Prof. Jon Mills has been tracking the unfolding crisis in American psychoanalysis, providing an ongoing analytic commentary on how the leaders in the field and the professional bodies are implicated. CTA would like to acknowledge his tireless work in bringing these important matters to public awareness.
His most recent article published in The Algemeiner returns once more to the issue of Dr. Lara Sheehi’s public political support of Hamas and how this has impacted the professional psychoanalytic community. In this article, he focuses on how Sheehi’s colleagues have rushed to her support and have positioned her as a victim. He states that: “Sheehi has managed to pull the wool over so many people’s eyes. But what is unfathomable is that more than 240 Jews signed a letter in support of solidarity with Sheehi after she was accused of antisemitic harassment by her Jewish students at GWU — without having any access to the facts” (italics in the original).
He goes on to note that the signatories of the letter include “some of the most highly recognized clinicians and influential scholars in the field including: Judith Butler, Andrew Samuels, Susie Orbach, Jessica Benjamin, Alan Bass, Joel Whitebook, Doris Brothers, Stephen Soldz, Steven Reisner, and Irwin Hoffman.” He ends by hoping that, now the facts of the matter are known, these signatories will publically retract their support of Sheehi. Here at CTA we feel less sanguine having noted the abject failure of leaders in the field of psychology and psychotherapy to publically defend the field against the political encroachments of Critical Social Justice.
Read Jon Mills’ article here.
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