The Ideological Capture of Psychotherapy: A Case Study

What happened when I was asked to give a talk to a group of therapists

The world of psychotherapy, a vocation that should be grounded in active listening, exploration and critical thinking, has been infiltrated by ideology.

I know this only too well. Just over 2 years ago, I was expelled from my Masters’ degree in psychotherapy, after raising my concerns about the impact of gender ideology on the mental health profession; specifically the medicalisation and serious risk of harm to children. I am currently in the midst of litigation against my former course provider, the Metanoia Institute, and my former regulatory body, the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP).

I co-founded a group called Thoughtful Therapists, who seek to formally raise concerns about the shutdown of free speech within the profession and the pressure to ‘affirm’ clients down a potentially irreversible pathway.

I have been reached out to by therapists from all modalities and walks of life, who tell me that they are too frightened to speak out, for fear of being cancelled, as I was.

You will imagine my pleasant surprise, therefore, when I received an invitation last September to speak at the annual conference of the Society for Existential Analysis (SEA), a therapeutic membership body.

The theme of the conference was ‘Protest!’ and they wanted me to discuss my ongoing case and concerns regarding gender ideology.

The blurb for the conference read: “Most of all we wish to encourage you to bring the challenge, to feel free to speak to the things that might have made your task as a therapist difficult or that brought a fresh perspective”.

To receive such an invitation gave me hope that, perhaps, things were shifting in the right direction.

Of course, I immediately agreed to take part. I was offered a 30-minute ‘bite-size’ slot and the topic of my presentation was ‘Gender Dysphoria, Free Speech and Therapy’. My own blurb was:

“I will be discussing the way in which gender ideology has infiltrated the mental health profession and caused it to abandon many of its foundational principles. I will be looking at the way in which we have enabled an “affirmation-only” model to take hold, whereby young children with mental health conditions are being affirmed down a pathway towards irreversible medicalisation. I will also discuss my own case and ongoing litigation, following my expulsion from my Masters’ degree in psychotherapy for speaking out about my concerns in this space”.

From the moment I arrived at the conference on the 12^th November, I could feel a certain tension in the air. I detected a number of attendees staring or whispering, while keeping a firm distance from me.

15 minutes before I was due to speak, one of the organisers informed me that there had been an attempt by multiple members to try to have my session cancelled. When the SEA very nobly refused to capitulate, many decided to boycott the conference altogether.

This was deeply concerning to hear. That several therapists felt unable to have a discussion with me, let alone be physically present in a building at which I was speaking, made me worry about the impact of both their fragility and dogmatic ideological beliefs on their clients.

I delivered my presentation to a packed room. When it came to the Q&A section after the talk, the hostility from certain members became apparent. The very first individual to speak asked why I had been invited at all and suggested that I had no right to be there. While one or two audience members came to my defence, it was clear that the majority were either hostile or felt unable to say anything.

After the session finished and sensing increasing tension caused by my mere presence, I decided to leave the conference early. On the way out, a few therapists approached me, checking first to see if anyone else was watching, before telling me that they agreed with the concerns I was raising but were far too afraid to say anything in public. That brought home to me the fear of God that the powers that be within the therapeutic profession have put in their members.

I subsequently discovered that, in response to my attendance, a last-minute, ‘emergency’ session had been arranged to take place directly after mine and held in the same room. It had 1 hour allocated to it, double the length of time I was given to speak. It was run by ‘Niki D’, a self-proclaimed “trans ally”. The title was: ‘Allied Space – Trans and trans-supportive forum’. Its aim was to provide a: “space to support and celebrate the trans therapists, colleagues, clients and loved ones in our lives”.

I was later informed that the core question posed to the audience during this session was: ‘How can we prevent this from happening again?’. By ‘this’, they meant someone with my views and beliefs being invited to the conference in future years. I was also reliably told that my views were described as “abhorrent”.

That it was felt necessary to organise such a formal ‘safe space’ following a talk I gave about child safeguarding, women’s rights and free speech is telling beyond belief.

Following the conference itself, the battle continued to rage on.

A number of articles relating to my appearance were published in the SEA’s magazine, ‘The Hermeneutic Circular’.

