Abigail, you're onto something. After my parent's nasty divorce, they placed ME in therapy. It's hard to quantify how damaging it was. Suddenly I felt like everything was my fault, that I was weird, that I was different. I loathed myself. As my terrible home life got worse, I was alternately diagnosed as having antisocial personality disorder AND bipolar disorder. These were the trendy diagnoses before the trans craze.
Funny thing happened after I was on my own and out of therapy: turns out there was nothing wrong with me. I am successful and (usually) happy, no thanks to my parents and the string of incompetent and greedy psychologists and psychiatrists that followed.
Gee, your experience sounds equally as awful as mine was. As a teenager I was forced by my dis functional divorced parents into meeting up with all kinds of nutty unethical psychotherapists and psychiatrists. In reality I was just struggling in a completely normal way as a girl trying to make do in a completely messed up family system. The “mental health professionals” proceeded to label me with all kinds of incorrect diagnosis which I simply did not meet the diagnostic criteria for. Eventually I left them all in the dust and never looked back. By then I was just older and more mature. I quickly figured out how to solve my own problems and proceeded to get married, live a normal life, and raise a happy well adjusted child. Main lesson I learned.... do not ever go near a “mental health professional “ and keep them away from your children.
No offense Ms. Shriner, but this is all anecdotal. You don’t seem to have any evidence to back up your hypothesis .(btw the people expressing their experiences here, while validating, are not Gen Z, they are older than that. They also all seem to be children of divorce. Perhaps there is something there, at least as to why the parents took them to therapy and why they were not best at picking out a doctor for their children. Divorce is a watershed moment in a life.)
I think you have an interesting topic, but you have cast your net too wide and too conclusively. If you are going to cast a net that wide you need to look at the variables; Why, from BOTH the parent’s perspective and the child’s, was the child sent to therapy in the first place? It isn’t a given that parents rush their kids off to therapy first thing for no reason. It’s usually because something is completely out of control and they have already tried many things.
So start there: what are the behaviors of the child that prompt parents? It has to be more (at least originally before the “trans craze” on social media) than just I feel awkward in my body.
What about divorce and how it affects families, including kids? What about addictions? You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an addict or child of an addict and how that affects their thinking and behaviors, and can lead them to become addicts, but not necessarily the same addiction! For example, the child of an alcoholic may, in teen years (always tumultuous anyway), develop an eating disorder, a drug habit, a gambling addiction, etc.
And what about ADHD/ADD? You seem to have reached conclusions about that too. Is it “real”? Or is it misdiagnosed MORE often than NOT, and are kids medicated MORE often than NOT, and are those who receive medication adversely affected MORE often than NOT? You are simplistically and reductively coming to a conclusion based on anecdotal evidence.
I’m not all for medicating kids, especially messing with hormones-which are extremely powerful biological processes- nor making permanent medical decisions like surgeries, nor do I think that all therapists/ therapy is bad. And “buck up buttercup” isn’t always the best way to handle it either. So I think it’s just as important to slow your roll on this as it is to slow the transitioners.
It seems to me too that everyone is forgetting that puberty is a tumultuous time that lasts years while at the same time kids are still LEARNING. And to learn they must be curious. To be curious about the opposite sex, their bodies, how they work, what it feels like to be in your own body, especially while it changes, etc. It seems everyone has forgotten kids explore. Adults used to call it playing doctor (or doctors and nurses.) How about going at it from that angle? I don’t know the answers, but this article isn’t well supported. Just my thoughts.
Sounds like our experiences were very similar. It was quackery. Sad to hear that children are even more vulnerable than ever, with more harmful diagnoses and treatment. At least no one put me on testosterone or tried to surgically change my gender.
So resonates with a friends experience - 16 years with a psychiatrist that did next to nothing to stop self-harm— always knew it was more a matter of a brilliant person seeing the injustice in a world determined to pretend that was crazy instead of true. When my friend realized that she was smarter than the psych, she just got on with it and has led a fulfilling life with no further self-harm and a career of service to others (though NOT in the mental health field).
I have had some personal interaction with mental health professionals and consider in general they are more insane than the people they are supposedly trying to help.
These are a few anagrams of 'mental health professional'.
