Leftist Extremism Is Turning Therapists And Counselors Against Their Own Clients
By: Andrew Hartz
June 02, 2022
https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/02/lef...term=2022-06-02


It’s never been easy to have a dissenting opinion, but it’s been getting harder and harder. Today, countless people face social and professional consequences for expressing their political views, and many more self-censor because they fear the consequences of candid dialogue (see here, here, and here).

Harassment, racial demonization, and social ostracization are becoming more frequent as woke culture spreads. And as people critical of leftist orthodoxy face more antagonism, they experience more stress and more isolation, and they’re more likely to need psychotherapy.

Rather than helping, the mental health field has often been antagonistic toward this population. Now, there’s a growing population of people who need mental health services at the same time that providers are most likely to mistreat patients with non-leftist views.

A few years ago, I worked at a psychotherapy clinic in New York City. A couple of weeks after starting, a therapist of color described his Jewish graduate-student patient in a clinic-wide meeting (in all clinical examples, the identifying information of patients and providers have been changed to protect patient confidentiality).

This patient had come for help with depression and social anxiety, but he also expressed frustration because he felt he lost out on a research fellowship based on affirmative action. The ethnically diverse group of about two-dozen providers (psychiatrists, social workers, and psychologists) discussed the patient and then came to an apparent consensus: the patient needed to be confronted about his racism and then be told that if he didn’t want to overcome his biases, he would be asked to leave therapy.

They argued it would be “unfair” for a non-white therapist to have to provide therapy to such a racist patient unless he changed his views. No one seemed to consider that it might be unethical to turn a patient away from therapy for his opinions about affirmative action.

Another example: In a case conference at a different clinic, one therapist described a session with a black high school student who was the daughter of African immigrants. This patient reported speaking in one of her classes to say that “all people are the same regardless of race.” In response, her teacher called her “racist” and condemned her views in front of the class.-- excerpt, rest at link above --