I’ve known for a short while that psychotherapists (both psychiatrists and psychologists) are increasingly evincing antisemitism in their professional communications, despite the fact that the field was started by—and still largely consists of—Jews. One would think that therapists, trained to be empathic and caring, wouldn’t go so far as to criticize and even refuse to treat Jewish patients, but that is sometimes the case. I know it’s true in Chicago, where the American Psychological Association had an online discussion group that became increasingly antisemitic, to the point where the APA President had to stop the bigotry.
In the post below from Commentary (click on screenshot, or find it archived here), psychiatrist and Yale lecturer Sally Satel describes how the Jew-hating termites are boring into the structure of American psychotherapy:
Some excerpts. Note that Jewish therapists or patients are often called “Zionists”, even when their views on Israel are unknown. This shows more than ever that “anti-Zionist” is simply a euphemism for “Jew hater” or “antisemite”.
It starts in Chicago:
Shortly after October 7, 2023, an Arizona-based group called the Jewish Therapist Collective received a sharp increase in calls from Jewish therapists. The collective is an online community that offers support to Jewish therapists and helps Jewish patients find welcoming practitioners. Its director, Halina Brooke, learned that in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, many Jewish therapists were being told by their colleagues that their very presence was ‘triggering to non-Jewish therapists.’”
A therapist in Chicago named Heba Ibrahim-Joudeh felt that patients, too, needed to be protected from Zionist therapists. In winter 2024, Ibrahim-Joudeh, a member of the Chicago Anti-Racist Therapists Facebook group, organized a “blacklist” of local Zionist therapists. “I’ve put together a list of therapists/practices with Zionist affiliations that we should avoid referring clients to,” she wrote to colleagues, who responded with thanks.
As I understand it, that list was put together not even knowing whether all the blacklisted therapists were Jewish; some were included simply because they had “Jewish names.”
In 2025, a young Jewish woman had her first appointment with a psychotherapist in Washington, D.C. During the session, she mentioned a recent months-long stay in Israel. The therapist, who was part of a group practice, smiled and said, “It’s lucky you were assigned to me. None of my colleagues will treat a Zionist.”
The intolerance is not confined to isolated examples. It’s roiling the American Psychological Association (APA), the nation’s foremost accreditor for psychological training and continuing education programs. Tensions reached a new level last winter when more than 3,500 mental health professionals calling themselves Psychologists Against Antisemitism sent a letter to the APA’s president and board. The signers called upon the association to “address the serious and systemic problem of antisemitism/anti-Jewish hate.” The letter told of APA-hosted conferences for educational credits in which speakers made “official statements and presentations [including] rationalizations of violence against Jews and Israelis; antisemitic tropes; Holocaust distortion; minimization of Jewish victimization, fear, and grief.”
Singled out by name was the former president of the APA Society of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology from 2023 to 2025, Lara Sheehi. In addition to diagnosing Zionism as a “settler psychosis,” Sheehi had posted expletive-laced messages on social media, including one stating “destroy Zionism” and another describing Israelis as “genocidal f—ks.” Her sentiments infiltrated the annual meeting of the APA in Denver last summer, where, according to psychologist Dean McKay of Fordham University, professional Listserv postings urged attendees to wear keffiyehs at the convention and read a “land and genocide statement” before giving their presentations, some of which contained Hamas propaganda. McKay has alsodocumented cases of therapists urging their clients to go to anti-Israel protests as part of what they see as their role in promoting activism.
Satel describes how some therapists reject patients who say they are Zionists, with the therapists explaining that “their values do not align”. That is a violation of how therapists are supposed to work, without regard to whether their political opinions are in synch. Yes, therapists can reject patients who are hostile, or those whom they think they can’t help because of other factors. (One example: patients who seek treatment for alcoholism “because my wife told me to come here,” for therapy won’t work unless the patient comes in of their own volition.) But requiring an alignment of politics a professional violation.
. . .one might be surprised to read the APA’s current Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct: “Psychologists establish and maintain knowledge and awareness of their professional and personal values, experiences, culture, and social contexts. They identify and limit biases that may detract from the well-being of those with whom they professionally interact.”
These tenets do not preclude therapists from making choices about whom they will treat. Such decisions, however, should spring from an individualized consideration of whether they can serve a patient well, not whether they morally disapprove of him. A therapist who lost a loved one on October 7, for example, might not want a patient who is a pro-Hamas activist. A therapist with relatives in Gaza could understandably pass up a potential patient who organizes pro-Israel marches.