I seem to remember reading an argument that the success rate for psychiatrists was about the same as traditional African witch "doctors" ... Though those scare quotes might also be reasonably applied to many in the first group.
Whole bunch of "doctors" in this clusterfuck who should lose their licenses -- if not be strung up by their nuts and left to twist in the wind -- once the dust settles.
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
Such prescience about our own era in this Huxley quote notwithstanding the fact that medical science has also made huge advances in the treatment of bacterial diseases and cancer etc. The prescience is his foreseeing how what Abigail calls the bad feelings industry got hold of a seductive snake oil.....a delusory prospect of offering a 'cure' for plain ordinary human unhappiness.
As regards cancer sadly the only advance medical science has made is to cause cancer to increase by promoting big pharma poisons as 'treatments'. Big pharma use statistics to try and show they do help but like everything big pharma it is smoke and mirrors.
I have had my own experience of what is called cancer and immuno-therapy.
Sadly, most of my family perished of their cancers within a year of diagnosis.
But a cousin lasted 15 years after a diagnosis of stage-IV metastatic breast cancer. Two oncologists said there was nothing to be done for her, but a third said, "I think we can work together."
And work they did. It wasn't always easy, but those 15 years were good ones for my cousin. Her oncologist cared about her. I am grateful to her and to Big Pharma.
Reading about what was done to Chloe Cole and other confused and misguided children infuriates me. I’m glad brave people like Abigail Shrier are drawing attention to this. We need a societal reckoning, the sooner the better.
People don't realize how broken, corrupt, and full of pseudoscience and baseless pop psychology the entire field of therapy is. There's a real need for therapy for some people, but the vast majority of those practicing it right now don't have the training or skills needed to do it properly and are causing more harm than good.
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
Both of my sons were diagnosed with anxiety and depression as children and both have owned these labels. Had I known that behavioral counselors were only making them worse, I would never have used them. Now that they're adults, I don't know how to drag them both back to healthy. My oldest son's anxiety is so crippling that he's never had a paying job and lives off of disability. It's very real. I need a book "Gen Z was given a mental health diagnosis, and you shouldn't buy into it anymore".
I wonder if someone like John Rosemond could be helpful? He’s a psychologist who speaks against his profession a lot. The APA (I think that’s the right acronym) attempted to remove his license because he doesn’t go along with their current crap (for lack of a better term). He’s a very down to earth, practical, “old school” type. He’s the person I’d first think to look toward — if I weren’t completely turned off from psychology altogether.
As I read this I thought that it was spot on but did not relate to our particular family experience until I got to:
"For well over a decade, teachers and school counselors have assumed the mandate (and curricula, and use of instructional time) to play shrink indiscriminately with kids, often styled as “Social Emotional Learning.”"
Yes! The teachers and counselor at our daughter's high school called our daughter a crazy name and "he" behind our backs and then would not stop when we learned of it. This is a serious psychological intervention/playing shrink and not something anyone should do with another's minor child. Yet, the do. All the time. And, they call it "Let the child lead". Or, something. We parents were the dinosaur bad guys which created triangulation with our daughter. Love reigns in our family once more but all of this has to change. And, there need to be professional consequences for many - including Doctor Jason Rafferty, Doctor Jack Turban, Satanic Panic Doctor Diane Ehrensaft and Admiral Richard Levine.
But, I agree that the ROGD travesty needs to be viewed in the context of SEL/DEI/"Social Justice" replacing basic learning in school. Schools do not have a right to take up any of that. How did this get decided without parents even having a say? The State does not own our children but it is sure trying...
Over here in the states I would like to see a President DeSantis next - but at least if it's Trump he is likely to fire Admiral Doctor Richard First Female Rachael Levine - Assistant US Heath Secretary and Child Mutilation Enthusiast.
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
The point about "overcoming" vs "accommodation" is so on the mark. We need to quit teaching kids to fear being uncomfortable or challenged and start teaching how to think critically, solve problems, and conquer difficulty.
Many parents today have a hard time watching their children suffer even in normal ways, as part of natural growth. We've convinced ourselves that life is meant to be comfortable, when in reality it is a challenge. We need to educate and encourage parents to be okay with their kids discomfort in order to allow them to authentically grow.
