After close to 20 years in the profession I can firmly say that the real answers to people’s problems are not taught in University and the worldview espoused often does more harm than good. I’m now trying to give my view on where I think it all went wrong and my suggestion for operating as a social worker in a way that will help people rather than just ‘protect’ aka control them. Love your articles. Thanks.
I am a psychologist. A fortunate one, in that I left the university in 1978 and did not rejoin one. For years I missed being part of a university community, but now I'm so glad that I am not.
I have noticed when I attend CE classes that the curriculum for social workers is extremely radical, postmodernist, and lacking in applied clinical theory and skills education. I was shocked by a video clip in which a social work instructor told her students, "You can use your critical theory here," meaning as a clinical intervention with clients. I was shocked and disgusted! Students are being taught to ignore the last 125 years worth of clinical experience with mentally disordered people as well as 50+ years of outcome research. In place of this mountain of knowledge about how to help people, social workers are teaching aspiring clinicians how to indoctrinate clients with postmodern philosophy.
The social work profession reached this point sooner than has my own, but clinical psychology is standing at the edge of the same cliff, and the APA has jumped over it.
Counseling is fully over the cliff with social work, and has been talking about using the clinical space to impress their ideological values on clients since the 1980s.
I’m glad that you missed the worst of it. That makes you a reservoir of functional knowledge. I hope you consider finding ways to transfer your knowledge to others.
All establishment everything has been insane from the beginning. No one's industry from within that control system is an exception. The systems were never corrupted; they followed the track they were created to follow. What a thing does is what it was designed to do.
"Therapists" are confessor priests who serve the ruling bloodlines. Their job is to report "problem children" up the line and lock up anyone who seizes the agency to pay their perpetrators back or end their own life. This is because the rulers see individuals as THEIR property, and no one is allowed to end the life of THEIR property without permission.
"Psychiatrists" are Nazi medical experimenters. This is the full-faced truth of what we are dealing with.
The only complete therapy is justice. The rest is just cope or distraction.
My practice is evidence based. There is no evidence base on the therapeutic value of critical theory. Zero. People who advocate for critical theory as a treatment strategy have to first prove that it is necessary to treat a recognized mental health condition, that it is safer than doing nothing or using an alternative established treatment, and that it is effective in measurable terms. Advocates for critical theory have failed to do this.
I did a year of MSW study and as someone who truly bought into genuine liberal principles... Free speech, the idea that rigorous critical analysis (the goal of the academy) was reading the strongest arguments for competing perspectives and negotiating my way between them... And as a multiple oppressed "white fella" (my only privilege being my race) I do find the emphasis on oppression unhelpful, as someone who was always committed to climbing out of homelessness etc etc. My greatest privilege as a kid was my love of reading and academically inclined intelligence, and I do note that despite having both parents who left school at 15, there were lots of books in my home, unlike my Aboriginal peers who had none, illiterate parents- and no "houses" to live in. But now, the urban Aboriginals in my sphere have often been more privileged than me - my urban Aboriginal best friend owned her own home, I live in social housing, and the Aboriginal psychiatrist (married to another doctor) at the hospital is way more privileged than me, the student who has not guilty by reason of insanity on my police record.
Given the apparent ubiquity of mental health challenges amongst youth, it seems self evident that privilege doesn't preclude suffering. I'm just not convinced that the emphasis on oppression helps the oppressed. I do know that Aboriginal wellbeing indicators have nosedived in my remote community since I was a kid, despite improvements in standards of living. People were better off when they didn't have houses. Certainly happier when there was no TV, let alone internet, to hatch envy and dissatisfaction. I know that I'm happier without all the awareness raising that goes on, much more blissful ignorant of all the terrible things that could happen to me. And of my oppression.
