About 10 years ago I was teaching a graduate course on applying mindfulness to CBT to treat mood, anxiety and addictive disorders. I was teaching the course for free. I used a case example of a young woman who was going to frat parties, getting heavily intoxicated and then getting sexually assaulted. She was being repeatedly traumatized. She had worked with a therapist who had suggested that she shared some responsibility for the assaults. The woman fired her therapist because "she said I asked to be raped!!". I was the young woman's psychiatrist and I pointed out to her that I did not know how to keep her safe if she was going to keep engaging in that behavior. She asked if I was blaming her and I said blame wasn't the question. I asked her if she were walking through a jungle and knew there were predators nearby would she be more or less safe if she were intoxicated. She agreed with my point. At her next visit she had stopped going to frat parties and was no longer drinking.
I pointed this out to the graduate students that by changing the focus from who is at fault to what behavior is safe vs unsafe she was able to make a healthy change.
A couple of the graduate students complained to the department chair that I was "victim blaming". He agreed with them and my course was canceled.
My point in relaying this story is that there seem to be people in charge of training therapists who have had their heads up their asses for a long time. Its not a recent phenomenon.
Nothing new here. Clinical psychology has always been an instrument of social control. During the dark days of the feminine mystique which Betty Friedan exposed in the book of the same name women who were dissatisfied with their 'feminine role' were diagnosed as 'neurotic' and sent to therapy to get them set straight. Earlier runaway slaves were diagnosed with draptomania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania. Any behavior or preference that is unacceptable in polite society gets diagnosed as a psychological pathology. And when it's no longer socially unacceptable the diagnosis is dropped.
Most people I know are in 'therapy'. I guess I understand. Everyone needs someone to complain to and if you're paying you don't have to feel bad about it. You're buying your whining time. But to take their rubbish, which changes by roughly the decade, seriously is disastrous. Remember 'repressed memory syndrome' which was all the rage during 1990s, when psychologists manipulated toddlers into telling stories of sexual abuse about their caregivers, who were in some cases sent to prison?
It is so very sad to read this article again confirming that "racist" antisemitism is unfortunately alive and flourishing in America, as it is in many other supposedly civilized Western democracies. What more can be said except the centres of higher learning should be the bedrock of teaching understanding, compasion and harmony, but have moved strongly to the left are in fact the centres of bigoted hatred towards targeted minorities such as the Jews. Their hipocracy is blinding whilst those in their ivory towers strongly support the dogma of divisive, and disrupting identity politics. Sadly there is little chance of a paradigm shift in this academic attitude as long as these professors are, in the main, dyed in the wool leftists.
Very true, but not limited to therapists. One could just as easily write, When Teachers Become Activists, When Pediatricians Become Activists, When Midwives Become Activists, When Human Resources Staff Become Activists, When Reporters Become Activists, When Pastors Become Activists, When Government Health Officials Become Activists, When Museum Directors Become Activists, When Nurses Become Activists, When Professional Licensing Boards Become Activists, When Police Administrators Become Activists - the list is endless, especially in what used to accurately be termed the "helping professions." Meanwhile we on the Right go blithely on just doing our jobs as historically understood while the Left aggressively undermines every profession in sight by repurposing them as agenda drivers, like viruses turning ordinary cells into machines for making more virus. People have begun noticing and talking back, hence the shrieking from all the above-mentioned activists.
The unpleasant reality is psychotherapists must be sued whenever it is possible. And they must be reported to state boards and HHS whenever they harm us or our loved ones. We seem to allow psychologists to harm us far too often.
There are people that grow up seeing their family or friends face legal challenges, that become motivated to become attorneys.
What I see in the psychotherapy profession is over representation in people that required psychotherapy services that became motivated to become psychotherapists.
Some of the most physiologically disordered people I know are clinical psychologists.
I have always been what you might call a philo-Semitic. I believe that one of the best things that ever happened to the US was the influx of Jewish immigrants around the turn of the 20th century and after World War II and the holocaust.
