Picture the scene: you have been struggling with your mental health. You eventually strike up the courage to talk to your GP, who refers you to a psychologist. After waiting for months, you are finally assigned one, and you start your sessions.
You build up a relationship and trust your psychologist – she reassures you that your discussions are confidential and that she is there to support you. Feelings, concerns and worries are shared, even thoughts that you’d never shared with anyone else. You feel safe to do so. After all, you’re talking to a professional whose job is to help people deal with feelings like yours. Then one day when you’re scrolling through social media, the algorithm presents you with a meme about psychology. You look at it, thinking you might learn something useful. Imagine how you would feel if, instead, you read this: “When your patient says ‘What do you think’ but you’d zoned out…”
Rather taken aback, you read on to see other psychologists laughing and sharing their own experiences of when they had stopped listening to their clients, including: “make a desperate rehash of the last thing you remember them saying…”, or “why don’t you tell me what you think?”
Shocked by this public sharing of what seemed to be a common experience for professionals you had previously trusted and assumed were listening closely to what you were saying, you scroll through a few more memes, seeing that there is a entire page dedicated to the experience of psychologists. You find upon looking at this page that a number of the memes refer to experiences with patients, with the following comments about them:
- “One of the reasons I don’t accept hot drinks when I do community visits is because I tend to propel them from my nostrils in disbelief when someone has actually done a home practice task as planned”
- “When you’ve spent all week formulating your client and you still don’t know what the f**k is going on”
- “Now listen here, you little shit”
- “When I worked in LD [Learning Disability] services I half expected a Demogorgon to walk into the clinic room when doing initial meetings”
“He shared personal information on a meme page”
Scrolling on with increasing concern, you then see one therapist proclaim that there “are lots of memes to be had with clients (how they treat us for example)”. The owner of the social media page agrees that he or she thinks that “making memes about clients is fine” because they are “just as fallible as we are”.
You then find to your horror that the Instagram page you’re viewing had actually previously been shut down due to ‘identifiable’ information having been shared. Yet it has clearly been re-opened. You panic, with your mind desperately trying to remember any piece of embarrassing, personal or sensitive information that you had shared with your therapist, wondering if you were the person identified. Even worse, had these professionals (including your own therapist whom you had trusted) been using you as an example, and laughing at what you had shared with them?
All of a sudden, the therapist who you thought was a professional whom you had built a trusting relationship with is now an individual who thinks it’s appropriate to publicly talk about and ridicule patients on a public site on the world wide web. Not only this, judging by the responses of her colleagues, this seems to be a standard, acceptable and enjoyable group activity.
“Crying is not an emergency”
Upon further investigation, you see that therapists’ lack of discretion extends beyond clients to their thoughts about other health professionals. Few are safe from criticism, with fellow psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors and medical-care staff all being targeted:
Looking at these jokes, you feel you’ve misjudged your therapist: you trusted her, you thought she was genuinely engaging with your story and that she wanted to help you. Instead, she and her colleagues are publicly laughing at patients like you; they have previously exposed identifiable information about patients, and they are ‘bitching’ about other health professionals in a public forum.
You wonder if your judgement of others is so poor. Clearly the trust you had was misplaced, as was your understanding of your relationship. Imagine the consequences for your mental health: the very person you put your trust in, and who was meant to help you, has damaged your wellbeing even further.
“There is a strong chance I will drop kick you in the face”
In another scenario, imagine that you’d struggled for a long time with your mental health. You don’t want medication and you know the alternative is therapy. This is a big step, and you are trying to psych yourself up to request it. However, when scrolling social media, you are hit by a number of posts that make you think twice.
Some of these posts seem to be particularly judgemental – even endorsing violence against those who hold different opinions to the therapist posting them. You read them with horror, shocked by the public displays of judgement presented by individuals who you thought were meant to be open minded, understanding and empathetic.
Many of the posts strongly condemn individuals for holding certain beliefs, and you feel concerned. You hold some of these opinions that are being condemned – clearly therapy is not for me, you think. Even when you don’t share the beliefs that are being condemned, you wonder whether that means that you can’t say certain things in therapy? Maybe you should research what you can and can’t say before you start your sessions. Your worries then escalate: could your therapist ‘cancel’ or report you for having beliefs that she doesn’t agree with? Will you upset her, will she be angry with you?
