How transactivism captured therapy

Um, care to quote where I said medications that require doctors prescriptions & consultations be handed out like candy in the interests of affirmation?

And no I don't need to be a therapist to notice Julie Bindel's misinformation/disinformation when they are common knowledge to any one with a modicum experience with therapy. I would bet my house she probably knows this herself but it would get in the way of her 'narrative' to provide a balanced view…a thing this individual is clearly incapable of given she's a raging ideologue.

Or, are you as you declared simply a debate pervert. Your words?
There's this thing called 'satire' that't clearly over your head.

You never answer any questions. However you have alluded to Sam Hall and malpractice so perhaps you are coming round to the pernicious nature of trans affirmation. As for women. We are fighting this trans agenda. We do not want men in our sport/spaces. We do not want our daughters told they might be born in the wrong body. We do not think double mastectomies are a way to treat an illness of the mind. Do you?

You are becoming the pub bore on these threads. Can you not see very few support your posts and the odd one that does is usually another waffle/word salad/verbal gymnast/trans/gender obsessive.

Satire is amusing.

Thank you for posting. JB is a shining light in this mad world and I can’t thank her enough for her continued activism shining light in some very dark corners. Those who try and throw shade should hang their heads in shame!

I highly recommend the Lesbian Project Podcast for more JB!

I’m surprised that no one has yet suggested that those of us who wear jeans and jumpers and do DIY and gardening are in fact trans. Perhaps someone has but it’s so evidently batshit that it hasn’t stuck.
Though of course hardly anything seems batshit enough not to be accepted as part of genderism.

Quite. The book The TERF Diaries does touch on the fact that if trans is real and trans people have always existed where are the women over 40 now transitioning?

We have seen that a vast number of men have transed over the past ten years or so but if this is natural where are all the women who say they are now men?

pub bore = owww these ideas are hurting meeee

Absolutely not hurting at all. Just amazed at your total lack of self awareness. Very little support for any of your posts but still you soldier on with verbose word salads.

Very true ⬆️ a keyboard warrior with an overly high opinion of their wit and intelligence.

Me too! I didn’t want to grow up into a woman because I could see how limited their opportunities and freedoms were. Then along came Women’s Liberation and the sun came ou!

Hear! Hear!

it’s important for therapy, even person centred Rogerian therapy, to use immediacy, challenge and exploration as part of the process. Only rare purist Rogerians believe a therapists role is to sit like a nodding dog and agree with everything put to them. If that applies to every issue brought to therapy, in theory a purist person centred therapist should nod in affirmation when an anorexic client tells them that they feel very fat and need to keep
losing more weight, even when they’re on death’s door.

This unfortunately is extremely common. Show me a trans person under the age of 35 and you'll find autism and / or trauma plus thousands of hours online on Reddit and Discord. People who have grown up believing they can be the avatar they hide behind online with limited social connections outside identity groups 'in real life'.

It's an excellent piece.

”Unlike traditional approaches that position the therapist as an authoritative expert who interprets behaviour or diagnoses pathology, person-centered therapy treats the client as the expert on their own life.”

I can kind of see how a therapist might be able to take a patient centered approach by asking questions that challenge the patient themselves to think about their current way of thinking, but the idea that someone in a bad enough mental state that they qualify for therapy on the NHS “is an expert on their own life,” and doesn’t require some degree of interpretation or understanding of their own pathology sounds like very risky ground to me.

Very much like the suggestion that teenagers are the experts on their own identity and that it shouldn’t be challenged.

I was slightly shocked recently at the advice my son received from a therapist (aside from previous advice from a psychiatrist which was probably even more destructive). He was with a new girlfriend who lived a couple of hours away, and was insecure as he thought she might stray. In my opinion, this was partly based on his own insecurities and partly on her past history, which she had disclosed to him. Instead of investigating the causes of his insecurity and discussing whether this was the right girl for him, the therapist suggested he could simply move in with her, to alleviate the worry created by the distance. I hope it will work out for him, but I thought it was a great opportunity missed to make him think about why he feels insecure in relationships, which was a pattern, rather than a one off.

I confess, I now have very little faith in modern psychiatry and therapy. If you’re already mentally healthy, it’s probably quite nice to navel gaze, but for those who are genuinely struggling, they need expert guidance, surely? I assume there are some good practitioners, but I have to wonder whether the better ones have simply been driven out of the profession, having read that article.

This 👆

Hooray for Julie Bindel! What an excellent article.

But how destabilizing and insecure it must be for those therapists who have gender critical views and must stifle them. Toe the line or lose the support of your governing body. Gosh, doesn’t that sound familiar …

As an aside, I wonder if the BACP (British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists) takes the same position as the BCP.

What excellent article. I knew about Dr Az Hakeem but had not realised how many other reasonable psychologists had been punished.

The problem is that some people think people are born trans as though it is another version of being gay.

