How transactivism captured therapy

Its rude now to ask people not to misrepresent their views?

I'm not representing anyone's views but my own.

I have just finished an intense podcast on a prolific paedophile and child rapist. It has excerpts from the sentencing hearing. The therapy speak and self-victimisation reminds me alot of the language used by the TRAs and their enjoyment of the”game”.

It is frustrating when the machiavellian tactics of the highly narcissistic-psychopaths work and the result is that women, children and adolescents suffer and are put in danger.

The only comfort is because of their poor impulse control and inability to self-soothe they will experience a collapse.

No one sane would want to

AI isn’t an expert in everything, you know. Perhaps you could start talking about your own experiences instead of splurging posts with spam.

AI posts on a forum so often indicate neurodiversity, youth / emotional immaturity, poor communication / poor critical thinking or a combination of all the above. This is not unlike the patterns observed in TRA circles ironically.

Thanks @lcakethereforeIam
I've just read the Genspect article you linked, it comes at the problem from a slightly different angle, and is clearly and fluently researched and written, well worth reading.

I am a qualified person-centred therapist, not currently registered with BACP or UKCP, and I would like to come out of retirement to do some private client work, but can't see a way round having to register with one of those organisations, captured and flawed as they are, in order to practice.

I think UKCP are ok, aren’t they? They released a statement about the validity of gender critical voices in therapy back in 2023. It’s the BACP and BPS who are dominated by activists.

Unfortunately, things have changed since 2023. From the linked article above:

A wider ideological project for therapy?

If the GSRD Guidance represents an attempt to re-centre BACP members’ practice, then there are the recent moves by the Partnership of Counselling and Psychotherapy Bodies (PCPB) to inscribe these changes onto a national canvas. The PCPB includes all major therapy bodies, such as the Association of Christian Counsellors, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, British Psychoanalytic Council, Human Givens Institute, National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society and the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy. The PCPB has just completed an ambitious national restructuring of employment criteria for UK therapists, in the form of the SCOPED framework. It is now turning its attention to complementing a draft criminal law ban on alleged conversion practices in England and Wales, by consulting on a joint policy which will also outlaw alleged conversion as unethical therapy practice.

doesn’t bode well at all for struggling young people who want to access really good exploratory therapy. Just means that therapists who are also captured activists, will be delivering the therapy for these very vulnerable,
often autistic clients. You would think therapy is very well informed on all aspects neurodiverse wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. It’s still a little taught topic on most counselling courses. To act as a counsellor for an autistic teenager who thinks they’re the wrong sex, without a solid grounding in neurodevelopmental conditions is completely unethical.

Wow I love that idea!

Absolutely no idea how you'd go about it though. Also, the world of therapy is incredibly argumentative. Even within my discipline (person centred) there are numerous strands and factions who really don't like each other and completely disagree. They even have separate conferences.

Hasn’t James Esses tried to start a group?

It is called “Thoughtful Therapists”
If you scroll to the end there are “allied organisations”.

www.thoughtfultherapists.org/about-1

Thank you! That's great to know

I scroll past. There’s never anything new and it’s all been said and been debunked time and time again. Regular posters do engage, bless them, but their harder questions never seem to be answered.

These are all unproven leaps of logic.

What is an unproven leap of logic is that any given teenager’s unhappiness is the result of nature having made them be born in the wrong body, such that they need hormones not intended for their sex, body modification including surgery, and a life if make believe.

"SW
Stephen Whittle
4d ago (edited)
This article appears a distortion of the reality in which gender identity clinical services are provided by psychologists in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. There are just 2 clinics that see children and adolescents, and just 13 for adults with gender identity concerns. Only a tiny number of psychologists work within these services - probably less than thirty in total. Yet, these trained and experienced clinicians do not have their voices heard at all in this article.
Bindel claims to have spoken to 'dozens of psychologists', but it would seem they are mostly anonymous. Anonymity can be justified in investigative journalism, but it does limit our ability to evaluate the testimony provided. Nor is she transparent about how the psychologists she spoke to were recruited, how many she approached, and how many declined to participate. She doesn't clarify if her interviewees represented different clinical specialisms or professional perspectives, nor whether she approached clinicians supportive of gender affirmative practice.

Notably Bindle does not provide documentary evidence of corroborated allegations of disciplinary intimidation. This is particularly significant because she makes claims about the culture of an entire profession. She is substituting selective testimony and examples for systematic evidence. Furthermore she presents those through her own (well documented) ideological lens.
A claim of institutional capture requires evidence that an organisation's decision-making processes have been systematically subordinated to external interests or that professional standards have been displaced through identifiable mechanisms. But Bindel does not provide hard evidence of those external interests, or which professional standards have been displaced and how.
Bindel repeatedly treats support for gender-affirming practice as evidence of ideological capture, she then treats criticism of that practice as evidence of independent professional judgement. This creates a circular argument; a psychologist who supports affirmative care is presumed to have accepted an ideological position, a psychologist who challenges affirmative care is presented as exercising scientific independence, and any criticism of the latter is treated as confirmation that the institution is captured. Again there is no evidence provided on this nor does she examine the possibility that some complaints against clinicians might concern professional conduct rather than legitimate disagreement.
At no point does Bindel entertain the possibility that those clinicians who support gender-affirming approaches do so because they consider them clinically appropriate. She also assumes all clinicians who might provide gender affirmative care do so in all circumstances and with all patients. I doubt that is the case, but we cannot find our whether or not it is , from this article.
Bindel asserts that the vast majority of clinical psychologists avoid expressing disagreement publicly and that a small minority who question affirmative care have been punished. Neither claim is accompanied by a representative survey, workforce study or, very importantly, any systematic analysis of disciplinary proceedings. Consequently, a reader is unable to distinguish widespread professional views from the experiences of a self-selecting network of dissatisfied clinicians.
I would not dispute the need for clinical freedom and better research. But, in reality, Bindel is attempting to attribute the difficulties of a small number of clinical professionals to transgender activism. She provides no evidence of this link.
Some psychology clinicians may have concerns about current gender identity clinical practice, but the same could be said about almost every field of psychological and medical care; the provision or not of anti-psychotics to people who 'hear voices; or the value or not of surgical knee replacements. Bindel does not provide the evidence to demonstrate the concerns of her interviewees are representative or that their preferred explanations are correct. As a clinician once told me "All medicine is as much an art as it is a science as every individual is unique".
At no point does Bindel acknowledge that throughout the UK's gender identity clinics, competent and non-judgemental care is now provided not just to the questioning their gender, or those seeking medical and/or surgical transition, but also to those (detransitioners) reconsidering their previous gender reassignment treatment decisions.
Finally Bindle's assertion that transgender activism is responsible for the personal experiences of a few clinicians, or that somehow it has impacted the ethical practices and regulations of the British Psychological Society is completed unevidenced, and I would suggest unfounded."

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

@Twoallbeepattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepickles where are all the bodies that these people should have been born into and why are older women not transitioning to men now it is seen as acceptable? Why are there not loads of young men transitioning to female?

Um, this is a thread about therapy. Maybe start your own thread on 'buried bodies'?

Stephen Whittle is a woman pretending to be a man. Why would anything she says be believed?

As for the irony of you telling me to start my own thread. Hilarious. You and your comrades derail incessantly.

Good therapy is essential. Ethical therapy even more so.

Whenever someone raises something you don’t want to engage with, you suggest starting a new thread.