This attitude used to extend to Israel. Although I was aware of Israel's fraught origins and less than compassionate treatment of Arab residents and neighbors, I always thought of Israel as a bastion of Democracy and rational culture.
No more. However heinous the Hamas slaughter might have been, the Israeli retaliation against Gazans was disproportionate beyond justification. Israel is now clearly a fascist theocracy pursuing an imperial agenda based on millennia old myths. It has taken me a long time for me, and I think many others to come to this realization.
My experience isn’t as much as a problem but it could show it goes back several decades. I was in grad school for my MSSW. I was born with a hearing loss but in those days hearing aid’s didn’t help, no one knew. I grew up teaching myself to lip read. I was one of the few in the class who weren’t ultra liberal. I positioned myself in class to see the prof talk in order to “hear” & would follow with my eyes. Her son was in my class. At a party I heard him joking about a student who wanted to get in on his mom’s good side by following her every word.
Another prof gave me C’s on everything. Not bragging but I know I didn’t do C work. Teacher’s pet would come in late EVERY day, prof would start the lecture from the beginning when she arrived - that student got A’s. Maybe she deserved them? Later the prof gave a party; I went. Walked around the house, I dabbled in art, noticed some lovely art work on walls so started looking - another woman joined me & we hung out the rest of the evening talking art. She was the artist. Prof came in, saw us talking… later I learned the 2 were a gay couple, living together - didn’t phase me in the least. I started getting straight A’s.
Greetings, I deeply appreciate your conclusion that there are actions that can be taken to address unprofessional behavior that are designed to serve the target of such behavior. We need to work hard to train clinicians to truly be client-centered and use the structures we have in place to address those failures. Hardin Coleman
I’m retired many years, but in my day there was like professional protect yourother members. It’s a club. Insurance? I don’t know. There needs to be more professional accountability & transparency.
About 10 years ago I was teaching a graduate course on applying mindfulness to CBT to treat mood, anxiety and addictive disorders. I was teaching the course for free. I used a case example of a young woman who was going to frat parties, getting heavily intoxicated and then getting sexually assaulted. She was being repeatedly traumatized. She had worked with a therapist who had suggested that she shared some responsibility for the assaults. The woman fired her therapist because "she said I asked to be raped!!". I was the young woman's psychiatrist and I pointed out to her that I did not know how to keep her safe if she was going to keep engaging in that behavior. She asked if I was blaming her and I said blame wasn't the question. I asked her if she were walking through a jungle and knew there were predators nearby would she be more or less safe if she were intoxicated. She agreed with my point. At her next visit she had stopped going to frat parties and was no longer drinking.
I pointed this out to the graduate students that by changing the focus from who is at fault to what behavior is safe vs unsafe she was able to make a healthy change.
A couple of the graduate students complained to the department chair that I was "victim blaming". He agreed with them and my course was canceled.
My point in relaying this story is that there seem to be people in charge of training therapists who have had their heads up their asses for a long time. Its not a recent phenomenon.
Nothing new here. Clinical psychology has always been an instrument of social control. During the dark days of the feminine mystique which Betty Friedan exposed in the book of the same name women who were dissatisfied with their 'feminine role' were diagnosed as 'neurotic' and sent to therapy to get them set straight. Earlier runaway slaves were diagnosed with draptomania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania. Any behavior or preference that is unacceptable in polite society gets diagnosed as a psychological pathology. And when it's no longer socially unacceptable the diagnosis is dropped.
Most people I know are in 'therapy'. I guess I understand. Everyone needs someone to complain to and if you're paying you don't have to feel bad about it. You're buying your whining time. But to take their rubbish, which changes by roughly the decade, seriously is disastrous. Remember 'repressed memory syndrome' which was all the rage during 1990s, when psychologists manipulated toddlers into telling stories of sexual abuse about their caregivers, who were in some cases sent to prison?