As a former Corrections Officer in a maximum security prison who then became a therapist. Also as a male whose dad committed suicide when I was six years old. I can say I am not your typical therapist and I am an outsider in the profession.
I intensely dislike most other therapists. Other therapists are overwhelmingly neurotic and extremely emotionally sensitive women. The idea that you should help a client stand up on their own two feet. Build some grit and transition out of therapy is considered toxic. Good therapy also involves confronting distorted thinking.
Therapy too often becomes a life long crutch, rather than help to get better.
Excessive anxiety is usually a lack of confidence. Depression is often being stuck and lacking direction in life. These are not hard for a good therapist to fix.
Some problems like PTSD, Anorexia, Gender Dysphoria, OCD are more durable and can take a long time to treat.
Pop culture has been making girls and women feel bad about their bodies forever. Dissatisfaction with our bodies and who we are is very real. Approaching the problem by saying "all you have to do to feel better about yourself is take cross-sex hormones and have major surgery to rearrange your sex organs" is insane.
I think parents in general should channel more of their inner Fran Lebowitz.
"Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success."
Benign neglect is wildly underrated. Ensure they don't have unfettered access to the cesspool called internet, feign interest in grades and daily location, ensure 6pm family dinner is an absolute rule, remind them that nobody likes a drama queen, feed them, clothe them, love them, "only ask them what they want for dinner if they are paying...."
"Don't bother discussing sex with small children. They rarely have anything to add."
In short, treat them as poorly educated adults, but with more hope in a 12 year old than a 32 year old, and they will surprise you, take responsibility, and become adults.
Having a rancid alcoholic father and untreated bipolar mother with a good aunt as distant backup seems to have done fine for me.
In my child's forth grade class, the teacher asked each child how are they feeling on a scale of 1-10 during normal class time. after kids give their answer the teacher asks each child to explain their answer.
i cant imagine any teacher from my childhood asking this.
Abigail, I can best this story. I’m currently enrolled at a local university for an MA in Creative Writing. Last semester, our prof began each course meeting by polling us to rate our mood: Excellent, Good, or Poor and explain our choices. Our ages ranged from 22 to 67. So ridiculous.
Ridiculous. Feelings are not truth. They should not rule us, nor dictate how we show up in the classroom, unless there are major trauma is happening for the child.
My kid's teacher on the last day before Xmas break asked everything to say one thing they were excited about for Christmas and one thing they were worried about. Bad bad bad.
I’m sorry so many of you have had bad experiences with therapists. I have a great psychologist. Believe me… She gave me structure and helped me figure out how to be a better… Everything. She’s retiring next month. I’m not neurotic and I haven’t seen her in a pathological way, but she has guided me through some very difficult times in my life. Therapeutic training has changed, and many therapists have become social advocates. But not all of us… I was trained well and had a great model.I try very hard to be a good therapist. To be sure, the profession can be sloppy and soft. But at its best, it can be transformative. When a person understands themselves, they are more likely to understand others. Therapy should not be enabling. It should be empowering in a functional, effective way.
Is there a movement of people who sue psychologists? I reported the one who pretended to treat my daughter for a HIPAA violation and he was eventually fined over $10,000, by HHS, and listed on their web site. Though that did not help my daughter, at least he was harmed for his incompetence. We have a duty to make life hard for incompetent therapists. Report them; make formal complaints against them. Most people simply do not believe their efforts can have an effect, but they do. File formal complaints. In time politicians will recognize this as something useful too. DEI is dying now because many many people kept making it harder and harder for them to continue. Reason does eventually win out.
Only about a quarter or third of the way in, but am reading “TIME TO THINK, The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children” by Hannah Barnes. It’s incredible to learn that so many recruited into the business saw very questionable things going on but thought they were just ignorant of whatever the experts knew and just kept following along. I am expecting the author to delve into the impact of social media that catapulted this “science” into the horror show it now is. (A once rare condition of gender dysphoria became practically epidemic and at the same time as so many other problems with young people--see studies by Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff, et al, concerning teem depression, anxiety, suicide.)