But those tenets don’t matter. The culture of therapy is becoming an ideological enterprisem with spreading “social justice” takes priority over helping the patient. Bolding below is mine:
. . . the culture of psychotherapy is changing. Before the murder of George Floyd, an identitarian approach to therapy had been simmering for at least a decade. Afterward, it burst upon the clinical scene. My colleague Val Thomas, a psychotherapist in the UK and editor of Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice, calls it Critical Social Justice Therapy. Untested as a form of therapy, it views patients as either perpetrators or victims of oppression and understands this simple dynamic as the root of their problems.
Social justice therapists—who see themselves as activists first, healers second—usurp the goals of therapy. They override patients’ needs and preferences in favor of their own politicized aims, such as “dismantling racism.” To the extent that Zionism is, in some quarters, considered a form of racism or white supremacy, pro-Israel patients face an uncertain reception when they show up at therapists’ offices.
. . . Yet now, regardless of the best interest of patients, the post–October 7 therapist seems to feel entitled to make his own comfort paramount, to quell his own anxiety. In the realm of responsible psychotherapy, this is a grave transgression.
If you’re Jewish and seeking therapy, it might be useful to ask potential therapists about their reaction to your beliefs. As Satel says, “Today, Jewish and Zionist individuals who seek psychological care must search carefully for an experienced therapist who, no matter his or her politics, will regard the patient, foremost, as a fellow human who is suffering.”
Even if you’re one of the rare Jews who doesn’t favor the existence of Israel, you’re still considered a “Zionist” (you’re still a “racist” and “white supremacist”, something I was called this morning), and shouldn’t have to spell that out for a therapist.
I had this post in draft, and saw this morning that Steve Pinker posted about Sally’s article, noting that he’d quit the APA some years ago. Apparently at that time antisemitism was already on the rise.
This should, of course, read “anti-Zionist”.
oops, will fix, thanks
Yes. I’ve read several articles about this phenomenon. It seems that the APA has contracted the Jew-hate virus. There is no cure.
And yes, in today’s climate, anti-Zionism = antisemitism.
“In 2025, a young Jewish woman had her first appointment with a psychotherapist in Washington, D.C. During the session, she mentioned a recent months-long stay in Israel. The therapist, who was part of a group practice, smiled and said, “It’s lucky you were assigned to me. None of my colleagues will treat a Zionist.”
What?! Yet more evidence that the therapy professions, and maybe most of social psychology, have been ideologically comprised.
Also, what is with the gender imbalance in psychology? Something like 75% of students in psychology graduate programs are women. Yet this was a field that men used to be interested in (indeed, were among the founders!). Does anyone know why this is?
It’s the usual pattern of STEM-capable women heading for the empathetic people-oriented fields such as psychology, medicine, veterinary science, and not to the abstract or “thing”-oriented fields such as engineering, chemistry, mathematics and computer science.
There’s nothing wrong with this in principle, so long as the dominance doesn’t lead to ideological bias.
This suggests a 3 to 1 difference in interest and ability favoring women. I don’t believe that men are that less competent or interested in psychology compared to women.
Something else is amiss.
Why not? The equivalent figure for veterinary science is 84%. (For engineering it’s the opposite, at about 26%.) Men and women really are, on average, quite a bit different in their interests.
Last comment from me…I’m close to flouting the roolz.
Take pharmacy…it’s now completely dominated by women, like 80/20.
Is that because women are more interested/better at filling prescriptions than men? Or is a large part of this the concerted effort by pharmacy schools to preferentially admit women to redress a gender imbalance…this by the way actually happened (and continues to happen).
So similar to pharmacy, have psychology programs systematically favored women over men, even when the men were equally qualified, which has now contributed to a large gender imbalance favoring women? And over time, this will reduce the amount of male applicants, as they realize that they are less likely to be admitted even if highly qualified? And then people will falsely conclude from this that the men are “less interested in psychology as a subject.”
I think this must be part of the answer.
Jeff, I don’t know if imbalances in pharm. school admissions is done to redress past gender imbalance. If ~ 80% of them are now women, I’d say the former gender imbalance is taken care of!
I don’t have a feeling for why the current imbalance exists, but I don’t see why it can’t be bc of differences in interests, or differences in family/life/work goals.
The difference (between men and women) in interests is well documented. The difference in talents is less clear. There is some evidence that men are (on average) better at math and women (on average) have better verbal skills. The evidence on mental rotation is less ambiguous. How any of this would impact psychotherapy isn’t clear (at least to me).
