Opinion | How Couples Therapy Can Address Our Political Divide

Louisa and Isaac, a lively, warm and bright couple in their 40s, fell in love two decades ago. They were intellectually engaged with each other, adventurous and, for years, shared “deep blue” affiliations. That changed during Donald Trump’s first term.

One of their earliest arguments about politics, they told me recently, erupted when Isaac announced he thought a wall on the southern border made sense. Louisa was shocked. She worked with undocumented immigrants; the spirit of protectiveness for the vulnerable was a deep part of her identity.

As Isaac became more engaged with a conservative worldview, their arguments grew more heated. Louisa described how their political divisions made them fearful of each other. “I didn’t recognize him,” she said. “I was afraid — maybe he wasn’t a compassionate person? Who is he? Is he even kind, loving? Does he care about people?”

I was introduced to Isaac and Louisa (that’s her middle name) by a director of my Showtime series, “Couples Therapy.” In my work as a psychoanalyst and couples therapist, I see a deep resignation in response to our political divide and a newfound fear of “the other side.” Due to our political differences, people in this country are deeply alienated from one another.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, I see how political disputes follow dynamics similar to disputes between couples, albeit amplified. People typically come to any event with differing views of the world, informed by their life and background. Couples negotiate these differences by creating their own political system and guiding ideologies.

Grasping the degree to which each of their “truths” emerges from a deeply subjective place is their most important challenge. This process is difficult — for a couple or for a country. A psychoanalytic approach offers a path.

As children, early in our psychological development, we all resort to a defense mechanism identified by the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein as “splitting.” To cope with negative or inexplicable experiences, we divide our perceptions of people into either all-good or all-bad.

This splitting allows us to avoid dealing with feelings of vulnerability, shame, hate, ambivalence or anxiety by externalizing (or dumping) unwanted emotions onto others. We then feel free to categorize these others as entirely negative, while seeing ourselves as good.

In political environments, this kind of splitting manifests in an “us versus them” mentality — where “our” side is virtuous and correct, and “their” side is wrong and flawed — which produces the kind of rigid, extreme, ideological warring we are caught up in now.

The technologies that mediate our access to reality only exacerbate this dynamic. The algorithms used by social media prioritize sensationalist and divisive content, creating “bubbles” that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives, rather than fostering a balanced discourse.

It’s important for us to recognize just how gratifying this process can be, both for individuals and larger groups. Splitting produces a kind of ecstatic righteousness. There’s an intoxicating thrill in hate — in feeling that you’re in the bosom of a like-minded brotherhood, free from complexity and uncertainty. In this state we’re prone to ignore information that contradicts our idealized version of ourselves; we become allergic to dissonance; and those with differing views are cast out or canceled.

To protect this brittle and distorted version of reality, we resort to extreme defensiveness. We frame opposing arguments as a threat to our identity and values. In psychoanalytic terms we call this the paranoid-schizoid position. We all tend to drop into this state of mind when we’re under extreme threat. In certain circumstances, it can allow for powerful acts of courage, but it’s also a state in which nuance and complexity are intolerable, and it’s too easy to see difference as danger.

What I find most striking when talking to people in my practice is how intensely afraid they are of what they describe as “the other side.” Much as Louisa and Isaac sometimes felt they no longer knew each other even after decades of marriage, many of us have become frightening strangers to each other across the political divide.

So how do we make our way back from this paranoid-schizoid state? It can seem difficult to imagine — but I know that empathy, compromise and brutally honest self-awareness are the beginnings of reconciliation.

In Kleinian psychoanalysis, the “depressive position” is the phase that comes after the paranoid-schizoid position, when one emerges into a more integrated and mature state. In the depressive position, individuals begin to see themselves and others as complex and multifaceted, capable of both positive and negative qualities.

To make this shift, you have to grapple with feelings of guilt and responsibility as you become aware that your aggressive feelings can hurt others — and that these feelings can also coexist with love and respect for the same person. The depressive position represents emotional maturity, within which one can reconcile ambivalence, manage feelings of loss, take responsibility and repair harm in relationships.

When I work with couples on coming back from great mistrust and animosity, the initial phase requires encouraging each of them to take a good second look at their partner — approaching the other with friendly eyes to gather new and honest information. I embolden them to seek an attitude of true curiosity: How did their partner come to feel the way they did? What motivated them? What matters to them? This entails a shift in rhetoric, away from a stance of suspicion, ridicule and derision toward friendly curiosity. Interest in difference is a place of potential growth and repair.

For a culture struggling with extreme political polarization, moving toward a depressive position would mean fostering a collective capacity to see political opponents as complex, nuanced individuals rather than entirely negative or hostile figures.

To understand that Democrats and Republicans share more than they are acknowledging, you first have to recognize your own role in perpetuating conflict and harm. Selfishness and a wish to protect those closest to us are human qualities we all share and need to grapple with. But I also believe that most of us can find within ourselves the wish to protect the vulnerable, the earth and its biosphere, the wish for a fair distribution of resources and the basic abhorrence of murderous and genocidal impulses, even if we have very different ideas of what actions these beliefs translate into.

National politics is, of course, a very specific kind of relationship. A feuding couple may not always need to come to a formal consensus on a contentious issue such as immigration policy or affirmative action — but a country does, so that legislative standards can be set.

What the psychoanalytic lens offers is a way to address the underlying patterns in which we process our disagreements. We can mourn that which we cannot change, rather than nurse our grievances. And in working toward worthy policy goals, we can avoid getting stuck in endless cycles of treating those who disagree with us as inferior, hostile or dangerous.

I asked Louisa and Isaac what could help them heal their marriage. True to themselves, they each had a different response.

Isaac felt the solution, both for this country and for them, was more freedom of speech and open, rigorous debate. Louisa agreed to a point, but added: “It is a relationship, and a moral imperative to explore each other’s views and values. We need to find a way to understand what the values are that underlie what each of us is saying. I do ultimately believe differences in politics and policy can be a rich part of life.”

In an attempt to fortify their marriage, Louisa became active with Braver Angels, an organization dedicated to helping individuals bridge the partisan divide, and Isaac began attending the group’s events. “We need empathy for each other so we can build bridges,” Louisa said. “Empathy allows you to see the world in color versus black and white.”

For all of us to move back from the brink, the political atmosphere will need to shift toward a more radical interest in diverse viewpoints. We need to see these viewpoints as part of a complex social fabric rather than existential threats to our values and ourselves.

I am talking about holding on to one’s moral and ethical principles while replacing the rhetoric of right versus wrong or good versus evil with an approach known as relational ethics. Theorists like the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and the psychologist Carol Gilligan have described relational ethics as situating the self within a larger network of interdependent subjects, each with its own valid perspective.

Relational ethical engagement with each other is rooted not in abstract moral principles alone but in a profound respect for the autonomy and depth of others’ experiences. I do believe that progressive ideological positions, at least in theory, are better set up to facilitate that kind of discourse, while conservative ideologies often promote submitting to strong men. But refusing to settle into a discourse of splitting is available to us all.

Such an approach offers a pathway to transform the “us versus them” mind-set into “them are us.” This is the first step toward a psychological maturity that can help us counteract the desire to simplify and polarize, and move together toward repair.

Dr. Orna Guralnik is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who serves on the faculty of New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and is the therapist on the Showtime documentary series “Couples Therapy.”

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