“Whiteness is still in the room”
Reading on, you are even more concerned to see that it is not only opinions that are condemned – it seems that individuals will even be judged on their immutable characteristics such as skin colour or sex. One psychologist complains about the fact that “whiteness” is “still in the room”, while another posts a disparaging meme about men. As a white male, you feel that you have already been judged: in the eyes of these therapists, you seem to be a problem that they don’t want to see or listen to – or at the very least, they hold you in distain.
“I’d be lying if I said my mental health was fully stable off my meds”
Having read these posts, you start to wonder why such individuals have decided to pursue careers as psychologists – especially when they seem to have such pre-determined (negative) ideas about groups of people. If these people only care about those they agree with – or those who are ‘like them’ – what can they bring to the table when they are working for the NHS and will be required to work with patients of a different sex, skin colour or religion? Looking further, you see that many of these psychologists seem to be in need of help themselves, voicing upset and distress at the kind of things you were expecting them to be able to advise their clients on.
For example, you see one trainee psychologist posting a stream of consciousness about her own psychological issues, another says she is “too triggered” to look at a magazine cover, another states that simply being a woman is “exhausting and scary”, while yet another states that she is unable to cope either on or off her own psychological medication.
When you see a senior consultant stating that the increasing presence of “lived experience” (i.e., psychologists who have “lived experience” of mental illness) is “the biggest game changer” she’s seen in “25 years”, you can’t help but think that if the aforementioned tweets are the consequence of the game being changed, then the field would have been much better staying as it was.
While you know that there is nothing wrong in struggling with mental health – after all, you are in the same boat – you feel uncomfortable with such a public expression of inability to cope from mental health professionals themselves. You sought advice about how you could feel better but it seems that they don’t know how to make themselves feel better either.
In the same way that you wouldn’t take your broken car to a mechanic who couldn’t fix his own car, you wouldn’t want someone who couldn’t fix their own mind to advise you on fixing yours. Of course, most people have experienced difficulty at some points in their lives, and this can develop their understanding and empathy. However, you would hope that these issues have been addressed before an individual offers advice to others – otherwise issues of risk and competence start to arise.
Summary
It is possible to argue that these are just a few ‘bad eggs’ who are very vocal on social media – and as a result they make it seem as if such behaviours are widespread. This may be true, but I invite you to search the social media accounts of clinical psychologists in your local area (especially those most recently qualified) and you will see that many, even if they don’t behave in such an extreme way, still hold similar views. This is evident when you see the responses from their peers to the aforementioned posts – they are endorsed and supported by others – these are not marginal behaviours and opinions.
As an outsider, you may wonder what on earth has brought about such an extreme departure from the professional behaviour traditionally expected of those in the mental health professions. A great deal of this is likely to be due to the wholehearted adoption of Critical Social Justice (CSJ) ideology. This is because CSJ presents the world in terms of victims and aggressors, or ‘oppressed’ and ‘oppressors’. As a result, proponents of this ideology tend to view the world in a binary way: on the one hand seeing ‘poor oppressed victims’ who need to be protected, defended and affirmed, and on the other, ‘nasty powerful oppressors’, who need to be stopped from bullying, mistreating and taking from the powerless.
According to CSJ ideology, the oppressors are bad people who need to be prevented from harming the oppressed. From this perspective, we can see how the proponents of CSJ can justify their hatred and vitriol, while still strongly believing that they are good – even nice – people, as well as competent professionals. Indeed, the more strongly and loudly they denounce, silence and even attempt to destroy those they consider the oppressors, the more virtuous they believe they are.
Another consequence of this mindset is that professional and ethical psychologists are silenced and intimidated. We hear from male trainees (males being outnumbered in the profession by women 80:20) who are silenced and disparaged in their training courses by lecturers and fellow students alike. We also know that training courses for psychologists recruit for and promote CSJ ideology, and this is one of the reasons that the field is becoming increasingly unable to offer appropriate support to patients. People with their own mental health problems, with vindictive, fragile personalities, and those with a desire to force their own opinions and beliefs on others are drawn to the field due to the opportunities it provides to develop these behaviours. If those in positions of authority in the discipline of psychology do not challenge these behaviours and traits, they are then reinforced, providing power and status to such individuals, while simultaneously reinforcing their narrative and shutting down alternative perspectives or challenges.
