CTA’s posts have been focusing on the American Psychological Association (APA) recently and we make no apologies for doing so. The APA is the largest. and consequently, easily the most influential professional therapy body internationally. Unfortunately, despite an ever increasing large body of criticism as well as punitive federal actions, the APA continues to double down on its new mission which appears to be the disassociation of psychology from reality.
In an excoriating op ed in the Wall Street Journal titled ‘The Inmates Run the Asylum at the Psychological Association’, Andrew Hartz and Colin Wright reveal how this corrupted mission shows up in the APA’s contribution (or absence of it) to scholarship. They zoom in on the recent APA conference for Division 39, which is the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology. A review of the conference programme demonstrates an overwhelming ideological agenda with hardly any focus on clients, treatment, and psychological therapy. As the op ed is behind a paywall the following verbatim excerpts will serve to give a flavour of this piece.
” The conference opened with workshops on ‘Cisteria! A Psychoanalysis Against Anti-Trans Panics,’ ‘opposing institutional oppression,’ and ‘loosening/abolishing gender assessment guidelines.’ Later sessions covered ‘Doctoral Student Narratives of Stress, Resilience and Identity in the Trump Era,’ ‘Fragments of a Queer Anarchist Psychoanalysis,’ and ‘ “White” Analysis: Race, Institution, and the Limits of Psychoanalysis.’ “
“-By our count, about 70 of the conference’s 90 panels had a clear ideological agenda, and every overtly political speaker came from the left. There were no comparable conservative, libertarian, centrist or heterodox perspectives.”
“… serious problems arise when professional organizations become so ideologically homogeneous that they are unable to separate their activist goals from their scientific mission. Therapists have outsize authority over vulnerable people. Patients shouldn’t have to worry about whether their treatment is evidence-based or shaped by a political agenda.”
“Division 39 has failed this test. Its promotion of next year’s meeting solicits work on capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, critical race theory and genocide. Other topics include “proximity to whiteness,” “colonial domination,” and “carcerality.” Most concepts essential to psychotherapy and psychoanalytic therapies are missing.”
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