In this essay, I want to illustrate my estimation of what is happening to my profession, by reflecting on my recent experience of a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) webinar. It will be anonymous in order to protect my current work status. I will also be disguising others in this account.
As an NHS Counsellor, I am experiencing the simultaneously insidious and abrupt corruption of our professional life. Theory and practice, root and branch are being wilfully infected by a disease which threatens to severely weaken, undermine and possibly to decimate our previously robust, rich and dynamic therapy field.
My background
I am relieved to have completed my post graduate training in Person Centred Counselling and Psychotherapy at a time relatively free from the infectious agent of Critical Social Justice (CSJ) ideology. I and my fellow trainees could grow and learn from each other, our tutors and clients in the ‘before times’. In an earlier part of my life and career, I had been steeped in psychodynamic theory and practice, in group and individual therapy training and supervised practice, set within a Therapeutic Community. This experience had a powerful and formative impact on me; however the fascination I had and still have with unconscious processes and motivations was adversely affected by those same unconscious processes being played out in manipulative power dynamics within the staff team, which contributed ultimately to the implosion of the team and service. Salutary lessons in group and institutional dynamics were learned. I have since become aware of political/ideological power plays amongst the early proponents of psychoanalysis. Suffice to say, although I cannot always ( as is currently the case) be overtly contrarian, I do, however, retain sensitive antennae for doctrinaire manipulation, having been imbued also with the highly seductive and authoritarian rites, rituals and teachings of the Catholic church, in my formative years, I have developed a natural scepticism and self-protective sense of the powerful, the powerless, the innocent, the deceptive, the self-deceptive and the profane.
The quest for interesting professional development training
So to the position I find myself in now; my NHS Trust, as much of the NHS, is increasingly captured by CSJ, identity politics; it is obsessed with oppressed/oppressor narratives and suffused with EDI dogma. Gender ideology terminology is uncritically adopted and imposed. Intersectional, coercive LGBTQ++ language and thought is slipped in when nobody is looking. Overnight changes just happen; suddenly ‘gender’ replaces ‘sex’ in electronic patient notes. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is smuggled in via frequent equity updates about minority, ‘marginalised’ groups and my registering body’s Continuous Professional Development (CPD) offerings are increasingly skewed towards identity issues: neuro diversity, autism, gender race/‘minoritized’ communities’ and queer topics. Whilst there are some interesting subjects available for further learning, I have noticed increasing number of ‘intersectional’- themed subjects on offer. CPD titles have recently included: ‘Neurodiversity and Counselling – the first contact’, ‘Healing from sexual minority and intersectional stigma events’, ‘What has whiteness got to do with it?.’ ‘Racism, racial trauma and anti-racism podcast series’ and ‘An Investigation of UK-based transgender clients’ experience of counselling’, I search forlornly for something to stimulate my mind, to extend and stretch my therapeutic development or simply to ‘tickle my fancy’. Alas there has been little to tempt me lately. I simply see the title and go no further.
I had been aware of the corrupting of wider societal and institutional fabric through this invasive species that is CSJ and have been rather more hopeful in recent months that a slowing of this pernicious movement’s advance seems to have occurred. This has been encouraging. We must remain vigilant however, as the wolf has been at the door for some time. But I didn’t expect it to prowl into a training space.
I recently accessed a recording of an online webinar via the NHS Bespoke Mental Health forum. I am interested in a counselling model for depression: PCE-CfD (Person Centred Experiential Counselling for Depression) I watched a recorded webinar on the subject, entitled ‘Deepen your connection and enhance your practice: a comprehensive exploration of engagement in PCE-CfD’, as I felt it was suitable. Presented by a prominent psychotherapy course leader, co-author and experienced therapist and trainer, I was looking forward to a wholesome CPD.
As I was accessing the webinar as a recording, not a live event, I was not able to contribute or interact in the ‘chat’. The first 2.5 hours consisted of a slide presentation, as one would expect, on the title’s subject – deepening the attendees’ understanding of PCE-CfD, in anticipation of enhancing our practice. This was attractive to me and had been recommended by a colleague. The presenter, whose tone and manner were gentle, soothing but authoritative, proceeded to offer the nuanced theory and practice of this Person-Centred/Experiential approach, in a persuasive way. Gentle, calm, present, he emphasised the centrality of ‘therapeutic presence’. He laid out the ground for positive therapeutic relationship and safety, “… through some of these aspects of therapeutic presence …”, which he seemed to embody. It was helpful to be reminded of how to use and develop the model approach and to have the reinforcement of such therapist qualities as: ‘…Invitational, tentative contact that helps the client access openness and trust … becomes a relational process ….’
And then ….
