The Jewish Chronicle has recently posted a news item concerning an Instagram post made by Dr Angie Cucchi, who heads up the doctorate programme in counselling psychology at London Metropolitan University. The post in question is a gushing eulogy for Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas chief recently killed by the IDF. Although this post was shared on her private Instagram story, her professional title and psychology speciality are prominently featured in her profile biography.
Cucchi’s post should be roundly condemed by both her professional body, the British Psychological Society, as well as the profession’s regulatory body, the Health Care Professions Council. Counselling psychologists along with other psych professionals have the right to hold political beliefs but it is quite a different matter to implicitly link in the public domain their professional role with extremist positions.
If the professional associations and regulatory bodies in the UK do not take action in cases such as these, the therapy professions are likely to fall further into public disrepute. If this prediction sounds alarmist then we draw our readers’ attention to what happened in the field of American psychoanalysis when a senior clinician loudly championed her extremist political sympathies – see here and here.
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