At CTA, we have been tracking the steady downward spiral of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) for some time now. We are not the only ones who have watched as this once reputable professional body became completely mired in ideological commitments diverting it away from its proper mission of being the voice for therapists. It has stumbled from one antitherapeutic position to another including: supporting the trans activism instantiated in the Memorandum of Understanding; promoting ideologically-informed workshops such as Queering the Therapy Space; orchestrating the revisions of its Ethical Framework along EDI-compliant lines; and delivering an endless stream of uncritical and uncontested social justice contents in its flagship journal, Therapy Today. So, given its record, it is unsurprising that the association now appears to believe that a partisan position on the Israeli-Palestine conflict is warranted.
The Jewish News has just published a report on the actions takn by BACP to cancel a column by a regular writer on the experiences of the Manchester Jewish community post October 7th. The report opens below (verbatim) and you can read the rest of the piece here.
The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) has stood by its decision to remove a column about Jewish trauma over 7 October from its latest magazine because of fears of a possible backlash.
The professional body pulled the piece by mental health practitioner Dr Sandi Mann from the January issue of its Counselling At Work magazine.
In it, Dr Mann told how Jews in Manchester are struggling to come to terms with the Hamas massacre in southern Israel. This month’s issue will be the first in 10 years that does not include her regular column, entitled Workplace Matters.
The scrapped column, headlined ‘A community in traumatic stress’, describes the trauma of the city’s Jews in the aftermath of the Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 people in southern Israel. It was apparently scrapped on deadline because of concerns about possible ramifications.
The piece also looks at how mental health professionals are managing support for the traumatised community, how the charity Jewish Action for Mental Health (JAMH) set up a response unit to cope with the crisis and the lessons that can be learned for supporting other traumatised communities across the UK.
(To read how the BACP justified its decision, go to the original report here.)
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