Therapist, Robin Atkins, writes a short piece in The Spectator detailing her experience of administrating a group of therapists online and becoming involved in a crisis when she attempted to prevent the group from advertising political meetings. This piece follows other recent published reports on the crisis in therapy, including Andrew Hartz in The Wall Street Journal and James Esses in The Spectator. This represents a hopeful sign that the general public is becoming informed about the ideological capture of mental health treatment.

Robin Atkins’ piece carries the strapline: ‘A large number of mental health professionals currently seem to value political advocacy over peer and client relationships.’ CTA would strongly agree and we have been sounding the alarm for the last couple of years about the threat to therapy posed by Critical Social Justice (see examples here of political bias in the APA and here of how ideological therapy weakens the client and here for a discussion on ideologically-captured therapy training).

She goes on to state: ‘In other conversations, therapists have admitted that they try to sneak critical race and gender theory into their sessions with patients, even if their patients are resistant to the idea. Some have even said that they encourage their patients to engage in certain types of political activism as a form of “empowerment.” ‘ This alarming observation along with other anecdotal reports provides further confirmation that the therapeutic relationship is being retooled in practice along instrumental and manipulative lines. Activist scholars have been seeding these ideas in academia over the last few years (see Dustrupp on introducing the salience of race into therapy with white clients) and professional bodies appear to support this turn to the therapist’s agenda (see Thomas‘ reflections on the antirelational nature of Critical Social Justice).

Robin Atkins’ experience of taking a stand and the ensuing split in the membership with one half leaving to set up an ideologically pure group could well be a foreshadowing of what is about to happen accross the therapy field (in the final chapter of the CTA book, Cynical Therapies, editor Val Thomas predicts a fracturing of the therapy field).