Psychotherapy is not based on real science, despite the fact that Freud said it was to be the new science. It is nothing more than generally agreed upon observational correlation. And the team that agrees are highly politically biased. The DSM is not based on any Randomized Trials.
I wouldn’t be as definitive as your statement here about this and am certain many clinicians would take issue with you, but certainly there is much left open to personal observation, interpretation, and opinion in the field. You might be interested in this: https://www.psychdb.com/teaching/1-history-of-dsm
Great article. My perspective is generally influenced by Szaz and a rather dour view of the chemical imbalance view of personality disorders. I certainly recognize that schizophrenia and bipolar and so forth have biological markers, but I am not at all convinced that most personality disorders have biological causes.
I differentiate personality disorders from mental and/or emotional illness. The former may involve structure, the latter may involve chemistry, or each have components of both structure and chemistry. I agree that the knee-jerk to drugs as “treatment” is in essence malpractice. CBT is empirically effective, however. But it takes time and expertise. 🧐
> It’s incredible to learn that so many recruited into the business saw very questionable things going on but thought they were just ignorant of whatever the experts knew and just kept following along.
Well, when the whole premise of what your doing is absurd, how can anything else come off as any more "questionable"?
Abagail, my story goes way back to the 60s when my sister had a "nervous breakdown". I was pretty young but she was acting strange and this was Main Line Philadelphia. So off to the shrink she went. 50 years later, after she has been on lithium for decades, we were on a walk and she causally told me that her psychiatrist had told her (when she was about 14 years) that our parents didn't love her. I was, of course, stunned. I had and have no reason to not believe her. My wife and I have other heart-breakings stories with young people we loved and still love who left our lives right after seeing a psychologist. Something about our affections causing stress. In studying the history of psychiatry and psychology and its inter-weavings into the more authoritarian political frameworks, I found as, course, you and many have found, that the destruction of the family is at the top who of their list and I am sure this "virus" infects most who practice in the psych field - whether knowingly or unknowingly. Brock Chisholm and his ilk state this emphatically and boldly in their mission statements in the 40s regarding psychiatry. Knowing this does not heal our pain but it helps to see that this infection is really rooted into our modern society. Thank you for being so brave.
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
Or, if you're in your late 60s as I am and experienced a series of (screws up his courage) traumatic experiences - there, I said it! - from infancy through the age of 18, child and adolescent therapy was unheard of in my world and families did not talk about unpleasant things. I got to suck it up. White-knuckle it.
Guess what: what doesn't kill you can indeed be an albatross around your neck for decades. I'm still dealing with the gradually lessening after effects of events that occurred six decades ago.
Sorry, grit-and-resilience fundamentalists and trauma denialists, but that is how it is for some people.
Abigail, you're onto something. After my parent's nasty divorce, they placed ME in therapy. It's hard to quantify how damaging it was. Suddenly I felt like everything was my fault, that I was weird, that I was different. I loathed myself. As my terrible home life got worse, I was alternately diagnosed as having antisocial personality disorder AND bipolar disorder. These were the trendy diagnoses before the trans craze.
Funny thing happened after I was on my own and out of therapy: turns out there was nothing wrong with me. I am successful and (usually) happy, no thanks to my parents and the string of incompetent and greedy psychologists and psychiatrists that followed.
Gee, your experience sounds equally as awful as mine was. As a teenager I was forced by my dis functional divorced parents into meeting up with all kinds of nutty unethical psychotherapists and psychiatrists. In reality I was just struggling in a completely normal way as a girl trying to make do in a completely messed up family system. The “mental health professionals” proceeded to label me with all kinds of incorrect diagnosis which I simply did not meet the diagnostic criteria for. Eventually I left them all in the dust and never looked back. By then I was just older and more mature. I quickly figured out how to solve my own problems and proceeded to get married, live a normal life, and raise a happy well adjusted child. Main lesson I learned.... do not ever go near a “mental health professional “ and keep them away from your children.
I so appreciate this comment. Thank you, Ann.
No offense Ms. Shriner, but this is all anecdotal. You don’t seem to have any evidence to back up your hypothesis .(btw the people expressing their experiences here, while validating, are not Gen Z, they are older than that. They also all seem to be children of divorce. Perhaps there is something there, at least as to why the parents took them to therapy and why they were not best at picking out a doctor for their children. Divorce is a watershed moment in a life.)
I think you have an interesting topic, but you have cast your net too wide and too conclusively. If you are going to cast a net that wide you need to look at the variables; Why, from BOTH the parent’s perspective and the child’s, was the child sent to therapy in the first place? It isn’t a given that parents rush their kids off to therapy first thing for no reason. It’s usually because something is completely out of control and they have already tried many things.
So start there: what are the behaviors of the child that prompt parents? It has to be more (at least originally before the “trans craze” on social media) than just I feel awkward in my body.
What about divorce and how it affects families, including kids? What about addictions? You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an addict or child of an addict and how that affects their thinking and behaviors, and can lead them to become addicts, but not necessarily the same addiction! For example, the child of an alcoholic may, in teen years (always tumultuous anyway), develop an eating disorder, a drug habit, a gambling addiction, etc.
And what about ADHD/ADD? You seem to have reached conclusions about that too. Is it “real”? Or is it misdiagnosed MORE often than NOT, and are kids medicated MORE often than NOT, and are those who receive medication adversely affected MORE often than NOT? You are simplistically and reductively coming to a conclusion based on anecdotal evidence.
I’m not all for medicating kids, especially messing with hormones-which are extremely powerful biological processes- nor making permanent medical decisions like surgeries, nor do I think that all therapists/ therapy is bad. And “buck up buttercup” isn’t always the best way to handle it either. So I think it’s just as important to slow your roll on this as it is to slow the transitioners.
It seems to me too that everyone is forgetting that puberty is a tumultuous time that lasts years while at the same time kids are still LEARNING. And to learn they must be curious. To be curious about the opposite sex, their bodies, how they work, what it feels like to be in your own body, especially while it changes, etc. It seems everyone has forgotten kids explore. Adults used to call it playing doctor (or doctors and nurses.) How about going at it from that angle? I don’t know the answers, but this article isn’t well supported. Just my thoughts.
Sounds like our experiences were very similar. It was quackery. Sad to hear that children are even more vulnerable than ever, with more harmful diagnoses and treatment. At least no one put me on testosterone or tried to surgically change my gender.
Well, if the shrink had told you that you were fine, he’d lose a customer….
So resonates with a friends experience - 16 years with a psychiatrist that did next to nothing to stop self-harm— always knew it was more a matter of a brilliant person seeing the injustice in a world determined to pretend that was crazy instead of true. When my friend realized that she was smarter than the psych, she just got on with it and has led a fulfilling life with no further self-harm and a career of service to others (though NOT in the mental health field).
I have had some personal interaction with mental health professionals and consider in general they are more insane than the people they are supposedly trying to help.
These are a few anagrams of 'mental health professional'.
fame hellhole porn Satanist
feel help hormonal Satanist
freemasons hip lethal talon
Satan is a Hebrew god . . . Satanism is a Jewish cult . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/satanism-is-a-jewish-cult
What an incredible story, Dave. Thank you so much for sharing it.
I seem to remember reading an argument that the success rate for psychiatrists was about the same as traditional African witch "doctors" ... Though those scare quotes might also be reasonably applied to many in the first group.
Whole bunch of "doctors" in this clusterfuck who should lose their licenses -- if not be strung up by their nuts and left to twist in the wind -- once the dust settles.
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
https://nationalvanguard.org/2019/06/the-jewish-pioneers-of-sexual-degeneracy-in-1920s-berlin/
"Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left." -- Aldous Huxley
LoL. You may remember the Ballad of Sigmund Freud by the Chad Mitchell Trio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d7O5no7W6k
https://genius.com/The-chad-mitchell-trio-the-ballad-of-sigmund-freud-lyrics
"Well, it started in Vienna not so many years ago
When not enough folks were getting sick
That a starving young physician tried to better his position
By discovering what made his patients tick
He forgot about sclerosis and invented the psychosis
And a hundred ways that sex could be enjoyed
He adopted as his credo, 'Down repression, up libido!'