Now before I get to the ‘big reveal’ (which of course is no reveal at all!) – I had tucked away in the recesses of my suspicious mind, warnings of tactics to come by Dr Val Thomas, in her essay on the broaching strategy used by activist therapists. I had read it then but was drawn to it again. There it was! … and here it all was, contaminating my CPD webinar subject so innocently and dutifully attended. It was inserted in the middle section, like a broaching dagger to the heart of our magnificent profession. At 2 hours, 35 minutes in, the presenter took some comments and read some attendees’ questions from the chat and then informed us that he was “…going to set up the next topic …. I want to move on from therapeutic presence to another aspect that is relational and contextual … and this is about broaching. So this is about the work of Professor Norma Day-Vines and colleagues…” (Day-Vines et al, 2007). The slide heading read: ‘Broaching the subject of Race, Ethnicity and Culture’.
The presenter came across as a gentle soul, a ‘very nice man’, rather like Carl Rogers himself, in manner and even appearance. As stated, from the outset, he exuded a calm, reassuring manner and gentle but sure authority in his knowledge and confidence in his subject. But I felt manipulated. I felt the space had been violated. For myself and on behalf of my beloved profession, I felt alarmed but also very sad. I felt my heart and stomach drop a little, as he entered into the middle section of the talk. We had not consented to this portion. It was not in the title. We were now invited (refuseniks not permitted) to think about the race of ourselves and the client. We were to become aware of our ‘white privilege’ and when working with clients from ‘minoritized communities’, we were to ‘broach’ the subject of race and the power differential that was inevitably brought into the room. ‘Broaching’, we were informed, “…. explicitly conveys a counsellor’s anti-oppressive orientation, communicating the counsellor’s cultural humility ….”. The justification for the inclusion of this was the claim that the drop-out rate for ethnic minorities is 50% , whilst that of ‘white/Caucasian clients is 30% (as imported from the U.S) A ‘colour-blind’ approach would be ‘faulty’, wrong. A video of our host with a black client was offered to demonstrate how this broaching must be done. Sensitively, tentatively but explicitly (I would say rudely and intrusively) at the beginning of a session, at the start of therapy, the therapist should boldly ‘broach’ race and power differences. We must be the ones to initiate this conversation, at the outset. In response to someone asking about whether this may be presumptuous and a tad ‘awkward’, we were told that we need to be ‘centring’ ‘social justice’. Who could refute that? A 90 minute imposition of Critical Race Theory as imported from the US ensued.
As widely asserted elsewhere, US racial and cultural history is not ours. We have a very different history and to adopt CRT unthinkingly is a profound error. I acknowledge that many from the US from the therapy field and beyond have countered the simplistic and misguided CRT narrative and work actively against it in the protection of their clients and their professions. It is shocking and should be shocking to all, that we were told that whether or not the client’s issues were linked directly to their racial and social context, they were central and we, as ethical practitioners should centre these and ‘clear the air’ of heavy oppression inevitably present and pertinent, even central to their reason for seeking therapy.
Then, as if the impertinent incursion had not taken place, we were back into the metaphorical soothing embrace of the CPD subject, to which we had been initially attracted.
Reflecting on the broaching event
My sense of betrayal, then, came in large part, by my sense of having been calmed and relaxed by an experienced therapist and genuinely likeable man. I happily settled into my chair, with my soothing cup of tea and in the company of like-minded colleagues for a refresher on a subject in which I am immersed and in which I believe, as a highly effective counselling approach for clients. Although he read verbatim from the slides throughout and seemed a little unsure of his foray into the applications of Critical Race Theory (CRT), I cannot forgive the messenger. He was either transmitting the ‘required’ dose of CRT/privileged/oppressor content rather naively or he was presumably a willing vector of this ideological contamination. I cannot say for sure. However, whether he and others are stooges for the ideological drivers of this or willing agents and activist themselves, our profession is being defiled, sullied and irrevocably changed. The tactic of broaching (see above, V. Thomas, 2022) was effectively enacted, I suggest, in the manoeuvre described above. In a parallel process to the one advocated for in the therapy room, by our presenter/activist, we were caught off guard, just as we were relaxing in the familiar warmth of our milieu, in the presence of a pleasant professional … there it was. Slipped in surreptitiously, and inserted.
What I felt occurred then and the more so, it seems, on reflection, was a suffusing of the whole, by the contaminant middle section and still further perfusion of the organs, tissues and ultimately, the molecular structure. The parallel process of this broaching manoeuvre which I experienced, is helpful in highlighting the concern we should have for our clients. When faced with this strategy as a tactical operation, the client/patient, naturally, will be vulnerable, may have little awareness and fewer defences than we have. They are likely to be caught off guard, damaged by these broaching tactics. The unwritten but known rules of engagement, broken. The likely downstream effects build; not felt at first, like a contaminant, released by stealth in the flow of the river.
Any power abuse is, I suggest, much more likely to be enacted in the incongruous deceit that is the CSJ intervention, dressed up as empathic therapy.
