Therapy’s Identity Politics Problem

As a psychotherapist with more than two decades of experience, I have observed this shift firsthand. Hundreds of patients have come to me after being frustrated or even harmed by previous therapists, who encouraged them to interpret their struggles through the lens of identity politics.

A black man, for example, came to me after a failed round of therapy with another provider. He wasn’t just anxious; he was disillusioned. “I went in for help managing anxiety,” he said. “But the therapist kept steering the conversation back to racism, even though I never brought it up. I left feeling like I was being treated as a black person first, and a human being second.”

A gay man told a similar story. “I wanted help managing stress at work,” he said. “But every session focused on supposed shame over being gay, even though that wasn’t why I was there. I felt pushed into a narrative that didn’t fit me.”

Graduate programs are no longer producing healers, but political activists with therapy licenses. Instead of teaching students to treat anxiety, depression, or relationship issues using evidence-based methods, many programs now encourage trainees to develop “critical consciousness.” That means guiding clients to interpret their distress through the lens of systemic oppression, rather than addressing individual agency, patterns, or choices.

At the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, for example, the Master’s in Counseling program is “grounded in principles of social justice.” Its mission is “to prepare and inspire a diverse student body to provide culturally sensitive mental health services that support resiliency, recovery, and social justice.”

Similarly, Antioch University boasts that it teaches trainees to confront “oppression” and become agents of “racial, economic, and environmental justice.” In 2023, a graduate student sued Antioch, alleging that the school trained counselors to label white clients as “privileged” and minority clients as victims.

This activist mindset is taking over the field. The American Counseling Association—one of the profession’s largest organizations—instructs therapists to “employ empowerment-based theories to address internalized privilege” and “engage in social action to alter laws and policies.”

Even after graduation, the indoctrination continues. Therapists are encouraged to attend $1,500 “anti-racism” retreats and “Getting Free From Whiteness” workshops. Marketed as enrichment, these sessions don’t promote empathy. They entrench bias—replacing one prejudice with another—and alienate the very clients they claim to serve.

There is no evidence this approach works. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has more than 13,000 studies supporting its effectiveness. Search the National Library of Medicine for “social justice counseling,” and you’ll find almost nothing. Yet universities treat it as gospel.

Patients become collateral damage. One politically moderate man came to me after a disastrous couples-therapy session with another professional. When his girlfriend flagged a Donald Trump photo he had posted online, the therapist told him to “atone for being a MAGA Republican” and to “fight for justice” by voting for Kamala Harris. He left feeling ambushed.

These stories reveal a profession that has stopped asking, “What’s wrong, and how can we help you move forward?” Instead, it asks, “Where do you fit in the oppression hierarchy?”

Programs justify this shift by claiming that it’s motivated by empathy. But empathy isn’t ideology. The identity-politics treatment approach reduces people to stereotypes, erodes trust, and turns therapy into a weapon in the culture war.

Therapists can and should address social and cultural issues when they are truly relevant. But forcing ideology into every session is malpractice.

Patients don’t come to therapy to be sorted into identity boxes. They come to heal and move forward. Right now, therapy is failing them.

Photo:  Kemal Yildirim / E+ via Getty Images