Is your white privilege giving you anxiety? Obviously, no. But for America’s mental health professionals, the answer is increasingly becoming “yes.” “Activist therapists,” Andrew Hartz, Ph.D., founder, president, and executive director of the Open Therapy Institute, are products of a culture that puts race at the center of nearly therapy sessions, and liken whiteness to a “parasitic condition.” Dr. Hartz joins today’s “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” (alas, no Victor) to discuss the sharp politicization of clinical psychology training and the implications it’s having on the wellbeing of everyday Americans.
Jack, just wanted to thank you for finding excellent candidates for interviews. I have really enjoyed them.
The American Psychological Association supports and encourages DEI and WOKE ideology! This racist ideology gives merit and reward for the color of your skin! How does it help psychology? So I guess if I want to succeed, I have to go to a tanning booth and say call me Sue!
I worked at a VA facility during my psych nursing clinical. There were people in lab coats everywhere and the PA system was constantly paging “Doctor So and So.”
I later came to find out that these folks were all psychologists, not MDs.
I remember during one of our group meetings with the facility’s staff being lectured about “overthinking” patient problems by one particularly arrogant psychologist. He said that “hoof tracks usually mean horses not zebras.” Realizing that this charlatan knew nothing about nursing practices I raised my hand and politely informed him that as a nurse it is extremely important to think critically when it comes to patient care because human beings are complex organisms. I continued using his hoof tracks metaphor:
“Let’s say you have a known drug seeker at the ER complaining of excruciating back pain and demanding Dilaudid. Horse tracks would tell you he’s lying and just trying to get high. However, after his MRI comes back showing a fractured vertebra that is pinching a nerve zebra tracks would tell you he is truly in agony. As nurses we must always approach patient care with compassion, empathy, and, above all, humility.”
He then claimed I had misunderstood what he meant and was only proving his point about overthinking problems. I didn’t respond. Although I felt like telling him what an arrogant jackass he was posing around in a lab coat.
To anonymous psychologist, I remember the good old days in the 70s when therapy was popular and, just like with my school teachers, I had no idea what they’re political views were. Actually, most people got along back then no matter which party they belonged to. I have 3 adult grandchildren and I wish I could recommend therapy because they need it due to what the leftists have done to our young people. Their job opportunities aren’t good, as a result of dreamers getting their dreams fulfilled, and finding a sane mate is not likely in the liberal area we live in. So, they’re left to struggle it out without therapy. Maybe therapists could start putting their political leanings in their profiles?
As a late career clinical psychologist (Ph.D. in late 1980’s), Dr. Hartz’s interview offered me hope for what was once a profession that prided itself on its scientist-practitioner roots. The multiculti groupthink to which he refers has new meaning for the psychologists employed by the VA healthcare system from where I recently retired after 12 years of service.. I can tell you, the nuts are running the asylum in this system. No room for diversity of thought and the consequences for divergence from the DEI LGBTQ+++ religion are enormous. I sent the interview link to the one like minded conservative currently employed by the VA to offer encouragement and hope for the future. The VA lures early career people to the cause with the promise of student loan repayment, they all fall in the line in order to survive (“please eat me last”), and the science supporting the evidence-based therapies offered in this setting is obscured by TDS and other unhinged ideologies of the left. Though I retired from my position as a VA psychologist, I plan to continue my work in a new position that honors my professional expertise and decision making abilities which I am proud to say continue to be based on science and not emotion.