And that was the start of Doctor Sigmund Freud"
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
https://nationalvanguard.org/2019/06/the-jewish-pioneers-of-sexual-degeneracy-in-1920s-berlin/
Such prescience about our own era in this Huxley quote notwithstanding the fact that medical science has also made huge advances in the treatment of bacterial diseases and cancer etc. The prescience is his foreseeing how what Abigail calls the bad feelings industry got hold of a seductive snake oil.....a delusory prospect of offering a 'cure' for plain ordinary human unhappiness.
As regards cancer sadly the only advance medical science has made is to cause cancer to increase by promoting big pharma poisons as 'treatments'. Big pharma use statistics to try and show they do help but like everything big pharma it is smoke and mirrors.
I have had my own experience of what is called cancer and immuno-therapy.
https://baldmichael.substack.com/p/sodium-nitrite-e250-the-poison-in
Sadly, most of my family perished of their cancers within a year of diagnosis.
But a cousin lasted 15 years after a diagnosis of stage-IV metastatic breast cancer. Two oncologists said there was nothing to be done for her, but a third said, "I think we can work together."
And work they did. It wasn't always easy, but those 15 years were good ones for my cousin. Her oncologist cared about her. I am grateful to her and to Big Pharma.
Reading about what was done to Chloe Cole and other confused and misguided children infuriates me. I’m glad brave people like Abigail Shrier are drawing attention to this. We need a societal reckoning, the sooner the better.
People don't realize how broken, corrupt, and full of pseudoscience and baseless pop psychology the entire field of therapy is. There's a real need for therapy for some people, but the vast majority of those practicing it right now don't have the training or skills needed to do it properly and are causing more harm than good.
Defining what “proper therapy” is reveals part of the problem.
Thank you for protecting our daughters. We must remain vigilant against Manson family-style cult behavior that involves love bombing, obedience, and mutilation. What is the best way to protect women’s sports and spaces? https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-save-womens-sports-riley-gaines
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
https://nationalvanguard.org/2019/06/the-jewish-pioneers-of-sexual-degeneracy-in-1920s-berlin/
Both of my sons were diagnosed with anxiety and depression as children and both have owned these labels. Had I known that behavioral counselors were only making them worse, I would never have used them. Now that they're adults, I don't know how to drag them both back to healthy. My oldest son's anxiety is so crippling that he's never had a paying job and lives off of disability. It's very real. I need a book "Gen Z was given a mental health diagnosis, and you shouldn't buy into it anymore".
I wonder if someone like John Rosemond could be helpful? He’s a psychologist who speaks against his profession a lot. The APA (I think that’s the right acronym) attempted to remove his license because he doesn’t go along with their current crap (for lack of a better term). He’s a very down to earth, practical, “old school” type. He’s the person I’d first think to look toward — if I weren’t completely turned off from psychology altogether.
Thank you. I’ll check him out.
Second John Rosemond.
Cure: get off the sideline, get in the fvcking game, grow up, get a job, be independent.
Worked for my kid.
As I read this I thought that it was spot on but did not relate to our particular family experience until I got to:
"For well over a decade, teachers and school counselors have assumed the mandate (and curricula, and use of instructional time) to play shrink indiscriminately with kids, often styled as “Social Emotional Learning.”"
Yes! The teachers and counselor at our daughter's high school called our daughter a crazy name and "he" behind our backs and then would not stop when we learned of it. This is a serious psychological intervention/playing shrink and not something anyone should do with another's minor child. Yet, the do. All the time. And, they call it "Let the child lead". Or, something. We parents were the dinosaur bad guys which created triangulation with our daughter. Love reigns in our family once more but all of this has to change. And, there need to be professional consequences for many - including Doctor Jason Rafferty, Doctor Jack Turban, Satanic Panic Doctor Diane Ehrensaft and Admiral Richard Levine.
But, I agree that the ROGD travesty needs to be viewed in the context of SEL/DEI/"Social Justice" replacing basic learning in school. Schools do not have a right to take up any of that. How did this get decided without parents even having a say? The State does not own our children but it is sure trying...
You may be interested to know that
Jason Rafferty anagrams to 'jr foe fry Satan'
Jack L. Turban anagrams to 'burnt jackal'
Diane Ehrensaft anagrams to 'her define Satan'
Rachel Leland Levine anagrams to 'led real evil channel'
Over here in the states I would like to see a President DeSantis next - but at least if it's Trump he is likely to fire Admiral Doctor Richard First Female Rachael Levine - Assistant US Heath Secretary and Child Mutilation Enthusiast.
