THE MORNING RANT: At WSJ - The Challenge for Therapists in Treating People With “Unorthodox” Beliefs Such as Religious Faith or Free Speech; also, Universities’ Exploitation of Students Pursuing Social Work Degrees

There are countless examples of how thoroughly the radical left has captured just about every institution and intellectual discipline in this country, but a piece in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago emphatically drove the point home, by accepting the premise that conservatives, people of faith, and those who favor uncensored speech are “unorthodox.”

The thesis of the piece was that even though the fields of psychology and social work have become echo chambers of left-wing doctrine, the people employed in those fields should still compassionately treat those with different views, rather than treating them with scorn or hostility.

That’s a worthy notion, I suppose, but not when the entire piece accepts that the Overton Window of acceptable opinion has moved so far left that those with traditional values and opinions are now “unorthodox.”

The Doctor Won’t See You Now: Therapists who judge, recoil, or quietly rage at their patients can’t provide effective therapy

The large majority of the country has at least one “unorthodox” opinion—maybe a conservative political bent, a literal belief in the Bible or support for free speech even when it’s offensive. This includes centrists, moderates, libertarians, and many liberals, as well as people who are simply open-minded. These people need mental healthcare as much as anyone else, and they deserve a therapist who respects their values.

That is an amazing paragraph, but I am willing to consider that the author, Andrew Hartz, is attempting to use a little irony in his writing, thus the term “unorthodox” is being used as a euphemism for “mainstream.”

But the word “unorthodox” soon loses its scare quotes, and it gets used unironically thereafter.

Today, people with unorthodox beliefs face unprecedented antagonism, yet the mental health profession largely ignores them.

And again…

But instead of training therapists to help these people, schools increasingly teach students to view those with unorthodox opinions negatively.

This repeated usage completely inverts who is out of the mainstream. It accepts by definition that normal church-going conservatives who won’t muzzle their beliefs are “unorthodox,” while the left-wing radicals he is trying to persuade to be more tolerant are not labeled at all. Their left-wing extremism is now implicitly accepted as “orthodox.”

In fairness, I am going to share a couple of Hartz’s paragraphs where he identifies the politics and intolerance of those organizations which are clearly radicalized.

The same ideologies that have infiltrated education, medicine and the legal profession have also invaded mental healthcare. The American Psychological Association has decried “traditional masculinity.” The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association published a paper describing “Whiteness” as a “malignant, parasitic-like condition.” Two years ago, a prominent psychiatrist speaking at Yale shared her fantasies of killing white people. Recently, the president of the APA’s division of psychoanalysis said that therapists should “center Palestine . . . as a central working tenet of any clinical praxis.”

Asking these people to provide counseling services to conservatives and independent
thinkers doesn’t sound like a very good idea to me.

These attitudes are more common than one might imagine. The most recent APA psychoanalysis conference, which has in the past focused on the practice of therapy, was absorbed by identity politics, such as “the white supremacist within” and “psychic colonization,” to quote two panel titles.

Rather than imploring radical left-wing psychologists to provide therapy to people even if they are “unorthodox,” perhaps the effort should be made to get those therapists to stop accepting the premise that a Bible-believing Republican who believes in free speech is “unorthodox.”

The National Association for Social Work, which represents many therapists, has a code of ethics requiring “all members of the social work profession to practice through an anti-racist and anti-oppressive lens.”

Wherever one is on the political spectrum, getting counseling or therapy from these people sounds like it would be an excruciating form of psychological abuse.

(h/t @physicsgeek who brought this story to my attention.)

While on the subject of psychology and social work, there is a related topic that’s been bothering me for quite a while, specifically, the collusion between the university cartel and the licensing organizations for social work and psychology. To work in these fields, a Masters degree is required. That requirement is beyond preposterous, and it is exploitative of those choosing that career path when they enter college.

Do you want to be a speech pathologist? “Entering the field requires academic and clinical coursework and the successful completion of a master’s degree at an institution accredited by the American Speech-Hearing Association (ASHA).”

Or maybe you’d like to be a psychologist? A Master’s degree may not be enough. “Most psychologist positions require a doctoral degree in psychology, but the BLS reports a master’s degree in the field can be sufficient for some roles.”

If you want to become a social worker you are going to spend a long, long time going to school. “A master's degree in social work is the minimum educational requirement for employment in supervisory, clinical, and specialty practice. Depending on whether attendance is full-time or part-time, it takes two to four years of graduate-level studies to earn a master's degree in social work (MSW)”

Children of several of my friends and family have entered college and pursued degrees in social work and speech pathology. Once they obtain their undergraduate degrees, they must continue on for a Masters degree if they want actual employment in their field, causing them to continue to pile on debt and/or drain their parents’ savings.

This is all a racket and a scam that mainly preys on young women and enriches the universities. In fact, every single person I’ve know that has followed these 6 or 7 year degree plans is female. I am not disputing that these are legitimate academic fields and respectable careers (although the radical left’s takeover of their accrediting agencies has certainly tarnished their image in my eyes) but there is no reason that it takes 6 or more years of schooling to become a social worker. If architects and RNs can practice with a bachelor’s degree or less, so can a speech pathologist.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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