Whenever a territory becomes weak and poorly defended it invites a takeover by outside or inside forces. This dynamic has played out countless times over the course of human history. And so it is in the less concrete realms of professional disciplines. Spearheaded by activists, new groups of professionals (practitioners, academics, bureaucrats) initiate a colonisation process. First, the institutions are captured and then the territory can be turned to other purposes – ones that suit the colonisers and their powergrab. CTA has been tracking this process in mental health treatment over the last six years (check out our archive of 480 posts held on this website).
In this first stage, most of the takeover process happens behind closed doors to prevent oppositional groups marshalling their forces. Then, when the professional realm has been secured, colonising agents feel confident enough to be explicit regarding their aims and agenda. A recent paper by a group of academics and educators at a UK institution (City University) is a case study of this incoming second stage. In it, they lay out their thinking about how they approach the project of “decolonising the counselling psychology programme”. We should be grateful to this teaching team for this helpful explication: although it wasn’t intended as such it provides an instruction manual on the processes of subverting the therapy training field. They have clearly not read Sun Tzu’s masterpiece, The Art of War, if they had then they might have realised that publishing such a paper is a strategic error.
We recommend that readers check this paper out (it is open access here ) and apply their own analysis. It is a useful read but deeply dispiriting. We think it is worth noting a couple of things.
First it displays an authoritarian and condescending attitude towards the students echoing the hundreds of emails from dismayed therapy trainees that have arrived in the CTA mailbox over the years: Dissent is automatically pathologised. See the following example:
“For example, while some students found these conversations validating, … , others displayed resistance. In one lecture, where we explored the intersection of critical race theory and research, several students appeared overwhelmed, feeling as though they were being tasked with the responsibility to ‘change the world’ through their research. This reaction is not uncommon in these discussions, as decolonial topics often evoke strong emotional responses.”
Here is an earlier essay which discusses how the pedagogy of discomfort has made inroads into therapy training.
But overall, one of the most striking aspects of this essay is its complete and utter failure to apply the same deconstructive lens used on Western psychology on its own ‘decolonisation’ stance (a point made by Eric Kaufmann). All psychological knowledge and social theories are shaped by the originating culture; all knowledge production has power dynamics instantiated within it. It is extraordinary that at no point in the whole essay do the authors interrogate their own position. There is zero reflexivity or insight. All that is left is the sense of a group of zealots who are utterly convinced of their own moral rectitude and determined to force trainees through a course of predetermined moral re-education. And it is this blinkered attitude that exposes the project for what it really is: An attempt to colonise a territory under the guise of ‘decolonisation’. It is not a quest to improve therapy training but rather a commitment to consolidating a power base. It has nothing whatsoever to do with training professionals to provide a helpful service to individuals who are struggling with difficulties in life in a rapidly changing society.
In conclusion, this paper leaves a big question hanging in the air – Who in their right mind would choose to train there? A question that should concern City University marketing and publicity departments.
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