Hi Jeff, sounds like you’re coming from a place of fear that somehow social justice warriors are out to get men. Like the other posters here have stated, it’s probably more a simple matter of accepting a natural gender diversity of interests, nothing nefarious going on to provoke insecure men into thinking they’re not wanted.
ISTM some of that fear may be reasonable, since males are generally considered to be disproportionately more ‘oppressive’, so SJWs would tend to preferentially target them.
“Hi Jeff, sounds like you’re coming from a place of fear that somehow social justice warriors are out to get men.”
Nope. “Place of fear”…I resent this kind of armchair psychology. I am simply looking at the data. It is 100% true that, for example, pharmacy schools preferentially admitted women over men, initially to address an overrepresentation of men in the field. But unfortunately, once the balance was corrected, the affirmative action policies favoring women were never rolled back, and instead became part of normal operations. Again, this is a more plausible explanation for the incredible overrepresentation of women in pharmacy over men…a field that up until recently men were happy to work in.
Same with psychology. 75% women grad students…that’s a staggering overrepresentation in a field that men have previously shown interest and capability in.
To ignore how schools and institutions put their thumb on the scale in favor of women applicants is in my view obtuse…and very hypocritical. When men are overrepresented to this degree, it is viewed as a major problem to be addressed. But when women are…the explanation shifts to meh, I guess men aren’t cut out/interested…move along nothing to see here.
When a profession or trade becomes “feminized”, which means women start to recognize it as something compatible with family life and follow their highschool herd into it, men desert it. Why? Because for men, “feminized” means that society will regard it as “women’s work” and deduce, correctly, that they can get it for less money. Insurance will pay open-endedly for low-value “woo” work in aggregate — it can’t control the number of psychotherapists hanging out their shingles — but it won’t pay that much for each practitioner. Whereas if you want neurosurgeons, computer scientists, and snowplow drivers to be consumed by their work at all hours, you have to pay big bucks for them.
Women change the social/professional dynamics of professions they come to dominate and go on to change the definition of what the work even is and how it shall be done. Only men who are themselves comfortable with this new order — let’s call them beta men — will join a profession where traditional male values, interpersonal styles, and coping mechanisms are suppressed as sexist.
And of course a man who is not obviously homosexual surrounded by female colleagues whom he doesn’t really fit in well with is at ever present danger of a sexual harassment complaint he won’t be able to defend — it being almost certain to be adjudicated by female HR officials –, or of just being censured as “difficult.”
Antisemitism has always been a litmus test for me. If an organization promotes it or connives at it, it is rotten to the core. If women from campus bring their anitsemitism into the professions along with their “female values”, then yes I’m judging harshly here. I wondered why the APA was so quick to condemn Lisa Littman’s exploratory findings of rapid-onset gender dysphoria as being “transphobic.” Now I think I know.
Interesting and important points to be reminded of and considered. Thanks for that.
I can’t argue with a word of that, Leslie. Whilst I don’t know (but fear) what the kids in medical schools are like these days, I should step up to separate psychiatry from non-medical psychotherapy. The latter is populated with psychologists, social workers and nurses, all of whom have a very different mindset to those who have been to medical school. Without naming names, I know someone who is the only psychiatrist in a public mental health clinic, surrounded by therapists of other stripes. The difference in attitude to work, waiting lists, time-keeping, attendance, sick leave etc etc is quite striking, not to even begin on the ideological differences that are the topic here. Those must not be touched upon within the clinic, or there will be Trouble.
That public mental health clinic you speak of is just one case study, not enough to generate any conclusion about how well the community is being served. We should be glad that these non-medical psychotherapists with their different mindsets work side by side with psychiatrists. We need both. I am a social worker psychotherapist, and I can tell you, we need a lot more psychiatrists with their medical way of thinking! What’s going on in this country that psychiatrists, especially child psychiatrist are in such short supply? What we also need is more practitioners of all stripes to have a better grounding in evolutionary psychology, it might go a long way to creating a shared perspective.
Hmm…
Imagine the response if a white therapist refused to treat a black person on the grounds that “their values do not align”. Ditto “straight” and “gay”.
Additional examples are left as an exercise for the reader.
I’ve never thought much of psychotherapy. I know there are good therapists out there, but the whole area just seems so close to woo that it is hard to take seriously. In fact many of the therapists I’ve encountered seem to embrace various forms of woo. Overall it seems an area devoid of rigor and too open to opinion. I think it’s too much to expect, therefore, that the profession wouldn’t be infected with the fads of the day, including antisemiticism.
