Welcome to Critical Therapy Antidote
This is a website for all those involved with talking therapies, including academics, practitioners, trainees and clients, who are concerned by the negative impact of Critical Social Justice Theory.
Latest Articles
Group Narcissistic Manifestations in Critical Social Justice (aka Woke) Movements – Part 1
Introduction In June 2021 I wrote an article for Merion West in which I discussed the psychodynamic processes present within the Critical Social Justice (CSJ) (or Woke, used here interchangeably) worldview. By analysing commentary on this worldview, adherents’ behaviour, and their self-disclosure, I identified and discussed several of its inherent intrapsychic dynamics. In this and …
Group Narcissistic Manifestations in Critical Social Justice (aka Woke) Movements – Part 2
This is the second part of the two-part series on Woke group narcissism. In the previous section I give a summary of the psychodynamics of Critical Social Justice (CSJ) as a worldview, and I discussed the Mastersonian understanding of narcissistic character pathology. In this section, I discuss my observations of similar subtypes of narcissism at …
The Myth of White Supremacy
We are well into a societal imbroglio dubbed the culture wars. What is this exactly? Since the racial reckoning, and especially after the police murder of George Floyd, progressive Left enthusiasts including the Black Lives Matter activism movement have determined that so-called “white supremacy,” including structural, systemic, and institutional racism, lies at the heart of …
Mutilate and Medicate: The Body Modification Trans Cult
When I first learned of extreme body modification, I found it fascinating: facial tattoos, skin implants, tongue splitting… the guy who removed part of his nose so he would look reptilian… I wondered how body mod enthusiasts got started down that path, how they might feel about the things they’ve done to themselves; whether they …
A letter to The Lancet: Making Way for the New Social Paradigm of Gender Identity…
Introduction The following piece provides a detailed critique of the human rights narrative which drives the new social paradigm for gender identity. The Lancet Psychiatry (2022) recently carried an editorial, reviewing the history of psychiatry as an oppressive form of medical practice with regard to sexuality and arguing for a more active stance against conversion …
How Ideological Capture is Hurting Clinical Psychology
It is clear that America’s political polarization has eroded our ability to navigate complex issues. My own field of clinical psychology has failed to evade this problem, and now finds itself deeply steeped in a troubling narrative. The American Psychological Association (APA) recently published a special report on the topic of racism that states, “Pursuing …
Freud Explains Cancel Culture
The superego is the woke part of the psyche. It’s moralistic, but it isn’tnecessarily moral. There sure is a lot of moralism going around. Censorship, condemnation,excommunication, demands for apologies. There are even spontaneous chants of“Shame! Shame! Shame!” directed at the villain of the moment. I recently saw an ad fora psychology workshop that argued outright …
Elders in the Therapy Professions – it’s Time to Step up to the Plate!
Where are you, elders in our professional therapy community? You know who you are – those of you in good standing: department heads, theorists, writers, conference keynote speech makers with well-deserved reputations. At this time of crisis, you have been notable by your silence. The therapy field is threatened existentially – are you just going …
Woke Psychology and New Racism
What began as a social justice movement directed by empathy and compassion for those who have experienced racism, social inequality, and marginalization due to power differentials in social institutions and culture, has now devolved into a radical left political-social ideology bordering on authoritarianism wearing cloaks of virtue. There is no consensus on what wokeness actually …
Sharing Personal Pronouns in Therapy: Legal and Ethical Arguments against Therapist Self-Disclosure
It is increasingly becoming a new norm in therapy for personal pronouns to be actively negotiated within therapy. Clients may be invited to state their preferences for pronouns when first contacting a therapy agency or an individual therapist. In turn, therapists seem to be increasingly requested to ‘share’ their own personal pronouns within professional meetings, …
Leftist Extremism is Turning Therapists and Counselors against their own Clients
It’s never been easy to have a dissenting opinion, but it’s been getting harder and harder. Today, countless people face social and professional consequences for expressing their political views, and many more self-censor because they fear the consequences of candid dialogue (see here, here, and here). Harassment, racial demonization, and social ostracization are becoming more …
It’s Time for the PTMF to Stop Categorising Men as Negative Stereotypes
This article is reproduced here by kind permission from The Centre for Male Psychology. It was originally published here online in the Male Psychology magazine on April 13th 2022. Around 25 years ago, as an undergraduate, I learned about the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s. The iconoclastic ideas of characters like psychiatrists RD Laing and Thomas Szasz resonated with me and other students …
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