The most striking aspect for me is the statement that there are so few non affirmative therapists at work in this country. This means effectively that there are no actual therapists at work in this country, and that there will be no more new ones in the future.
The most striking aspect for me is the statement that there are so few non affirmative therapists at work in this country. This means effectively that there are no actual therapists at work in this country, and that there will be no more new ones in the future.
Any kind of therapeutic practice that explicitly excludes the possibility of critical examination of the contents of a mind seeking therapeutic intervention is no longer able to call itself therapy. The whole point of everything from bereavement counselling to deep analytical psychotherapy is to take the contents of such a mind, which must be assumed to be in some sense upset, disturbed or unhappy with itself, and to hold them up to the light of reasoned compassion, to examine where and how the mind can be brought into a condition of greater peace by being enabled and empowered, to be critical, sceptical or otherwise doubtful about its own contents, which is surely also a skill that mature adult human beings must develop in order to be mature adult human beings. Minds are in fact being encouraged on the other hand not to accept the disturbing or unhappy thoughts they encounter and the scary feelings they experience, but to find some way of making these go away - without question!
It is no wonder that therapists of every hue are up in arms, furious or just plain confused about what they are now expected to do. The idiotic politicians and the ideologically driven enabling organisations that manipulate them have absolutely no clinical experience whatsoever; the idea that they are so blithely legislating any relationship between client and therapist, is frankly terrifying.
Do they consider any of the possible consequences? Are they prepared to draw lines between those mental states that should remain sacrosanct at all costs and those that may legitimately be held up to a critical light? Do they even realise that most therapeutic qualifications require that the aspiring therapist must undergo quite sustained therapy themselves? This inevitably involves principled destruction of their most cherished assumptions, some of which they may be only barely conscious? Do they realise that under these circumstances, teaching new therapists becomes more or less impossible?
Or is that maybe the point? To replace therapy with ideological training and correction?
It looks more and more as if the thought police is merging into the ideology police to ensure that everybody will draw their moral, social and psychological boundaries using the same ruler to get the same neat categorisation of people into ... well, the good and the bad ... while all opinion will have been always already divided into the sacred and the profane, right and wrong, clean and dirty and so forth. Traditionally, as Mary Douglas demonstrated yonks ago, these are divisions negotiated in an active social and cultural milieu. They are now, it would seem, being imposed on isolated individuals by power to create societies of pure narcissism.
All this will come back to bite humanity on the bum and if the legislation is enacted, it will take decades to clear up the damage and to allow people to develop naturally by learning that sometimes what they think about the world and themselves is downright nonsense.
Thank you for telling this story.
The most striking aspect for me is the statement that there are so few non affirmative therapists at work in this country. This means effectively that there are no actual therapists at work in this country, and that there will be no more new ones in the future.
Any kind of therapeutic practice that explicitly excludes the possibility of critical examination of the contents of a mind seeking therapeutic intervention is no longer able to call itself therapy. The whole point of everything from bereavement counselling to deep analytical psychotherapy is to take the contents of such a mind, which must be assumed to be in some sense upset, disturbed or unhappy with itself, and to hold them up to the light of reasoned compassion, to examine where and how the mind can be brought into a condition of greater peace by being enabled and empowered, to be critical, sceptical or otherwise doubtful about its own contents, which is surely also a skill that mature adult human beings must develop in order to be mature adult human beings. Minds are in fact being encouraged on the other hand not to accept the disturbing or unhappy thoughts they encounter and the scary feelings they experience, but to find some way of making these go away - without question!
It is no wonder that therapists of every hue are up in arms, furious or just plain confused about what they are now expected to do. The idiotic politicians and the ideologically driven enabling organisations that manipulate them have absolutely no clinical experience whatsoever; the idea that they are so blithely legislating any relationship between client and therapist, is frankly terrifying.
Do they consider any of the possible consequences? Are they prepared to draw lines between those mental states that should remain sacrosanct at all costs and those that may legitimately be held up to a critical light? Do they even realise that most therapeutic qualifications require that the aspiring therapist must undergo quite sustained therapy themselves? This inevitably involves principled destruction of their most cherished assumptions, some of which they may be only barely conscious? Do they realise that under these circumstances, teaching new therapists becomes more or less impossible?
Or is that maybe the point? To replace therapy with ideological training and correction?
It looks more and more as if the thought police is merging into the ideology police to ensure that everybody will draw their moral, social and psychological boundaries using the same ruler to get the same neat categorisation of people into ... well, the good and the bad ... while all opinion will have been always already divided into the sacred and the profane, right and wrong, clean and dirty and so forth. Traditionally, as Mary Douglas demonstrated yonks ago, these are divisions negotiated in an active social and cultural milieu. They are now, it would seem, being imposed on isolated individuals by power to create societies of pure narcissism.
All this will come back to bite humanity on the bum and if the legislation is enacted, it will take decades to clear up the damage and to allow people to develop naturally by learning that sometimes what they think about the world and themselves is downright nonsense.