Tuesday, August 25, 2020

She Is No Longer a Social Worker

New Mexico social worker Judith Acosta is no longer a therapist. She declares that she is no longer a social worker, but, by the terms of her description, she is talking about being a therapist. More than a few social workers practice therapy.

She has had enough. Today’s woke culture has caused her to abandon her profession. She knows, better perhaps than most of us, that a therapist who deviates from woke orthodoxy can lose her license.


Seriously. She explains in this short essay (via Maggie’s Farm):


It started one ordinary day, in one otherwise ordinary session: A beautiful young woman I had known for a few years wanted to cut off her breasts. (Details changed to protect identity.)


“What happened?” In my mind, the first concern was cancer.


“Nothing. I just hate them. I’d really like to be rid of them. I was just wondering what you thought.”


So I told her. She had a long history of abuse, abandonment, and self-mutilation. Given that, I suggested, didn’t it seem like another aspect of self-hatred and rage? I urged her to take time to really consider all the ramifications -- its effect on her physiology, on her partner, on her children.


She bristled and said I was being unsupportive. I explained I couldn’t be supportive of something that was an extension of existing pathology.


She found another, more supportive therapist, and is now living with the results of her surgery.


That was the beginning of the end for me.


For weeks afterward I found myself fighting off fears of being reported to the licensing board for not agreeing with her and realized, finally, that the whole profession had become a political platform. Therapy had become a form of indoctrination and if you weren’t goose-stepping with whatever was trending, you were truly risking everything.


Therapy as a form of indoctrination; where have we heard that before?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Therapy as a form of indoctrination; where have we heard that before?"

Soviet Russia.

- shoe