Ultimately, those responsible for policy-making and guidelines must be held to account – both the organisations themselves and those enabling these ideological views to spread. These organisations include the British Psychological Society, the Health Care and Professions Council and the NHS. They are of the same mindset, promoting and embedding these ideas and behaviours into policies, while steadfastly refusing to listen to any concern or criticism.
The division of the British Psychological Society in charge of clinical psychologists has become increasingly militant in its politicisation, promoting ideology over evidence and encouraging those with a similar mindset to join the profession at the expense of those with a strong scientific and research-based mindset. Indeed, the latter are dismissed as ‘White’ ‘Eurocentric’ and ‘Western’, and their expertise discarded alongside their immutable characteristics – a sign of the priorities of the discipline.
Throughout this piece, I have asked you to imagine that you are in the position of the patient, and with a quarter of the population experiencing mental health problems each year, there is a strong likelihood that either you or a loved one might be in this position at some point in your lives.
For a final time, I ask you to put yourself in the position of that patient: unless action is taken to combat the ideology that has taken over our mental health institutions, the ‘professionals’ described above are the ones who will be ‘treating’ you. You will see individuals who judge you by your skin colour, your sex, your opinions. You will see individuals who can’t look after their own wellbeing. You will see individuals who don’t have the requisite desire, ability or understanding to support you with evidence-based treatments.
Ultimately, you won’t see knowledgeable, capable professionals – you will see people who are more in need of support than you are.
And that should scare you.
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Simple psychology is pseudo science drivel that only ppl who are either fools or not paying for it themselves use.
What is “simple psychology” and how is it different from psychology which isn’t “simple psychology”?
That was very likely meant to be understood as:
Simple. Psychology is …
So, a full stop and a capital letter omitted. I’m not good at guessing when lack of correct punctuation makes sentences unclear (to me).
To be fair, most of those memes are criticisms directed more at the profession and other medical professionals than patients. Still, they should be taking their concerns to their supervision sessions rather than spraying them across the internet where they could be misinterpreted by patients (such as the one with the dogs). A need to do this shows the psychological professional isn’t cut out for the work or coping well, and should probably find alternative employment.
I found quite a few of the memes quite funny.
Does that make me a bad person?
An acknowledgment that sounds like a good start.
The only evidence one really needs to be aware of is that trying to isolate the effect of a particular therapy on a person’s, given the sheer complexity of people’s lives and the massive storm of effects that a person experiences, is a fool’s errand.
Perhaps more amusing than the meme’s are people who take psychology too seriously.
The difference is, I guess, that you are not a professional discussing to your patients.
“Whiteness is still in the room”…..Probably from a self-hating white person. Cultural Marxist Common Purpose (they are still going strong as were exposed buy UK Column over a decade ago).
I saw a video on YT recently of a job interview, where literally the first thing the applicant (a skinny white bloke) did was to raise his fist and acknowledge his whiteness and unearned privilege.
Then he demanded the interviewer outline the company’s woke/CSJ credentials and explain why he should deign to work there.
Bemusedly, the interviewer pointed out he was acting as if he’d already been offered the job. The guy just wouldn’t shut up, forcing the interviewer to call it a day and tell him he wasn’t successful.
No doubt the idiot told the story differently, claiming he’d avoided working for a massive bigot.
Where the hell has the common sense gone? We weren’t perfect when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s but we weren’t so damn fragile and entitled?
I have come to the conclusion that rabid wokitude is a symptom of congenital stupidity.
We have gone beyond disillusionment and cynicism into the realm of nihilism hence the fact that professional standards themselves are now seen as something to be laughed at. We lacked vigilance and the decay has set in from all sides. It was remarkable to watch it as a child during the 1980s. I could feel the shedding of the virtue and decency and the replacement with a far shoddier cloak of gross materialism and a growing darkness. And yet there was gaiety. The same thing in the late 1990s during the reign of the Blair regime.
I think I know what you mean Jabby although the rot probably set in much earlier but I agree, really began to show in the 1980’s. I remember reading Stephen Covey’s seven habits book in the late 1990’s and he talks about noticing the difference in self help books pre the second world war and post. Pre WW2 the books focus on character – being good (virtue and decency as you say) and after the war, they talk about self esteem etc, feeling good.
