![]() It wasn’t safe to use the wrong language or to express the wrong views and I learned the game of political correctness. I dropped the slang terms I had grown up with. I learned to write ‘she or he’ instead of ‘he’. I more or less uncritically adopted the beliefs I was taught, for example saying woman instead of girl or lady, black person instead of coloured person. But the ‘creep of hate speech laws’ must worry us all (Bowcott, 2021 Tylecote, 2021)įrom the 1980s I sometimes had to attend anti-discriminatory workshops as part of a job. A degree of uncertainty about ‘what can I say?’ sometimes amounts to a kind of paranoia: if I say something ‘politically incorrect’, will I be ostracised by colleagues and lose my job? Such cases of cancellation culture are more obvious in academia, politics, sport and celebrity circles than, as yet, in therapy. Feminism has raised similar sensitivity around gender, and the LGBT community around homophobia and transphobia. Some of us have lived through major cultural changes in the past few decades, certainly from the 1960s and intensifying recently, with the change to an increasingly multicultural society, hypersensitivity around racism and demands for radical reforms. It seems likely that today, many therapists are wary of such challenges and avoid them.ĬSJ and the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia It could include the most hateful, erotic or other unsettling statements. This was usually seen as a way of accessing deep feelings with long roots in family life. Therapists would even invite this, with provocative ‘what’s going on right now?’ questions. Many years ago, I was in a therapy where clients were encouraged to say what we really felt, as strongly as we felt it, whether it was positive or negative, and even if it was a direct confrontation to the therapist. She may work through her unease and benefit, or not.Ĭlients who are refugees may be wary of disclosing details about themselves because they are guarding against painful PTSD being triggered and/or they are unsure exactly how safe and confidential the setting is. She may be able to request an alternative therapist, or not. A small woman who has been abused may feel unsafe with a male therapist who is large and strong, say. Potentially harmful mismatches between clients and therapists can involve many different scenarios involving gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, class, appearance, and perceived status or power. Sometimes therapists may be unprofessional or abusive, rendering the client unsafe. Therapists may identify these moments or they may not. Clients may intuit this and assertively raise it, or they may not. ‘I will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia’.Ĭlients may be unsafe or feel unsafe if their therapist comes to be out of their depth. Any therapist who has specific ideological or ‘woke’ boundaries should alert the client to them, e.g. Perhaps further legal clarity is required on what may or may not remain confidential. Clients should be told about all exceptions at the outset. In certain settings where, for example, corporations provide counselling, there are sometimes further exceptions regarding theft, fraud, and so on. We are aware that the main exceptions to confidentiality are when clients might discuss terrorist plans paedophilic or other harmful criminal actions or intentions serious suicidal ideation and perhaps other criminal or anomalous cases. These students are political activists who are denying space in public institutions to their perceived political opponents. ![]() – are not in the same position as individual therapy clients. ![]() Let’s note that those woke students who have demanded a safe space in universities – free from controversial speakers, lecturers who fail to toe the line, microaggressions, etc. I want to raise a few points about how safe clients are in therapy to express anything they wish to what the barriers to feeling and being safe are when safety has to give way to challenge and confrontation and how safe, resilient or upset therapists may be at times. I am not talking here about physical safety. Therapy is often seen as a safe, protected space or oasis in a society that may be experienced as alienating or threatening. Trust and risk are ultimately inseparable. Perhaps I should begin by saying that I assume this forum is safe but not necessarily completely safe, since I don’t know you, nor you me. How safe a space is therapy in the age of wokeness?
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