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
https://nationalvanguard.org/2019/06/the-jewish-pioneers-of-sexual-degeneracy-in-1920s-berlin/
The point about "overcoming" vs "accommodation" is so on the mark. We need to quit teaching kids to fear being uncomfortable or challenged and start teaching how to think critically, solve problems, and conquer difficulty.
Many parents today have a hard time watching their children suffer even in normal ways, as part of natural growth. We've convinced ourselves that life is meant to be comfortable, when in reality it is a challenge. We need to educate and encourage parents to be okay with their kids discomfort in order to allow them to authentically grow.
As a former Corrections Officer in a maximum security prison who then became a therapist. Also as a male whose dad committed suicide when I was six years old. I can say I am not your typical therapist and I am an outsider in the profession.
I intensely dislike most other therapists. Other therapists are overwhelmingly neurotic and extremely emotionally sensitive women. The idea that you should help a client stand up on their own two feet. Build some grit and transition out of therapy is considered toxic. Good therapy also involves confronting distorted thinking.
Therapy too often becomes a life long crutch, rather than help to get better.
Excessive anxiety is usually a lack of confidence. Depression is often being stuck and lacking direction in life. These are not hard for a good therapist to fix.
Some problems like PTSD, Anorexia, Gender Dysphoria, OCD are more durable and can take a long time to treat.
Pop culture has been making girls and women feel bad about their bodies forever. Dissatisfaction with our bodies and who we are is very real. Approaching the problem by saying "all you have to do to feel better about yourself is take cross-sex hormones and have major surgery to rearrange your sex organs" is insane.
I think parents in general should channel more of their inner Fran Lebowitz.
"Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success."
Benign neglect is wildly underrated. Ensure they don't have unfettered access to the cesspool called internet, feign interest in grades and daily location, ensure 6pm family dinner is an absolute rule, remind them that nobody likes a drama queen, feed them, clothe them, love them, "only ask them what they want for dinner if they are paying...."
"Don't bother discussing sex with small children. They rarely have anything to add."
In short, treat them as poorly educated adults, but with more hope in a 12 year old than a 32 year old, and they will surprise you, take responsibility, and become adults.
Having a rancid alcoholic father and untreated bipolar mother with a good aunt as distant backup seems to have done fine for me.
In my child's forth grade class, the teacher asked each child how are they feeling on a scale of 1-10 during normal class time. after kids give their answer the teacher asks each child to explain their answer.
i cant imagine any teacher from my childhood asking this.
That specific exercise is more harmful than people know. I discuss it in BAD THERAPY.
Abigail, I can best this story. I’m currently enrolled at a local university for an MA in Creative Writing. Last semester, our prof began each course meeting by polling us to rate our mood: Excellent, Good, or Poor and explain our choices. Our ages ranged from 22 to 67. So ridiculous.
Ugh!!!
Ridiculous. Feelings are not truth. They should not rule us, nor dictate how we show up in the classroom, unless there are major trauma is happening for the child.
My kid's teacher on the last day before Xmas break asked everything to say one thing they were excited about for Christmas and one thing they were worried about. Bad bad bad.
Explain?
Why i think the teacher is wrong to do that?
Therapists are the secular world's version of priests or pastors, and they're way worse at the job priests or pastors used to do.
I’m sorry so many of you have had bad experiences with therapists. I have a great psychologist. Believe me… She gave me structure and helped me figure out how to be a better… Everything. She’s retiring next month. I’m not neurotic and I haven’t seen her in a pathological way, but she has guided me through some very difficult times in my life. Therapeutic training has changed, and many therapists have become social advocates. But not all of us… I was trained well and had a great model.I try very hard to be a good therapist. To be sure, the profession can be sloppy and soft. But at its best, it can be transformative. When a person understands themselves, they are more likely to understand others. Therapy should not be enabling. It should be empowering in a functional, effective way.
Therapists are 'the rapists', raping people's minds. 'atheists pr' is a very apt anagram of Therapists.