It is so very sad to read this article again confirming that "racist" antisemitism is unfortunately alive and flourishing in America, as it is in many other supposedly civilized Western democracies. What more can be said except the centres of higher learning should be the bedrock of teaching understanding, compasion and harmony, but have moved strongly to the left are in fact the centres of bigoted hatred towards targeted minorities such as the Jews. Their hipocracy is blinding whilst those in their ivory towers strongly support the dogma of divisive, and disrupting identity politics. Sadly there is little chance of a paradigm shift in this academic attitude as long as these professors are, in the main, dyed in the wool leftists.
Very true, but not limited to therapists. One could just as easily write, When Teachers Become Activists, When Pediatricians Become Activists, When Midwives Become Activists, When Human Resources Staff Become Activists, When Reporters Become Activists, When Pastors Become Activists, When Government Health Officials Become Activists, When Museum Directors Become Activists, When Nurses Become Activists, When Professional Licensing Boards Become Activists, When Police Administrators Become Activists - the list is endless, especially in what used to accurately be termed the "helping professions." Meanwhile we on the Right go blithely on just doing our jobs as historically understood while the Left aggressively undermines every profession in sight by repurposing them as agenda drivers, like viruses turning ordinary cells into machines for making more virus. People have begun noticing and talking back, hence the shrieking from all the above-mentioned activists.
The unpleasant reality is psychotherapists must be sued whenever it is possible. And they must be reported to state boards and HHS whenever they harm us or our loved ones. We seem to allow psychologists to harm us far too often.
There are people that grow up seeing their family or friends face legal challenges, that become motivated to become attorneys.
What I see in the psychotherapy profession is over representation in people that required psychotherapy services that became motivated to become psychotherapists.
Some of the most physiologically disordered people I know are clinical psychologists.
I have always been what you might call a philo-Semitic. I believe that one of the best things that ever happened to the US was the influx of Jewish immigrants around the turn of the 20th century and after World War II and the holocaust.
This attitude used to extend to Israel. Although I was aware of Israel's fraught origins and less than compassionate treatment of Arab residents and neighbors, I always thought of Israel as a bastion of Democracy and rational culture.
No more. However heinous the Hamas slaughter might have been, the Israeli retaliation against Gazans was disproportionate beyond justification. Israel is now clearly a fascist theocracy pursuing an imperial agenda based on millennia old myths. It has taken me a long time for me, and I think many others to come to this realization.
And I thought I’d heard it all…
My experience isn’t as much as a problem but it could show it goes back several decades. I was in grad school for my MSSW. I was born with a hearing loss but in those days hearing aid’s didn’t help, no one knew. I grew up teaching myself to lip read. I was one of the few in the class who weren’t ultra liberal. I positioned myself in class to see the prof talk in order to “hear” & would follow with my eyes. Her son was in my class. At a party I heard him joking about a student who wanted to get in on his mom’s good side by following her every word.
Another prof gave me C’s on everything. Not bragging but I know I didn’t do C work. Teacher’s pet would come in late EVERY day, prof would start the lecture from the beginning when she arrived - that student got A’s. Maybe she deserved them? Later the prof gave a party; I went. Walked around the house, I dabbled in art, noticed some lovely art work on walls so started looking - another woman joined me & we hung out the rest of the evening talking art. She was the artist. Prof came in, saw us talking… later I learned the 2 were a gay couple, living together - didn’t phase me in the least. I started getting straight A’s.
Judgemental hypocrites
Greetings, I deeply appreciate your conclusion that there are actions that can be taken to address unprofessional behavior that are designed to serve the target of such behavior. We need to work hard to train clinicians to truly be client-centered and use the structures we have in place to address those failures. Hardin Coleman
How are complaints filed/heard/recogonized?
I’m retired many years, but in my day there was like professional protect yourother members. It’s a club. Insurance? I don’t know. There needs to be more professional accountability & transparency.