The now ‘cancelled’ letter to the British Psychological Society
As a psychologist I used to belong to the British Psychological Society — British Psychologists’ governing body*. Recently however, I have found the organisation’s behaviour deeply concerning, and after deliberating for a substantial amount of time, I decided to resign. I also wrote a letter explaining my decision to leave — feeling it may be useful for ‘the powers that be’ in the BPS to understand why a member of several decades felt she could no longer face being associated with the organisation.
The letter was published, the editor then added an addendum, and then it was removed. Here is the letter and the editor’s note:
I would like to add that although Jon has clearly tried to present my tweet commenting on my stats as yet another slight which would no doubt add to the ‘trauma’ that my letter caused, it was meant as a wry comment on the behaviour of those who were criticising the letter (I think many of us are well versed in the behaviour of those who endorse ‘cancel culture’). It is also worth noting that the only reason that the aforementioned people had access to my site was because of Jon having posted the link to it on his original post (I had not included it in any communications or on my Twitter profile).
I will discuss the issues surrounding my writing of the letter, the behaviour of BPS members, and the behaviour of BPS representatives at a later date, but I would like to allow people to judge the content of the letter and responses on their own first.
*There has been some debate regarding my labelling of the BPS as our ‘governing body’ but since it describes itself as ‘the representative body for psychology and psychologists in the UK’, I feel my definition is close enough.