“professional standards”
So far as I am aware there is minimal or no teaching of students in most or all professions of what professionalism is and how professionals should conduct themselves in the execution of their professional duties.
It looks like that applies to psychologists.
Ironically, professionalism is a mindset – a way of thinking about how to conduct oneself for the benefit of those the profession is meant to serve.
Psychologists should thus be best equipped but clearly are not if these examples are any indication – which perhaps they are not – but sadly one cannot assume simple things like that anymore.
Insofar I remember this, this took place after the cold war had ended. Some time in the first half of the 1990s, someone lectured me on the meaning of life (calling this a conversation wouldn’t be appropriate) and his idea was that it was all about coming out on top of everything for the purpose of self-gratification, preferably with as little actual work as possible and while making someone else pay the bills. Minus the different topic, this was the exact same kind of guy who’d have told me that I must absolutely care about ICBMs¹ some years earlier. I never really did the latter and have – to this date – remained unimpressed by the former.
In hindsight, I conclude that I’ve so far managed to keep a roof above my head and (most of the time at least) to have enough food and clothing for me and if I missed out on the real meaning of life, I at least didn’t do so hungrily.
I don’t think anything changed in a fundamental way, just one golden calf got swapped for another and the same people are still dancing around it.
¹ Intercontinental ballistic missiles (with nuclear warheads) which are going to kill us all one day.
Some bit of feedback on the article: That psychologists are just human and thus, given to blowing off steam about work-related stress when they’re not working, isn’t so surprising. I think it would have been a better idea to leave the memes bit out and focus on CSJ.
Doctor – patient relationship in this area is a bit weird due to the nature of the work. Patients need to understand that psychologists are not their friends. They’re people who get paid to try to help them because they’re supposedly more qualified than $random_family_member. But they’re really professionals, that is, something like whores. They’re doing this for money and wouldn’t do it without.
I think pretty much everyone is a whore by that definition, given that almost everyone goes to work in exchange for a pay check and wouldn’t otherwise.
Sort of. However, my job is to program computers and work with software at the code level and this doesn’t involve mock intimate relationships with any other human being. This also wasn’t supposed to imply criticism of the profession¹ as such, just to illustrate a point: They get paid to listen to patients and give them advice. But this doesn’t mean they’d even voluntarily say “Hello!” to them, should they meet them in the streets.
¹ Actually, it was.
But this would be a different discussion.
Patient confidentiality should trump anything else, even if you anonymise them. To make fun of another persons state of mind demonstrates a remarkable lack of insight that should be requisite in those who are trying to heal. You can joke about with your workmates about things but the fact that you refer to how they make you feel is a big problem. You should never do that. For one thing it s unmanly not to mention morally bankrupt and entirely unprofessional in that it lacks the spirit of self-sacrifice.
Without exception, any women I have known that are either working as or studying to be psychologists or therapists have been completely unstable, overly medicated and almost completely incapable of self reflection.
How do you know they’re on medication? Most people keep that information private to all but possibly close friends and relatives.
A relative of mine wanted to study psychology at university but then saw sense when looking at the very limited career opportunities combined with the fierce competition for places and the disproportionately high exam grades to qualify for admission. [***]
In other words, on any rational basis one might be thought to be out of one’s mind to want to be a psychologist.
Irony?
[*** PS and compulsory Covid and other vaxes to be allowed to practice. Totally barking to want to be anything to do with anything medical if one values one’s health.
More irony?]
A few years ago my son was looking for a physics degree course and attended a university open day. We followed the signs to a large lecture theatre and found it packed with young women (it was few years ago) with standing room only.
We thought it a bit odd and went outside and realised we had misread the psych sign.
The physics lecture which we eventually found had a handful of young men in it.
Almost every female teenager (daughyters of friends and neighbours, I hasten to add) I speak to about A-level courses reports that psychology is one of their subjects.
Is this a woman thing?
By “have been struggling with your mental health”, do you mean “have been unhappy”?
Maybe some of those psychologists are suffering from ‘impostor syndrome’ and think the only way to dispel it is to go on such a site and share jokes about their patients/clients.
Another explanation is that they really are impostors and shouldn’t be in the same room as anyone suffering from mental illness.
But there is a significant difference between psychologists and psychiatrists: the latter are medically trained whereas psychologists are not required to be.
Most people are better off talking to family and friends than paying a therapist to listen to them (or not).