Response to ‘Budding Therapy’s’ response to my cancelled BPS letter
I recently wrote a letter to the British Psychological Society explaining my resignation from the society after roughly several decades of membership. This letter was considered so problematic that it was published and then removed (more details here).
I haven’t seen the majority of the outcry against it as those complaining have not tended to include me in their comments. Those I have seen generally either call me a bigot, or misrepresent the points I was making. However, I did find this response, which I wanted to pick up on — as it is one of the few, if not only, responses that is measured, thoughtful, and without personal attacks.
For this, I have a great deal of respect for Becki, and although I don’t agree with what she says (I will detail why below), I thank her for her civility and willingness to attempt to engage with my actual arguments.
I’m not aware of ever saying that I find the BPS statement ‘offensive’ and my concerns here certainly are not about ‘racial equality’. My concerns are about the definition of racial equality, and therefore the version of racial equality that the BPS and Social Justice (SJ) Advocates promote.
Perhaps — but my complaint is based partly on the BPS’s decision to publish official statements that call for white people to be aware of their fragility, and to ‘apologise’ (along with many others of a similar tone). No-one would accept these demands (from a representative body no less) if it were directed at those of any other skin colour — so why is it acceptable, encouraged and, even expected when directed at whites? This hardly demonstrates racial equality (hence my previous point about definition of equality).
Here is what I said in my original letter:
‘Finally, and perhaps most concerningly, following a social justice agenda prevents us from achieving the goals that as psychologists, we should be striving towards. First, it actually promotes mental illness — encouraging individuals to look for, and hold on to slights, read in to others’ intentions, and assume the worst from others’ behaviour (all patterns of thinking that CBT practitioners warn against).’
Firstly, I want to highlight that here I am referring to broad social justice principles — I am not referring specifically to people of colour. As I think is also clear here, the point is not that people’s distress is not warranted, legitimate or understandable. The point is that regardless of whether your distress is warranted, legitimate or understandable, in order to live a happy and fulfilling life, you need to be able to learn to deal with these feelings. There seems to be a pervasive misunderstanding amongst Social Justice Advocates, and particularly worryingly — among clinicians, that we need to encourage individuals’ negative feelings in order to be ‘empathetic’ and ‘compassionate’. While of course, we do indeed need to be understanding, empathetic and compassionate towards others’ feelings, but we also need to help them to learn to address these feelings in order to get better.
Cognitive behavioural therapy is the most efficacious method of treating mental illness that we currently have, and one of the reasons for this is that it encourages the individual to take responsibility for their own thoughts and their own role in their distress. Some of the ways of doing this include letting go of slights, not assuming the worse from people, avoiding ‘tarring everyone with the same brush’/mind-reading/catastrophising etc. That DOESN’T mean that an individual hasn’t been wronged — they may have been wronged terribly, it just means that the individual needs to learn to move on from this in order to get better and live a healthy full life. We can acknowledge the legitimacy of an individual’s feelings without encouraging them to hold on to them.
However, in contrast, the notions of microaggressions, implicit bias etc. (as well as having little evidence to support them), actively encourage individuals to search for insult and slight in any ambiguous or neutral (or even positive) interaction. They preach that entire groups of people are out to damage you, and that you are merely a passive victim of others’ behaviour. Again, even if this were true, what good does it do to encourage people to believe this? It robs the indivdiual of efficacy, self-reliance and happiness.
I don’t really know how to answer this without trawling through many of tweets and examples of white men (especially), but also white people in general being told that they have to ‘shut up and listen’ and basically not correct, contradict, or challenge those who they allegedly have power over. In an educational setting, teachers and professors will inevitably have more ‘power’ than their students which presumably means that they are not able to contradict, challenge, or correct their students. Clearly this means that education cannot happen. You say that discussion is possible, but contradiction, correction and challenge is part of discussion — or certainly it should be in an educational setting — and when it is directed toward a person perceived as being in a ‘vulnerable’ group, increasingly, it is not accepted.
Re. the ally notion, I think that is rather unfair. We don’t get to demand that people be our allies any more than we can demand that they fall in love with us. We can’t force people to do as we chose, and neither should we want to — as what does love, or friendship, or solidarity, mean if it is forced? People need to choose which causes they align themselves with, and they certainly shouldn’t be contractually obliged to demonstrate allegiance with any cause. People of course are free to judge them for either aligning themselves or not, but they cannot force it.
Certainly by many, I clearly won’t be missed, but the number of supportive emails I’ve received suggest that some at least will miss my perspective. Indeed, one of the reasons that I had deliberated for such a long time about leaving was because I felt (and it has been supported by the events of the last few days) that some dissenting opinions were needed in the society to avoid it descending into a cult for ideologues. Unfortunately that’s too late, but many bystanders have been shocked and appalled by the behaviour of so-called professionals (many of whom are clinicians), and I believe that this has done the discipline irreparable damage .
I would be willing to engage with those who have challenged my attitudes (as I am doing with you) — but unfortunately your challenges are the only ones that I have encountered that have attempted to engage with the actual points of my letter. All others have involved lies, misrepresentations of my letter, and personal insults. Should anyone else be willing to engage me in the manner you have, I’d be delighted to listen and respond.
I hope you will also share your hopes of growth with your colleagues and urge them to consider the way their behaviour can impact upon their patients and clinics (and indeed, the image of the profession as a whole).
I do take exception to the charge of bigotry as I have yet to be informed of anything that I said that was bigoted. Even in your discussion above, you have detailed nothing that warrants that description. I think what has been even more illuminating than the views of mine that ‘have been brought to the light’, is the behaviour of so called caring professionals whose careers should center around professionalism, ability to challenge their thinking, self-reflection, open-mindness, empathy and understanding.
Finally, I would like to briefly defend my motivation for writing the letter to begin with. Contrary to popular opinion, it was not to upset people, present a bigoted viewpoint, or ‘increase stats to my site’. The reason I am so anti-identity politics and SJ principles is because they are divisive. They pit groups against each other, and this leads to an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality, ingroup favoritism, groupthink, outgroup derogation, and as we have seen — legitimisation of hatred towards other groups. I believe that anything that encourages hatred is bad (regardless of who it is directed towards), and it needs to be stopped. Ironically, I know that’s how many feel about me — but I know there was nothing in my letter that encouraged hatred against any group or any person. Unfortunately that can not be said of SJ principles (or its followers).
While I know that it is unrealistic that we would ever change each other’s minds, I hope that you can understand a little more about my motivations — and that at least we can agree that both of us (although we have very different views about how to go about it) want to make the world a better place…