Is there a movement of people who sue psychologists? I reported the one who pretended to treat my daughter for a HIPAA violation and he was eventually fined over $10,000, by HHS, and listed on their web site. Though that did not help my daughter, at least he was harmed for his incompetence. We have a duty to make life hard for incompetent therapists. Report them; make formal complaints against them. Most people simply do not believe their efforts can have an effect, but they do. File formal complaints. In time politicians will recognize this as something useful too. DEI is dying now because many many people kept making it harder and harder for them to continue. Reason does eventually win out.
Didn’t the Tavistock Center in Britain have to close because of so many lawsuits against them?
Only about a quarter or third of the way in, but am reading “TIME TO THINK, The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children” by Hannah Barnes. It’s incredible to learn that so many recruited into the business saw very questionable things going on but thought they were just ignorant of whatever the experts knew and just kept following along. I am expecting the author to delve into the impact of social media that catapulted this “science” into the horror show it now is. (A once rare condition of gender dysphoria became practically epidemic and at the same time as so many other problems with young people--see studies by Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff, et al, concerning teem depression, anxiety, suicide.)
Psychotherapy is not based on real science, despite the fact that Freud said it was to be the new science. It is nothing more than generally agreed upon observational correlation. And the team that agrees are highly politically biased. The DSM is not based on any Randomized Trials.
I wouldn’t be as definitive as your statement here about this and am certain many clinicians would take issue with you, but certainly there is much left open to personal observation, interpretation, and opinion in the field. You might be interested in this: https://www.psychdb.com/teaching/1-history-of-dsm
Great article. My perspective is generally influenced by Szaz and a rather dour view of the chemical imbalance view of personality disorders. I certainly recognize that schizophrenia and bipolar and so forth have biological markers, but I am not at all convinced that most personality disorders have biological causes.
I differentiate personality disorders from mental and/or emotional illness. The former may involve structure, the latter may involve chemistry, or each have components of both structure and chemistry. I agree that the knee-jerk to drugs as “treatment” is in essence malpractice. CBT is empirically effective, however. But it takes time and expertise. 🧐
Another comment... If you don't yet, consider following Dr. Vinay Prasad whose article today is pretty incredible for the admission concerning science in it! https://www.sensible-med.com/p/fraud-distortion-and-truth-in-science
> It’s incredible to learn that so many recruited into the business saw very questionable things going on but thought they were just ignorant of whatever the experts knew and just kept following along.
Well, when the whole premise of what your doing is absurd, how can anything else come off as any more "questionable"?
Sounds like a good one! I’m excited about Haidt’s new book too.
Abagail, my story goes way back to the 60s when my sister had a "nervous breakdown". I was pretty young but she was acting strange and this was Main Line Philadelphia. So off to the shrink she went. 50 years later, after she has been on lithium for decades, we were on a walk and she causally told me that her psychiatrist had told her (when she was about 14 years) that our parents didn't love her. I was, of course, stunned. I had and have no reason to not believe her. My wife and I have other heart-breakings stories with young people we loved and still love who left our lives right after seeing a psychologist. Something about our affections causing stress. In studying the history of psychiatry and psychology and its inter-weavings into the more authoritarian political frameworks, I found as, course, you and many have found, that the destruction of the family is at the top who of their list and I am sure this "virus" infects most who practice in the psych field - whether knowingly or unknowingly. Brock Chisholm and his ilk state this emphatically and boldly in their mission statements in the 40s regarding psychiatry. Knowing this does not heal our pain but it helps to see that this infection is really rooted into our modern society. Thank you for being so brave.
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
https://nationalvanguard.org/2019/06/the-jewish-pioneers-of-sexual-degeneracy-in-1920s-berlin/
Or, if you're in your late 60s as I am and experienced a series of (screws up his courage) traumatic experiences - there, I said it! - from infancy through the age of 18, child and adolescent therapy was unheard of in my world and families did not talk about unpleasant things. I got to suck it up. White-knuckle it.
Guess what: what doesn't kill you can indeed be an albatross around your neck for decades. I'm still dealing with the gradually lessening after effects of events that occurred six decades ago.
Sorry, grit-and-resilience fundamentalists and trauma denialists, but that is how it is for some people.