# If I'm looking for a therapist, is it OK to ask if they are a Trump supporter?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-im-looking-for-a-therapist-is-it-ok-to-ask-if-they-are-a-trump-supporter/928400>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [December 19, 2020, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-im-looking-for-a-therapist-is-it-ok-to-ask-if-they-are-a-trump-supporter/928400 "2020-12-19T14:46:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 49

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**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\
**Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-im-looking-for-a-therapist-is-it-ok-to-ask-if-they-are-a-trump-supporter/928400/49 "2020-12-20T17:23:06Z")

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> [@KarlGauss](#):
>
> She is about as liberal as can be (and doesn’t hide it) yet many of her clients are overt Trump supporters (and some are even players in his reign). They don’t seem to be put off by her.

There’s some aspect of selection bias based supply and demand, I’d suspect. Other than explicitly faith-based ones, therapists tend to skew other than the Trump supporting side of the spectrum. A client who demanded a Trump supporting therapist has a smaller universe of choices.\* (The career choice selects for people with empathy and compassion inclusive of those very different than you.)

> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#):
>
> That’s their choice. They don’t have to justify it. I also don’t have to justify my choice to patronize those who need to hide information that’s important to me.

That is true. And I posed the subject to my therapist wife and she leaned to your side. Bringing up the religion analogy her response included pointing out that some Orthodox Jews would exclude a more secular Jew as a therapist - to them they are apostates and better to see a righteous Gentile than an apostate. And they are right that it might get in the way of developing a functional therapeutic relationship.

> [@Riemann](#):
>
> And the actual numbers from that article:

Please note: “Thirty percent said their therapists divulged their views”. Making “their beliefs known implicitly” is a squishy thing of “wink wink nudge nudge” and _sometimes_ projection. _Implicitly?_ Maybe accurate maybe not (given the skew of therapists a guess of not a Trump supporter does have good priors) and certainly not explicitly stated or even hinted at before any therapeutic alliance is created. **The overwhelming majority, 70%, did NOT actually divulge their views.** So while I stated “[s]ome, maybe many, therapists are extremely hesitant about disclosing …” that data suggests I was too cautious. _Many_, a solid majority, still do not divulge their views.

> [@Riemann](#):
>
> Being a Trump supporter falls outside the spectrum of political beliefs of well balanced and well socialized normal human beings

Let’s reality check here: 47.8% of Americans voted for Trump. You may not knowingly have meaningful interactions with many of them, especially in our current world, but this sort of description of nearly half of our country as being, well, almost not really countable as normal human beings, is IMHO very disturbing.  
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\*The cited Psychology Today article confirms that skew. Only 7% of therapists polled self-identified as Republican, less than independent or even than “other”, and a solid majority as Democrats.

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