One therapist publicly defended my presence at the conference. That therapist was Helen Runciman and it was she who originally invited me to speak at the event. In her article, Helen described the fact that she had been practising therapy for over 15 years, working with a significant number of ‘trans clients’ in the process. She described herself as having been a “fully signed up trans ally”.

However, she became concerned that the therapeutic governing bodies were “proscribing beliefs” and effectively banning those who held ‘gender critical’ beliefs (i.e. a belief that sex is binary and immutable). Helen wrote:

“The world of trans activism has become one filled with threats, silencing, homophobia, misogyny, coerced language and belief policing.”

She described the ‘trans safe space’ at the conference as being one in which individuals present who shared my beliefs were “shut down”.

Things become so hostile that one senior member of staff told Helen he would keep an eye on her as she left the building at the end of the conference, to make sure she got out safely.

She received emails from numerous attendees in the following days, supporting her decision to invite me and sharing their anxiety of speaking out on the day, for fear of the repercussions.

Helen finished her article off with the following powerful words:

“Who are we as therapists if we cannot tolerate and be open to divergent points of view? How can we truly attend to the Other in the therapy room if we need them to agree with us to feel ‘safe’? What does it mean to offer a therapeutic space where our clients can express their deepest, darkest thoughts and feelings if ‘words are literal violence’?

Unfortunately, as expected, Helen appeared publicly to be a lone voice. Her article was published against a backdrop of numerous other pieces condemning my appearance at the conference.

Therapist, Stella Duffy, wrote a piece stating that my appearance was “painfully othering”, before complaining about “heteronormative essentialism predicated on gender binary essentialism”. This is the same Stella Duffy who gave a talk just before mine, in which she said: “Menopause affects all bodies, including trans and non-binary bodies”. As I have responded - I am a man. Menopause will never affect my body. It is not controversial. It is a fact.

Another article was written by Niki D, the individual who ran the ‘trans safe space’ after my session. She described feeling “shocked” and “gaslit” by the mere fact I had been asked to attend.

She raged against the “sense of entitlement of some cis people”.

She spoke with pride of the fact that she tried to “filter“ out those with gender critical beliefs and “did not give space to their views”.

Her piece was filled with divisive and dangerous ideology. She claimed that a person’s ‘gender’ is “given to them by birth parents and the medical system”. She attempted to justify the complete removal of healthy breasts in patients with gender dysphoria on the basis that we offer ‘breast augmentation’ as a form of plastic surgery. She attempted to undermine the plight of detransitioners, writing that “all surgery can lead to regret”.

Most telling of all was when she wrote:

“I doubt they would have platformed a speaker who held racist or homophobic views, so why is cisnormativity and trans hostility seen as acceptable to promote?”

The fact that Niki D attempts to equate gender critical beliefs (which are protected under the Equality Act 2010) with racism or homophobia is extraordinarily revealing, worryingly misguided and disgracefully inflammatory.

Another therapist, Rebecca Escho Greenslade, who was due to speak at the conference, wrote of the fact that she withdrew from the conference when she discovered I was due to speak “in service of trans solidarity”. She described feeling “heartbroken and enraged” when she learned of my appearance.

She shared the fact that: “some of my own supervisors and students chose not to attend as they felt unsafe”.

Finally, she preached that any of the SEA’s membership who either agreed with my views or supported my right to speak at the conference were “ethically and philosophically problematic”.

The above demonstrates just how captured the therapeutic profession has become. No doubt, there are individual therapists who are willing to put their head above the parapet, in order to stand up for child safeguarding and free speech. However, the powers that be appear hell bent on shutting down any form of dialogue if it contradicts their ideological worldview. For a vocation that is built around resolving the most complex and sensitive of human dis-ease, this is shameful.

Gender dysphoria is a mental health condition and, as any other mental health condition, should be treated with exploration, not affirmation. Therapists do a disservice to their clients by pushing an ideology which risks placing them on a slippery slope towards irreversible medicalisation and potential harm. To do so flies completely in the face of the Hippocratic Oath: ‘First Do No Harm’.