We were to adopt and communicate a ‘cultural humility’. Lifted from and consistent with US originated Critical Race Theory (CRT) and clumsily inserted into the intensely relational, intimate and nuanced work with clients, the infective agent became indistinguishable from the body of the approach we were considering. I felt it to be jarring, shocking and sinister. Our gentle presenter, whether discomforted or not, had skilfully broached ‘this difficult subject’. He had begun to work on our own discomfort in broaching the subject of race, power and privilege. He did so uncritically; presenting the topic as unquestioned and unquestionable. What I feel to be an incongruous intrusion into the learning space, just as it is in the therapeutic space, he introduced as just another therapeutic ‘way of being’. To be reluctant to engage with this and embrace it wasn’t a choice, he inferred. To resist the ‘race conversation’ and the compliant acknowledgement of ‘white privilege’ was to be an ‘avoidant’ and ‘unsophisticated’ therapist, with poor awareness of how racial and cultural context affects clients in therapy and beyond. To reject the responsibility to broach race and culture issues, we were informed, was to be ‘incongruent’. Our presenter regurgitated, without caveat or qualification, CRT’s contested doctrine. He pronounced that part of the CFD approach was to ‘’ …to determine how race and culture may impact counselling – related concerns … and together making it something that is often loaded and unspeakable, something that is speakable and relatable … so that together we can we can generate a plan of action for mediating some of this … so it’s intended to explicitly convey a counsellor’s anti-oppressive orientation … communicating our cultural humility and interest ….’’ A most disturbing appropriation of Carl Rogers’ P-C philosophical and psychological tenet of a persons’ ‘way of being’ was written starkly on a slide. This was to indicate that the highest aspiration of the therapist in integrating CRT and ‘broaching’ race was as a ‘way of being’. My heart was heavier still.
The inserted CSJ section, as presented was largely uncontested. As dogma. I can’t say with certainty, that, had I had attended the live webinar, I would have challenged the assertions explicitly. With no nuanced call for reflection as to the basis and context of this, as embedded in an ideology, there seemed no fruitful way forward. Resistance would be futile and expose the therapist as either avoidant, a poor and unsophisticated practitioner or a ‘dangerous dissident’ whose fitness to practice may be called into question. I do not know the attendees views. There is likely to have been a wide range. Just one person’s chat comment was aired – “.. Should we not be considering economic disadvantage over racial?” Any other dissenting or questioning voices were duly unheard. There was unctuous praise and thanks offered to the presenter for his enlightening insights and gratitude for his having brought this added element to our therapeutic understanding.
All the better to EAT YOU! Concluding Thoughts:
My experience of a violation of the space, which I was lulled into believing was sacred and protected, was affecting. I was and am drawn to a type of therapeutic, spiritual and philosophical realm, which is of a growth paradigm, itself rooted in and hewn out of humanistic psychology. The co-opting and theft of language and concomitant meaning, such as ‘relational’, ‘congruent’ and ‘way of being’ is, evidently, in full swing. These words are stolen from Rogers’ humanistic psychology and P-C counselling theory in what is tantamount to plagiarism. So radical is this, that the disingenuous therapist/activists know they must sugar-coat their message by incorporating the respected and accepted language of classic established theorists.
We must aspire to remain fully present with our clients and honour their unique selves in much the same way as we would hope others would perceive us. The therapeutic encounter’s reason d’etre is the facilitation of emotional connection and expression, self-insight, healing, growth and ‘shift’ from relative ‘stasis’. We seek to explore and expand rather than assume and reduce.
The effrontery of our webinar presenter and the ease with which he insulted the attendees and hijacked the CPD webinar, amply demonstrates, I suggest, the malign nature of the CSJ activist movement. I bear witness, from the frontline, how unsettling it is, as it masquerades as enriching and ethically essential for practitioners to adopt and incorporate into their work and ‘way of being’. The experience presented here, was all the more concerning as it was covert and had, it seemed to me, the intention to deceive.
That ideologues masquerade as healers, preachers and sages, is patently widespread, universal and persistent. The current pervasive and persistent CSJ/intersectional/ decolonizing ideology polluting the therapy field, seems not only antithetical to the therapeutic, healing endeavour but counter-therapeutic and indeed deadly to the growth-inspired, interpersonal, transpersonal and occasionally transcendental enterprise, which we know it to be. Safeguarding aside (a crucial first ethical consideration), if we are not aware of the threat and the need to defend our territory, we risk the impoverishment and/or utter demise of this most precious but delicate art that is psychotherapy.
References
Day-Vines, N.L., Wood, S.M., Grothaus, T., Craigen, L., Holman, A., Dotson-Blake, K. and Douglass, M.J. (2007), Broaching the Subjects of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture During the Counseling Process. Journal of Counseling & Development, 85: 401-409. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2007.tb00608.x
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