Most therapists are part of the left. The left has been taken over by anti-semitism and identitarianism. News at 10.
So some unknown number of instances of anti-semitism occur in a large population, as evidenced by anecdotes including comments on-line. And this somehow warrants a conclusion about wide-spread anti-semitism among APA members (about 200k) and among therapists (almost 300k in USA, incomplete overlap between two groups). Perhaps a little over-generalization? Put another way, would some inference like this be acceptable in a scientific journal? Not that the House Committee on Education and Workforce is likely to be concerned about such niceties given its past witch hunts.
On fields seen as relatively more coded as “for the women”/“for the men”. There has for a long time been the idea in philosophy that it’s men who do logic and philosophy of logic, and it’s women who do ethics. This goes with the idea that logic is tougher. This conception goes back to Wittgenstein, who treated Elizabeth Anscombe as an honorary man.
I think that not supporting certain Israeli political moves is not antisemitic. or anti-Jewish.
Well, sure. If you are informed enough about Israeli politics to have an opinion about how powerful their Supreme Court should be, or how much support the Haifa Symphony Orchestra should get, then go ahead. Opine away. Not antisemitic at all, and even if it was, so what? But don’t expect the Israeli politicians to pay attention to you, because you don’t vote for them. Do you have opinions about the politics in other foreign countries where you also don’t vote?
Now, “certain” leaves a lot unsaid, I think.
I’m now a foreigner and not a voter in US elections, and I have very strong opinions and emotions about the current politics in my former homeland. Various US activities (or lack) do impact foreigners, who then naturally have opinions about the politics which led to these.
But doesn’t anti-Zionism mean opposition to the very existence of the world’s only Jewish state? Not the same as criticizing some policies of the current government.
I can think of several states I’d be glad to be rid of, and expect you can too. But in the case of Israel it’s not so much the state they abhor but the people as a whole race. Very big difference. In this century “Zionism” almost always means “Jews”, as many WEIT items show.
There are a lot of people in the world who are not US citizens and have very strong opinions about US politics! The fact is that US politics affect the rest of us, like it or not.
“Social justice” psychology is another example of the scientific rigor of a “discipline” in which a high percentage of experiments cannot be replicated. When your discipline is based on feelings and is unmoored from rigorous scientific principles, basing your practice on your own feelings apparently makes sense. Medicine is in the process of jumping the shark culturally. Unfortunately, that screws those of us dependent upon medicine and the people toiling in that vineyard.
One of the things that makes me even angrier is that this kind of perversion makes me silently cheer on the financial attacks against the academy that fosters that philosophy by the DFT administration. And I’m not proud of that.
Whats “DFT”?
Donald profanity Trump
Aha!…Duh!
Another institution almost completely marched through?
Very discouraging. Between the anti-Zionist left and the groyper right, things are not good.
Very disturbing. I’m glad I resigned from the APA decades ago – then over their zeal for torturing animals in psych experiments.
“Zionist” just means supporting the existence of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state. It is a liberal democracy, in contrast to the 50-plus Islamic states. If any states are illegitimate it is the latter not the former.
Helen Andrews wrote a thought-provoking piece in Compact Magazine, “The Great Feminization” about how what happens when women become the majority in a particular field. I work in a field with almost no men in it anymore, obstetrics. My colleagues are wonderful people, but they take a lot of leave to have their babies. They take up the slack for each other while those on leave are away, but it doesn’t feel great to always be the one taking up the slack.
I think that as the percentage becomes 50-60 percent women in a particular field, men consciously or unconsciously see that such a pattern may happen in their workplace and make other choices. I think it could be possible to change that by offering childless people and fathers periodic 4-month leaves or paying a premium to them for never taking no/short leave.
There’s been institutional capture across the board: not only the APA, but also the ACA, the ABA, etc. Further up the pipeline, there’s institutional capture of university clinical programs graduating psychologists, counselors, social workers, as well as lawyers, doctors. The faculty and the administration of most universities swing leftist: leftist progressive and Marxist faculty are dominant and faculty who identify as conservative are slivers of the faculty pool. Throughout the psychology pipeline there’s been institutional capture by leftists, and Trump has his work cut out for him. With monopoly control, social justice warriors in higher education can get away with antisemitism without much in the way of recourse.
Hi. The Open Therapy Institute works to neutralize Critical Social Justice in psychological treatments. It’s astonishing how deep and pervasive the influence of CSJ is in education and training of therapists, etc. I am not surprised to see this.