Therapy and Politics

If therapy can be a vehicle for ideology, then clinicians risk repeating past abuses.

The article “The Danger of Decolonization Therapy” by Miri Bar-Halpern and Dean McKay, published on April 8, 2025, in Jewish Syndicate News, addressed concerns within the mental health field. The focus was on the partial politicization of some facets of therapeutic spaces.

Spotlight on Decolonization Therapy

Decolonization Therapy is a psychological approach working on lasting impacts of colonialism by centring Indigenous knowledge, challenging Eurocentric models, and integrating social justice. This does not necessarily mean cultural psychology or Indigenous psychology: To acknowledge some systemic issues is different than imposed ideological stances ignoring principles of impartiality. The emphasis for Bar-Halpern and McKay is a particular strain and risk in this framework of therapy, implicitly. They argued decolonization therapy lacks sufficient rigorous scientific validation unlike Dialectical Behavioural Therapy or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

It can erase the core identity of some Jewish clients vis-a-vis Jewish identity and Zionism, and may retraumatize some Jewish clients.  They make a call-to-action for the rejection of ideological coercion in therapy, protecting Jewish clinicians from discrimination, demanding high empirical standards of practices, addressing some nuanced antisemitism in mental-health training, and advocating for Jewish clients in this space. Naturally, colonialism is a factor in histories and people groups more recently affected remain extant. That’s not the question of concern here, but remains a question of concern in other conversations. 

I would agree with the thrust of the arguments, while pumping the brakes modestly.

A Cautionary Tale: Sluggish Schizophrenia

I thought about this over a coffee one morning, whether to pursue analysis or not. I had another coffee and jotted some brain droppings down. I had some time today to synthesize some reflections. The piece made me think, rethink, question myself, et cetera. A reflection from a doctoral counselling psychologist colleague with Metis heritage, if that counts in context on prior politicization of an intended apolitical therapeutic space after reading the same article by Bar-Halpern and McKay:

In the mid-twentieth century, Soviet psychologists invented a category called “sluggish schizophrenia,” which they used to classify political dissenters as mentally ill. Psychology continues to be misused to push political agendas. Ethical psychologists do not push their views on their clients. Psychotherapy is designed to assist the client in expanding their worldviews and making their lives more satisfying by using self-experimentation and reason. Even if a client decides she wishes to forgo her volitional abilities and become a robot waiting for the command, we explore the likely consequences with the client. However, as long as the client is aware of the consequences of their actions, we support them. Here is an ethical dilemma we discussed in my early training: Do we help Al Capone become more self-actualized in his actions?

Decolonization therapy may well do this, not from Eastern Europe but from North America if pushing ideologies, whether anti-Capitalist or anti-Zionist. Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism in most cases, while pro-Zionist or anti-Zionist political pushes in an intended apolitical space is wrong. That is the root: “Psychology continues to be misused to push political agendas.” No specification of alignment or a re-stipulation of the foundational ethics of therapy: impartiality, or minimize bias and maximize neutrality.

From Theory to the Couch: Ethical Dilemmas

As the article surmises, the majority of Jewish people identify as Zionists and/or support Israel. On a personal note, I share the last name of the Founder of Reform Judaism, Israel Jacobson. However, I do not know if there is any family history or patrilineal or matrilineal relation. My family received an award for harbouring at least one Jewish couple for several years for safety and protection on the Dutch side during World War II. Do I get a cookie? No. 

My biases: Let us say, for the sake of argument, the likely background of no family relation, I “identify” per contemporary, in vogue, verbiage, or “am” a “Zionist” in a manner of being a ‘Palestinist’–not an abnormal position in international documentation. I wrote a book project, out of In-Sight Publishing, of in-depth professional, expert-level interviews from 2019-2021 on precisely the subject matter of Israel-Palestine, entitled On Israel-Palestine: 2019-2021 (2024). 

Identity, Data, and the Risk of Erasure

Those State terms came from agreements following the Balfour Declaration. The vote for Palestine’s non-member observer State status on November 29, 2012, at the United Nations cemented this further within international voting records. UN Resolution A/RES/67/19 stipulated, “The General Assembly… Decide to accord Palestine non-member observer state status in the United Nations…” 

It passed with 138 votes in favour, nine against, and 41 abstentions. Therefore, we have Palestine as a non-member observer State status of the UN, under observer state Status, on equal footing with the Holy See, as Israel is a Member State with voting privileges. At least, in either case, it could change, in theory. 

However, it is so overwhelmingly supported by the international community for a State of Palestine under the Question of Palestine and for a State of Israel, simply unreasonable to put in the fore a question about the member state status of either. I denounce anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice, and antisemitic bigotry. Many others do, too.

The fact that these become controversial stances, as generically positioned and further utilized to politicize a professionally intended vulnerable population and apolitical interpersonal professional space, raises serious questions under codes of ethics. Therapeutic spaces are intended as apolitical spaces for terms set by clients with therapists. To politicize them violates the premise, they are not complex considerations.

The symmetry fits structurally with Conversion Therapy in their positionality, but is disjunct in harm type and degree. Based on the article numbers, Zionism is something 85% of Jewish people support. However, based on other sources from the United States and in the United Kingdom, these may be inflated numbers, but not too much. Others range the numbers from 63% to 82% regarding caring about Zionism, with lesser strength in support, while still adhering. 

As of 2020, UK data from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research state 73% of U.S. Jews feel emotionally attached to Israel, while 63% identify as Zionists, down from 72% a decade earlier. While Pew’s 2021 data show 82% of American Jews feel at least some attachment to Israel, while 48% under 30 feel “very” or “somewhat” attached to Israel, 51% of Jews 50 and older caring about Israel is essential to Jewish identity. Overall 2/3rds express some degree of connection to Israel. Attachment does not equate to support. Connection and care can mean Zionism to many. Therefore, most adhere to styles of Zionism or connection, care, and/or support for Israel.