I heard that too. It was so interesting.

With this patient-knows-best stuff, there does seem to be a risk of unclarity about the difference between symptoms and diagnosis.

Symptoms, or at any rate the internal, invisible ones - yes, the patient does know them best, in the sense that they are the one having them, whether it's a pain in the stomach or a painful emotion. The therapist's or doctor's part there is to listen to how the patient feels.

But diagnosis - the explanation for the symptoms - is another matter. For a start, you can't self diagnose with something you've never heard of, or have heard of but it hasn't occurred to you that it may be relevant to your case. The professional you are consulting may know of other possibilities that should be explored too.

And some of the diagnoses you have heard of may be higher profile in your mind than others, because they are more talked about, or more frightening or attractive to you, or more fashionable as explanations at present. This is where the therapist or doctor shouldn't just be saying yes, yes, of course, but making sure all possibilities have been looked at.

So "I hate my body, I wish I didn't have boobs and periods", and "I feel uncomfortable when people say "she" and "her" about me", are symptoms. " I am really a man", is a diagnosis, and not the only one possible.

but the idea that someone in a bad enough mental state that they qualify for therapy on the NHS “is an expert on their own life,” and doesn’t require some degree of interpretation or understanding of their own pathology sounds like very risky ground to me.

You're assuming trans identification as being a pathology just like being homosexuality used to be & it isn't considered to designated as such. You also seem to be assuming incorrectly patients who present as trans with mental health problems as causing them being trans & because of that their mental health problems aren't treated. These are all unproven leaps of logic.

Very much like the suggestion that teenagers are the experts on their own identity and that it shouldn’t be challenged.

That's a convenient oversimplification of patient centred therapy which is a lot more complex & does in fact involve challenge but on a non confrontational patient led level.

"Patients are still challenged in Rogerian (person-centered) therapy, but the challenge looks very different from traditional confrontation. In classic Rogerian therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, a therapist will never argue, judge, or tell a patient what to do. Instead, the "challenge" happens implicitly through the therapist's use of core conditions like empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence (genuineness).

1. The Challenge of Self-Confrontation
Rather than the therapist pointing out a flaw, the therapist acts as a mirror. By reflecting the patient’s thoughts and feelings back to them accurately, the patient is confronted with their own contradictions.

• Example: A patient might say they love their job but spend the whole session describing how miserable it makes them. The therapist reflecting both statements allows the patient to face their own internal conflict.

2. Discrepancy between the "Real Self" and "Ideal Self"

Rogerian therapy naturally highlights the gap between who a patient currently is (the real self) and who they want to be (the ideal self). Experiencing unconditional acceptance from a therapist while feeling deeply dissatisfied with one's choices creates a powerful psychological tension that challenges the patient to change.

3. The Weight of Total Responsibility
In person-centered therapy, the therapist refuses to take the role of the expert who gives advice. This shifts 100% of the responsibility for choices and outcomes onto the patient. For many, being denied a "quick fix" or a roadmap by the therapist is the most intense challenge of all, as it forces them to trust their own autonomy.

4. Evolution into Motivational Interviewing (MI)
In modern practice, classic Rogerian principles have evolved into more active frameworks like Motivational Interviewing. MI relies heavily on Rogerian empathy and autonomy but uses strategic, gentle challenging to help patients explore their ambivalence about behavior change (such as addiction or lifestyle choices)."

I don't like the use of the term "Rogerian". It's not a term. There is no such thing.
What you are critiquing is the person-centred approach, which originated in Carl Rogers' work. The term "person-centred" has been applied rather lavishly as a broad description of certain kinds of work in the field of both mental and physical health. That strips it of meaning. Anyone can say "we do person-centred work here". But the Person-Centred Approach is contained within theory and boundaries, initially proposed and developed by Carl Rogers, who said that the approach would evolve and develop through practice.
Person-centred therapists are not "nodding dogs" who "simply affirm" whatever mental or emotional states their clients bring. What would be the point in that? That's what social media is for. Therapy involves real work, where the therapist is aiming to assist the client to become congruent, fulfilling the necessary and sufficient conditions in which meaningful change and growth can occur.

Also, Person-Centred therapy is not "100% client led". It's a relationship between the client and the therapist, in which the client is experiencing incongruence, and the therapist is congruent, the therapist will show unconditional positive regard to the client, (which does NOT mean affirming, it means having a non-judgemental attitude) and is able to express empathy with the client (NOT affirmation), and, to a greater or lesser extent, the client will understand and be able to receive the unconditional positive regard and empathy, which will enable the necessary and sufficient conditions for therapeutic change to take place.

Person-centred therapists are not "nodding dogs" who "simply affirm"

Um, if you bothered to read my posts you would know I said as much.

Lol, did you read ALL my posts? Clearly not.

There's no need to be so rude. Not everything is all about you, or your posts.