Critical Therapy Antidote

The debate over conversion therapy in the UK has become increasingly contentious in recent years, especially since the UKCP’s adoption and withdrawal from, the MoU on Conversion Therapy. In June 2026, the UK Labour Government published its Conversion Practices Draft Bill, aimed at creating new offences related to efforts aimed at changing, not only sexual orientation, but now also “transgender identity.” As legislatures, professional bodies and activist movements seek to define the ethical boundaries of clinical practice, a fundamental question emerges: should psychoanalysis adapt its methods to prevailing political and moral frameworks, or should it retain its distinctive commitment to open-ended inquiry, even when that inquiry reaches uncomfortable conclusions? Our latest article enters this debate by examining the arguments advanced in favour of a UK conversion therapy ban within contemporary psychoanalytic discourse.

In Psychoanalysis and Banning Conversion Therapy: A Response to Jeremy Clarke on “Code Gender,“ Jaco van Zyl and Peter Jenkins argue that the current discussion on so-called conversion practices extends well beyond questions of professional ethics. They contend that legal reasoning, identity politics and psychoanalytic theory have become increasingly intertwined in ways that risk obscuring crucial conceptual distinctions. This article examines the legal, philosophical and psychoanalytic assumptions underpinning contemporary arguments for a ban. It also questions whether grievance ideology, political transgenderism and historical analogies with homosexuality have been overextended to impose upon foundational psychoanalysis without sufficient critical scrutiny.

Given the established inadequacy of ideologically-inspired affirmative practices at the Tavistock GIDS, as well as the poor support for affirmative practices for gender-distressed youth, the question around conversion practices ought to be discussed with intellectual honesty rather than ideological certainty. Psychoanalysis has always distinguished itself by its willingness to examine unconscious meanings, internal conflict and the gap between subjective conviction and psychic reality. This article asks what happens when psychoanalytic concepts become intertwined with contemporary identity politics, and whether psychoanalysis can retain its conceptual coherence while adopting frameworks developed outside its own theoretical tradition. It is a contribution to an important debate about the future direction of psychoanalytic thought and practice. We are pleased to publish this contribution as part of Critical Therapy Antidote’s ongoing commitment to rigorous debate on the future of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.