A lot of people ask me how therapists can go along with the transgender affirmative care movement. There are many reasons we can point to illustrating how hard institutions and public policies are pushing this agenda. The amount of censorship and cancel culture around this topic is off the charts. Grad schools everywhere are teaching that there is an urgency to affirm a gender questioning child or that child will kill herself. However, those who have been paying attention, and those with common sense know these are lies. Yet people STILL ask, how can people who are so insightful be so blind on this issue? I honestly don’t fully know, but as someone “on the inside”, I have some ideas.
Therapists want to be good
I believe therapists have a higher drive than the general population to see themselves as doing more ‘good’ than the average person. I know I did, and it takes one to know one. It took the ideas to becoming so extreme and militant for me to question whether my profession was actually doing ‘good’. At this point, I do not believe that owning a dog is racist nor do I think the term “master bedroom” is offensive. It took some silliness for the woke vail to be fully lifted from my eyes. However, I’m not fresh from indoctrination school - I mean grad school. If new therapists are taught the affirmative care model is the straight path to goodness, I think they will fall for it harder than the general population.
Ask any therapist or social worker why they joined the profession and it’s usually a simple answer. They want to help. They felt called to make this world a better place. I did, and still do. When I was younger, in my early 20’s, and I was just beginning my career, this feeling was overpowering. I wanted to help so much, I sometimes sacrificed my own well-being to do so. I was working in New York inner city schools and gave my heart and soul to the kids and families I was working with. With mentorship and maturity, I learned this was not sustainable, and in reality I wasn’t helping anyone this way. But I had appropriate guidance that enabled my learning curve, which is not found often today.
Transference and Counter-Transference
I was trained by New York University with a psychodynamic approach. As part of my training, I learned about a concept called counter-transference. That is a fancy therapy term for the feelings your clients bring up in you. I was required to write papers on how clients evoked feelings in me and how that could both guide my work and get in the way of ethical practice. A related concept is transference, which is when you actually see someone, like yourself or a close family member in your client. When this happens, it can be helpful in relating to a client, but often it is something to watch closely because it may be an alert to your own unresolved issues. My training in the 90’s emphasized these pitfalls, but many schools do not discuss these ideas anymore. As a clinical supervisor, I helped other therapists analyze their transference and counter-transference so they didn’t displace their issues, insecurities and blind spots onto their clients. This is not an easy task and it takes humility and discipline to constantly be open to these discussions. I do not believe these conversations are happening as commonly anymore. In particular, not around the gender issue.
The Counter-Transference Rescue Fantasy
I believe, on a large scale, many of these helping professionals are living out a form of rescue fantasy with children and it is being reinforced by the media and every major institution. When you believe you need to rescue a child from parents who aren’t doing the right thing, it becomes justifiable to keep secrets, like a new gender identity. Many therapists who were not accepted when they were young project their experience onto their clients. Unfortunately, this can cause them to miss, or minimize important issues their clients have, such as sexual trauma. For example, a gay therapist who struggled coming out of the closet as a young person wants to be that accepting adult their younger self didn’t have. This phenomenon can be very dangerous because these professionals are no longer treating their clients, but are essentially treating their younger selves instead.
Here is an example of a rescue fantasy. This photographer feels called to help trans kids because he is helping his “younger self”:
He is a kind man with good intentions. Unfortunately, we know what the road to hell is paved with.
Important Questions
If you are shopping for a therapist for your child, one good question to ask is how they handle the situation when they see themselves in their clients. An appropriate response would involve some self-reflection and how they do their best to separate their personal experiences from their clinical work. The best answer would be that they consult with a colleague. If they seem like they hadn’t thought about it or are caught off-guard, I would keeping shopping around.
Counter-Transference and Transference may seem like complicated concepts, but asking the right questions and listening to the response can protect your child from working with a therapist that is more focused on themselves than on your child.
Pamela Garfield-Jaeger is a licensed clinical social worker with over 20 years of experience in the mental health field. She has worked in group homes, community-based organizations, hospitals and schools. Pamela was fired from her job last year due to the COVID vaccine mandates. Since then, she has dedicated herself to educating parents on what is appropriate, non-ideologically captured mental health care. She has written a comprehensive parents’ guide to mental health. Click here for Pamela's guide to mental health
IG: @the.truthfultherapist
twitter: @redpilledlcsw
Nice post, thank you. I've been supervising new therapists for some time and they seem to have lost sight of the reality that sometimes clients need to be challenged and indeed made uncomortable for change to tak place. In the outside world the clients mainly just get affirmation. My supervisees seem to think that to challenge a client is somehow rude. Yes in might be countertransferrance or a carryover of Rogerian client centered therapy or a deeper current in the culture of post modernism that any expression of self creation should be sacrosanct. Hope to see more writing by therapists on this topic.
Question, is the "rescue fantasy" dynamic similar to (or the same, even) as the Karpman "drama triangle"?