This space is for contributions in the form of personal testimonies, opinion pieces, practice guides and protocols
What’s a Gender Critical Therapy Trainee to do?
The counselling and psychology landscape is changing, and trainees who don’t subscribe to an ideological ‘gender affirmative’ narrative have tough choices to make. Let me make it clear: I’m not an expert. I’m not an academic, clinician or psychotherapist with a masters, a PhD, and hours of practice behind me. I am a man who …
How Ambitious Women Can Heal from their Feminist Miseducation
As I’m writing this, my best friend is in the hospital because of a suicide attempt. We’re all in that agonizing waiting period where nobody knows anything. I have my own history with suicide attempts, and I can’t help but feel like I’m watching my own life on replay. I initially found CTA because I …
Calling all Clinical & Counselling Psychologists: Your Regulator needs you!
What can you do if you are worried about the incursion of Critical Social Justice (CSJ) ideology into clinical and counselling psychology? Trying to address the problem directly with professional bodies that have been captured by this ideology, such as The British Psychological Society, can be a frustrating and ultimately futile endeavour. A more fruitful …
Preferred Pronouns: Neo-Etiquette or Radical Self-Rejection ?
Last week the Registrar at my university sent out a memo to all students and faculty inviting us to add “preferred pronouns” to our academic profiles. This was followed quickly (about two hours later) by an apologetic correction in which she expressed regret for the “problematic” usage of the word “preferred” and reiterated the message …
Coaching in the Era of ‘Woke’ Counseling: Some Reflections
While I was in graduate school for clinical mental health counseling, I began to have serious reservations about the program I was in, the modern counseling profession as a whole, and the licensure requirements for professional counselors in my state. I also began contemplating how and whether I could proceed with my career goals …
The Future of Counseling is Racist
“In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?” ― Carl R. Rogers As a graduate psychology student …
Masculinities: Who Gets to Define Them?
In Australia we have an august organisation called the Mental Health Professional Network. It is federally (government) funded and supported, and aims at pulling together for mutual benefit mental health clinicians/professionals of different professional species (pun). Medical doctors are part of the mix. In my neck of the woods I was on the organising committee …
The Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) Takes a Dim View of the Male Gender
CommentaryTherapy Written By Martin Seager Many psychologists question the wisdom of the DSM diagnostic system and would like to see it replaced or modified to something more ‘human’. The fact that the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) is an alternative model makes it immediately appealing to some, but closer inspection reveals that the PTMF contains …
Some Comments on the Power-Threat-Meaning Framework
A colleague recently described to me in supervision her client’s vehement and hostile rejection of a diagnosis of BPD given to her in a medical mental health facility. My social work (SW) colleague works in private practice and has a lot of flexibility to work with the client on her interpretation of the malaise that …
Our Professional Bodies no Longer Represent the Best Interests of Therapists: a Resignation Letter Spells out Why
The full text of a resignation letter from a long-term member of the UKCP. 07 September 2021 Mr Martin Pollecoff Chair UK Council for Psychotherapy 2 America Square London EC3N 2LU Dear Martin, I am disappointed you did not deem my letter of 30 April 2021 worthy of a reply. As a paid up member …
My Harrowing Experience of a Critical Social Justice-Informed Counseling Psychology Training: Part 1 – Abusive Pedagogy
I am a nontraditional student in the last half of my Graduate level Clinical Mental Health Psychology program in the Midwest of the United States. I believe my background is important to mention. I recently studied Biology, Pharmacology, Pre-Med/Pre-Law, and have also spent much time in a different Master’s program in Psychology which is heavy …
How Critical Social Justice Ideology Impedes the Teaching of Psychotherapy
As a professor of psychology in a West Coast University I am responsible for training graduate students who are becoming psychotherapists. I have observed with mounting alarm how Critical Social Justice ideology has been promoted and required to be integrated into all programs, specifically in the clinical psychology program. Over the years, universities have overwhelmingly …
Letter from a Reader: My New Therapist
I can’t verify the specific claims about the therapist’s behavior in this email. The emailer provided her real name and basic details about her life that check out, and the therapist she named is real and does online appointments, but I have no ability to know what went on between the two of them in …
The Righteous and the Woke – Why Evangelicals and Social Justice Warriors Trigger Me in the Same Way
I was Born Again until nearly the end of graduate school, a sincere Evangelical who went to church on Sunday and Wednesday with my family and to Thursday Bible study on my own. I dialed for converts during the “I Found It” evangelism campaign, served as a counselor at Camp Good News, and graduated from …
My Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology Taught me a lot about “Social Justice” but very little about Counseling or Psychology
One month ago I finished my final class at graduate school, completing the academic requirement for a Masters in Counseling Psychology. It took two and half years and roughly $70, 000, borrowed from the government. During the final class, on zoom of course, students were invited to express their feelings as they transitioned to the …
#MeToo Victims vs Survivors
I came from a family of 9. I am number 5. My father was Transgender when he finally contacted me at 28. My mother was an alcoholic and I am sure mentally questionable, we had many men come home with her from the bars. She would encourage us to call them daddy so they might …
How Woke Feminism Kept Me Sick for Decades and How I am Rebelling
If I could get the ear of a modern day feminist, I would ask her (or him, or they, or shim, or zhe) two questions. The first question would be, if I am in a heterosexual marriage, and I need to consider quitting my career due to insurmountable mental health disabilities, how do I accept …
My Experience of the Hidden Politics of Dialectical Behavior Therapy
A tweet exchange popped up on my feed recently that embodied very succinctly some ideas that have polluted modern psychotherapy. Though they appear sensitive and empathetic, these ideas may be holding clients back from recovery. I describe here some of my own experiences with the hidden politics of psychotherapy that may be a microcosm of …
Psychotherapy: the Nemesis of Critical Social Justice Theory
“Where would I find enough leatherTo cover the entire surface of the earth?But with leather soles beneath my feet,It’s as if the whole world has been covered.” ― Shanti deva I am intelligent but neither clever or wily enough to counter the sophistry of CSJT (critical social justice theory) So it is with some trepidation that …
CTA Guidance for the Diversity Module
Introduction Diversity modules among therapy students’ graduate/professional training by now are no doubt imbued, at least in part, by Critical Social Justice (CSJ) theories. It is Critical Therapy Antidote’s goal to aid students in effectively navigating their diversity modules through their coursework, and do so while standing on solid ground. The fear of dissent from …
My Story of how Therapists are Ill-equipped to Deal with the Damage Inflicted by Critical Race Theory. Part 2: The Therapy
“I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are your secrets. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it is to be human.” -Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets Dear Reader: If you read …
The Anti-Therapy. Part 2: The Anti-Resilience Mousetrap
Hello again, Student J here. This is the second segment of my Anti-Therapy series. In my previous article, which appeared in Therapy Matters (J, 2020), I shared some background on myself and my experience dealing with the “woke” phenomenon in my counseling education program and my concerns regarding such. In this piece I am going …
My Story of how Therapists are Ill-equipped to Deal with the Damage Inflicted by Critical Race Theory. Part 1: The Damage
“But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” -W.B. Yeats Dear Reader: Before I begin to tell my story, I have one thing I want to ask of you. Like you, I have a story that is filled with …
The Anti-Therapy. Part 1: My Experience as a Counselor in Training
Call me J. I am a first semester student of clinical mental health counseling at the graduate level, and I’m very worried about my chosen field. I would like to take this opportunity to share my experiences as a student regarding the encroachment of Critical Social Justice Theory into the counseling profession. In this piece …
Original Text of a Resignation Letter Published and then Retracted by The British Psychological Society
(Linked to blog post dated August 28th 2020 in Critical Therapy Watch) Why I no longer wish to be associated with the BPS by Dr Kirsty Miller Dear Sir, In recent years I’ve become increasingly aware of the politicisation of the BPS, a shift that I feel is inappropriate for what is ultimately a governing …
Heading for the Hills: My Departure from the Mental Health Profession
As I write this, I struggle to find words to offer that would be particularly helpful to those either choosing to enter or maintain careers in counseling related professions. I recently resigned (quit under threat of termination is more like it) from my post after several years of practice. This will be more of a …
Diversity, Oppression, and Decolonisation – Are There Too Many Social Justice Articles in The Psychologist Magazine?
An Opinion Piece by Dennis Relojo-Howell On February 22nd this year, Nicola Beaumont voiced her disappointment in The Psychologist‘s (the British Psychology Society’s journal) focus in its March 2020 issue: decolonising psychology. As expected, her views attracted a vast pile-on, which included people questioning her qualifications and whether she’s fit to work within the psychology …
How and Why I Stood up to Critical Social Justice Theory in Counselling Training
Before the diversity section of the counselling course I was on, our tutors were training us in counselling techniques, a variety of theories, and facilitating an ongoing personal development group. Confidentiality was agreed at the start, as in all counselling training. The counselling techniques involved being empathic, viewing clients with unconditional positive regard, giving our …
Critical Therapy Antidote 