Parallels and Hypotheticals

Similarly on issues of gender and sexual minorities, LGBTI+, using terminology via the UN with the LGBTI Core Group rather than narrowing within common American parlance, is an inherent identity of development. Gender and sexual orientation seem to flow outwards, akin to the development of a snowflake and a sociological category. It is not a position of necessary advocacy to proclaim: “I am a bisexual man.” It is fabulous and factual, but not a necessary point of advocacy in the manner of Zionism or argument around historicity or a claim to some biblically (mostly) unjustified narrative. On the other hand, antisemitism has been around for centuries. This can count as an early sprouting of it in a professional space. 

Within a few decades, people’s lives targeted can be impacted. Conversion Therapywas established and systematized for decades prior to the 1990s controversies. Conversion Therapy, or reparative therapy, is a practice aimed at changing sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. Peter Gajdics, the author of The Inheritance of Shame, was a victim. So, that case is different, not in spirit but in development. Eventually, I could see a symmetry if others were not critically inquiring into it and pushing back against it. It is critically confronted, not yet 2055 or 2065, either, so not enough room for decades of entrenchment. 

So, we can at least step forward with a strong foot. This potato is too hot. Journalists do not want to cover this. To critique Israeli policy, “Hooray, stop the genocide!”, and “You are an antisemite.” To critique Hamas murders on October 7 and hostage-taking, and leftwing unwitting antisemitism, “Stop the clock on the Woke, you go, Mr.!”, and “Deport the lunatic leftwing radicals and terrorists on our campuses!” 

If they are on the Right sociopolitically, then they might be afraid of leftist harassment and cancellation tactics. If they are on the Left, then they do not want to become another Norman Finkelstein case, and fear some wings of the Israeli lobby and the American State. To the more significant point, though, while no mainstream therapy formally pathologizes Zionism, a framing as inherently oppressive without acknowledging its ethnic and religious dimensions risks veering into symbolic antisemitism. This could destabilize a client’s sense of safety and/or identity.

If they are like Mr. Huckabee and want a single super-state for apocalyptic Christian Zionism for the Second Coming of Christ, then that is a different story on hermeneutical antisemitism if that is their wheelhouse. One obvious thought experiment to me. Can we reverse this claim? Just forgetting any UN record, rights abuses by the Israeli state or the Palestinians against Israelis, etc., theoretically, one could assert the American far-right ethnic supremacist talking point about white genocide. 

As a case in illustrative hyperbole, based on extreme viewpoints held in parts by many, “Looking at the mass immigration, look at the Kalergi-Coudenhove plan in action for the ‘Eurasian-Negroid race of the future,’ the Rothschilds own the moon, etc.; we are being colonized–watch out for the space lasers (TM) targeting the last of the pure Aryan Race.” These form a White ethnic American State idea. 

They pose this: anyone criticizing or arguing against it is considered colonizing. We need to decolonize the therapy of anti-White Statism. It is a professional duty for those in our care to decolonize from anti-White State ideas. People would take offence at this. Why not the reverse? They could even have APA poster presentations pointing to the prefrontal cortex, vaguely identifying anti-White Statism as a mental illness needing a decolonization therapy style of approach as was done with Zionism.

Restoring Neutrality: Evidence and Safeguards

We risk undermining the neutrality and integrity of psychological practice, and are moving towards this more pervasively based on this. Jewish identity is multifaceted, is not a mental illness when linked to Zionism, and involves self-determination. Decolonization Therapy mostly lacks sufficient rigorous empirical support. However, it is grounded in cultural psychology and values ideology over evidence, while inverting its duty not to harm by retraumatizing some Jewish patients, alienating them further. 

It does not have the same systematic and comprehensive empirical support as standardized therapeutic techniques, including Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. Therapists, thus, can buy into antisemitic tropes around genocide and fascist stereotypes, labelling Jewish clients as oppressors, politicize therapy with anti-Zionist ideologies, and make therapeutic spaces a place to intimidate others. I submit that if a social justice framework in therapy retraumatizes and alienates clientele, then there will be less social justice and more anti-social injustice frameworks for therapy. 

Therapy as Sanctuary, Not Battleground

Dr. Jennifer Mullan, the Founder of Decolonizing Therapy, most succinctly stated, “There’s no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom,” or “To begin to consider and implement practices that support politicizing and shifting our organizational and interpersonal perspectives.” 

To contrast, the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists (Fourth Edition), under Ethical Standards of Principle of Integrity in Relationships, stipulated the importance of the need “to be as objective and unbiased as possible in their… service.” The British Psychological Society in Code of Ethics and Conduct linked reason or rationality to impartiality. The International Union for Psychological Science in its Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles for Psychologists emphasized the fundamental Principle of Integrity specifying “maximizing impartiality and minimizing biases.” Finally, the American Psychological Association (APA) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct emphasizes in its Principle C: Integrity the avoidance of deception and misrepresentation, which could extend to refraining from the use of therapy as a vehicle for partisan persuasion.

Therapy is meant as a sanctuary for clients’ own narratives. Ironically, this trend can come to risk repeating the colonization abuses of the past under the imposition of a ‘decolonization’ pretense. We need a reintegration of client autonomy and therapeutic neutrality; therapy is the client’s domain for autonomy premised on non-maleficence, not an ideological battleground. It may be helpful to further embed thorough mandatory neutrality training in licensure standards, so it doesn’t become an issue at scale.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes forThe Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), TheHumanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash