Why class consciousness is important in therapy.
As a therapist providing services in a Philadelphia, community mental health agency, I aim to consider each of my clients from an intersectional perspective, particularly focusing on the impact of our economic system (not because class issues don’t impact us ALL – rich or poor – but because neo-liberalism is becoming increasingly more life-threatening to marginalized individuals) (1). Invaluable learning resources, including The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class, and Culture Through a Psychoanalytic Lens by Neil Altman, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey, Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis, have been influential in my understanding of the enormous overlap between capitalism and mental health issues.
Class consciousness is an awareness and acknowledgment of one’s socioeconomic class relative to others, specifically drawing distinctions between the working class and the ownership class (2). The working class (aka the proletariat) is composed of those who sell their labor to the ownership class (aka the bourgeoisie) who buy and profit off this labor. The ownership class is composed of those who possess businesses, investments, bonds, real estate, etc., and do not rely on their own labor or skills for their living. Class and wealth are distinct – and this distinction is an important one. Regardless of one’s income or education level, if you’re exchanging your labor for money, you’re part of the working class. However, ideologies like ‘the Protestant work ethic,’ Fordism, meritocracy, the ‘American dream,’ and delayed gratification disrupted our ability to practice class consciousness – leading to the rise of “temporarily embarrassed billionaires (3).” John Steinback wrote,
"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves" (A Primer on the '30s.’ Esquire (June 1960), p. 85-93).
Steinback’s quote was paraphrased by Ronald Wright to give us the concept of a ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaire’ defined as someone who is part of the working class and aspires to acquire wealth and eventually become part of the ownership class. Such individuals may be worried about laws, policies, regulations, and taxes that affect the ownership class — spending little to no time analyzing their current class position. This can lead to ‘false class consciousness’ or ‘class blindness’ in which we don’t recognize the exploitation of the ownership class or may have a distorted understanding of one’s class identity, contributing to their own exploitation.
The devastating consequences of false class consciousness or class blindness can be found in our laws. On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court criminalized street homelessness, ruling the function of sleeping in public spaces is punishable by arrest or fines (4). Instead of addressing the root causes of homelessness to eliminate the public safety crisis, we are exacerbating the effects of poverty, mental health issues, and physiological stressors. Sleep is a biological need and our approach to homelessness is to either deprive people of sleep, which can cause significant issues such as psychosis and death (5), or force them deeper into poverty due to accruing fines or criminal records. This kind of mentality comes from the moralistic, individualistic ideals perpetuated by a lack of class consciousness.
However, class consciousness goes even further than just thinking about wages and labor. Class consciousness can help us better understand our own and our client’s limitations, barriers, and challenges with greater compassion. As a therapist, advocate, and activist I am constantly taking into account the multitude of factors impacting our choices. For instance, I was listening to a group of people discuss the issues of a “phone-based childhood” as opposed to a “play-based childhood” (6) — and they were making great points: smartphones are designed to trigger dopamine release which can keep us hooked; there’s a ton of misleading information that’s not always questioned; minors can be exposed to inappropriate content; social media content can cause comparison leading to anxiety, depression, and again the nature of smartphone apps can cause distractibility, procrastination, dissociation, etc., etc., etc. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, juxtaposes play-based and phone-based childhoods in his most recent book publication:
“…the decline of the play-based childhood, which began in the 1980s and accelerated in the ‘90s. All mammals need free play, and lots of it, to wire up their brains during childhood to prepare them for adulthood. But many parents in Anglo countries began to reduce children’s access to unsupervised outdoor free play out of media-fueled fears for their safety, even though the “real world” was becoming increasingly safe in the 1990s. The loss of free play and the rise of continual adult supervision deprived children of what they needed most to overcome the normal fears and anxieties of childhood: the chance to explore, test and expand their limits, build close friendships through shared adventure, and learn how to judge risks for themselves…
…the rise of the phone-based childhood, which began in the late 2000s and accelerated in the early 2010s. This was precisely the period during which adolescents traded in their flip phones for smartphones, which were loaded with social media platforms supported by the new high-speed internet and unlimited data plans” (10).
While I agree that there are unintended consequences to extended or unsupervised smartphone use, I wondered, “Are ‘iPad kids’ the problem, or is something else going on?” It may be tempting to try to reduce the negative consequences of smartphone use by enforcing age restrictions and fining parents, but does it address or resolve the underlying problem? Or does it just punish individuals with limited resources as a result of class blindness?
Our lives have become increasingly hectic, expensive, and demanding. Burnout has been an ongoing topic companies are trying to “resolve” to increase productivity and reduce employee turnover (7, 8, 9). My clients share feeling drained, isolating, withdrawing from hobbies, detachment, procrastination and generally finding doing activities of daily living so strenuous. Often we only have the physical, mental, and emotional repertoire to get through the workday with barely enough time to recover on the weekends. Most adults have to work 40+ hours a week, not including commute times, and are told to get enough sleep, eat balanced meals, stay hydrated, engage in physical activity, and keep up with social connections to maintain wellness and prevent burnout. Somedays I come home from work and all I can muster for dinner is a handful of dried banana chips and a spoon of peanut butter before showering and binging a TV series. Some days are just too much for me to always be able to show up for myself.
But what happens when we have more than just ourselves to take care of? With inaccessible child and elder care, many working adults have few, if any, options aside from doing it themselves. It seems more necessary than ever to have a dual income to support a household and can burden individuals managing full-time jobs with full-time housework. I’m not surprised parents are spending less time developing a play-based childhood and are having to resort to turning on the TV so they can cook dinner, clean, and wash up. It makes me question whether the emphasis on economic growth is tipping the balance between work and self/family. Perhaps our neoliberal model is blurring the lines between work and life considering how much time we dedicate to earning a paycheck SO THAT we CAN have homes, children, and leisure. We’re held hostage by the economic system, satisfied by the intermittent rewards provided by biweekly paychecks, and ignoring the control labor has over our lives. It sounds like we’re in a trauma bond with capitalism.
I say all this, to appropriately assign responsibility to the systems that impact our choices. As people in helping professions, we need to look deeper to reveal what’s happening in our clients’ worlds. I believe that class consciousness can help reduce shame and allow for the acceptance of conditions outside of our control before we can help clients figure out how to sustainably align with their values while practicing self-compassion. Of course, it doesn’t mean we don’t also work on addressing these issues outside the therapy room as advocates and activists. Here are some guidelines that can help therapists navigate the complex interplay between socioeconomic factors and mental health:
First, we as therapists must explore the distinction between our responsibility to the systems around us versus the responsibility to ourselves as thinking agents before we can do this work with clients.
While we didn’t have a choice to be in this neoliberal system, we play a role in maintaining or exacerbating the negative effects of this system if we, as therapists, do not analyze and acknowledge our class identity.
We can assist clients in appropriately assigning responsibility for their conditions.
This can help reduce shame, self-blame, and depression by exploring their barriers and challenges in the context of neoliberalism.
We can provide a safe, containing space that allows clients to face the emotions arising from coming to terms with painful circumstances.
This teaches clients to tolerate distress. It’s normal to experience fear, grief, a sense of loss, overwhelm, etc. when facing these issues. We can facilitate acceptance processes to help clients let go of struggling with their internal experiences.
We can support clients develop a plan of action to mitigate or partially unhook from the impact of socioeconomic factors outside of their control.
Here therapists can encourage clients to identify, explore, and define their values and ways to commit to actualizing meaningful behaviors and goals rather than hooking onto despair, hopelessness, or misapplied control.
References:
Vallier, K. (2021, June 9). Neoliberalism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoliberalism/
Crossman, A. (2019, July 25). Defining Marx’s class consciousness and false consciousness. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/class-consciousness-3026135
Day, F. J. (2021, September 2). Why Americans can’t comprehend class consciousness. Medium. https://faitheday.medium.com/why-americans-cant-comprehend-class-consciousness-5ef5d3f65ab0
23-175 city of grants pass V. Johnson (06/28/2024). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf
Waters F, Chiu V, Atkinson A, Blom JD. Severe Sleep Deprivation Causes Hallucinations and a Gradual Progression Toward Psychosis With Increasing Time Awake. Front Psychiatry. 2018 Jul 10;9:303. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00303. PMID: 30042701; PMCID: PMC6048360.
Price, C. (2024, April 4). The one book about technology that every parent should read. https://catherineprice.substack.com/p/its-time-to-end-phone-based-childhood
Zhou, A. (2022, December 15). Council post: How companies can navigate the burnout epidemic. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/12/13/how-companies-can-navigate-the-burnout-epidemic/
9 policies companies should implement to reduce burnout, according to employees. American Heart Association. (n.d.). https://newsroom.heart.org/news/9-policies-companies-should-implement-to-reduce-burnout-according-to-employees
Balluru (Schaefer), C. (2023, November 27). How companies can prevent burnout by reducing over-enthusiasm in the workplace. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-companies-can-prevent-burnout-reducing-workplace-candice-7hicc/
Haidt, J. (n.d.). The anxious generation. Jonathan Haidt. https://jonathanhaidt.com/anxious-generation/