism” retreats and workshops with titles like “Getting Free From Whiteness.”

Whatever one thinks of these ideas politically, they don’t belong in the therapy room as clinical assumptions. Therapy ceases to be therapy when political assumptions become therapeutic assumptions.

I’ve seen the consequences firsthand. Earlier this year, an Asian American woman told me that her previous therapist steered nearly every session back to race and politics, even when she wanted to discuss work-related stress. Politics wasn’t her problem. It was the therapist’s preferred explanation.

The effects are showing up in therapy rooms across the country. Patients describe cutting off relatives, refusing to date across party lines, and ending longstanding friendships over elections. Reuters/Ipsos polling found that 27% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans say politics has negatively affected their friendships. Dating surveys likewise show that political compatibility has become a prerequisite for many Americans.

Good therapy should interrupt these patterns, not reinforce them. Its purpose is to help people tolerate discomfort, question their assumptions, and navigate conflict without immediately deciding that the other person is beyond redemption. That’s especially important when politics has become intertwined with people’s identities. A therapist’s office should be one of the few places where people can examine their beliefs without fear of ideological approval or condemnation.

By almost any clinical measure, polarization resembles a psychological condition. It limits relationships, fuels chronic stress, heightens anxiety, and encourages poor coping. Instead of helping patients loosen these patterns, many therapists reinforce them by validating ideological rigidity and framing ordinary political disagreement as emotional danger.

When therapists abandon neutrality, polarization stops being something to treat and becomes something they unintentionally prescribe. Some shame conservatives for “bigoted thinking.” Others dismiss progressives as trapped in “woke fantasies.” Patients leave more convinced that those who disagree with them are psychologically deficient. Disagreement becomes harm. Difference becomes pathology. Therapy becomes another arena for political combat.

I’ve experienced this shift personally. After appearing on Fox News, patients and even relatives have asked variations of the same question: “How could Jonathan go on Fox? He’s such a nice guy.” Their assumption wasn’t that they disagreed with my decision. It was that appearing on the “wrong” network revealed something morally suspect about me.

The same mindset surfaced after the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, when some therapists and other healthcare professionals publicly celebrated the attack or suggested the shooter should have succeeded. Regardless of one’s politics, healthcare professionals should not model the contempt and dehumanization they are entrusted to help patients overcome.

Neutrality isn’t etiquette. It’s the foundation of effective therapy. Without it, patients censor themselves or quietly leave. The “shy Trump supporter” isn’t only a political phenomenon. It’s becoming a clinical one. Patients who fear ideological judgment stop being fully honest with their therapists, and therapy can’t work if patients feel they must edit themselves.

Many people are now looking elsewhere for guidance. They turn to TikTok influencers, partisan echo chambers or artificial intelligence. AI lacks the wisdom, empathy, and accountability of an experienced therapist, but it offers something many patients worry they won’t receive from a human therapist: political neutrality. That should be a wake-up call for the profession.

Polarization is no longer just a political problem. It has become one of America’s defining psychological challenges. Therapy should help people tolerate disagreement, strengthen relationships, and build resilience in the face of conflict, not deepen division.

GRAHAM PLATNER AND THE THERAPY SCRIPT EVERY DISGRACED POLITICIAN NOW FOLLOWS

Good therapy doesn’t demand ideological conformity. It helps people think more clearly, understand themselves more honestly, and live alongside those with whom they disagree. In family and couples therapy, neutrality allows people with profound differences to remain connected without demanding agreement. The same principle applies to our politics. 

A therapist’s job is not to recruit patients into a political tribe. It is to help them become healthier, wiser, and more resilient human beings.

If psychotherapy cannot recover that mission, it risks losing not only the public’s trust but its very purpose.