Thank you for your thoughts on this. My focus at the moment is on primary education rather than social work courses specifically, although I'm sure much of what you have described resonates well with many other fields and experiences, including my own university experience. I'd be very interested to hear your take on a recent article of mine where I touch on the effects of incorporating a highly politicised topic such as diversity into a mainstream classroom. Hope you don't mind me attaching a link here: https://samuelkammin.substack.com/p/supplementation-or-tokenism-bolt
I’ll also add, beyond my experience with a particularly toxic and corrupt dept, that the “no judgement” ethos enforced was also awful and usually contrary to what clients actually wanted. We were dealing with population whose lives were littered with bad decisions and lacked good role models. They didn’t want “no judgment” or told everything was the fault of systemic racism. They wanted guidance, answers and less BS. Clients who wanted to hear nothing was their fault were system lifers and all they wanted was better tools to manipulate the systems.
I dropped out of a BSW program 20 years ago because even then it had become a farce. I had gone into SW because I thought it had more merit and real world value than psychology. What I found were ideological bullies and idiots. The dept specifically recruited single moms on welfare, women who usually had caseworkers themselves, because they qualified for generous grants and scholarships. Some of these students were barely illiterate. There were also several black male athletes in the program because the black male dept head was happy to pass them even if they turned in no work and barely showed up to class. .
I remove comments that substitute personal attack for argument. Telling a writer they 'haven't done the reading,' that their experience doesn't entitle them to a view, or dismissing them with 'girl bye' isn't discourse — it's enforcement of an in-group norm by social pressure. This publication exists precisely to examine that dynamic in professional contexts. You're paused for 30 days. You're welcome back if you'd like to engage with the actual arguments.
Yes, you have to be careful to “lift up” voices that only state truths you want to hear. Comfortable lies that align with your ideology is why SW is such a mess. I am forever grateful I got out and got another degree. 80% of people who got BSW and MSW degrees from the university I was at were only there because they were given passing grades and degrees with little to no effort. It was little more than a degree mill inside a university. The dept head was eventually forced out due to embezzlement to avoid criminal charges.
All by design, I suspect. After the lunatics infilttated the professions, they needed a way to keep someone else from doing it to them, and pushing out all the non crazy people with nonsense seems to be their go-to tactic.
After close to 20 years in the profession I can firmly say that the real answers to people’s problems are not taught in University and the worldview espoused often does more harm than good. I’m now trying to give my view on where I think it all went wrong and my suggestion for operating as a social worker in a way that will help people rather than just ‘protect’ aka control them. Love your articles. Thanks.
Thanks for your comment. Keep writing and sharing your views - social work is in strong need of intellectual diversity.
Thanks for your thoughts. I’m glad that these conversations are starting to happen, because we need to build new things as soon as possible.
I am a psychologist. A fortunate one, in that I left the university in 1978 and did not rejoin one. For years I missed being part of a university community, but now I'm so glad that I am not.
I have noticed when I attend CE classes that the curriculum for social workers is extremely radical, postmodernist, and lacking in applied clinical theory and skills education. I was shocked by a video clip in which a social work instructor told her students, "You can use your critical theory here," meaning as a clinical intervention with clients. I was shocked and disgusted! Students are being taught to ignore the last 125 years worth of clinical experience with mentally disordered people as well as 50+ years of outcome research. In place of this mountain of knowledge about how to help people, social workers are teaching aspiring clinicians how to indoctrinate clients with postmodern philosophy.
The social work profession reached this point sooner than has my own, but clinical psychology is standing at the edge of the same cliff, and the APA has jumped over it.
Counseling is fully over the cliff with social work, and has been talking about using the clinical space to impress their ideological values on clients since the 1980s.
I’m glad that you missed the worst of it. That makes you a reservoir of functional knowledge. I hope you consider finding ways to transfer your knowledge to others.
All establishment everything has been insane from the beginning. No one's industry from within that control system is an exception. The systems were never corrupted; they followed the track they were created to follow. What a thing does is what it was designed to do.
"Therapists" are confessor priests who serve the ruling bloodlines. Their job is to report "problem children" up the line and lock up anyone who seizes the agency to pay their perpetrators back or end their own life. This is because the rulers see individuals as THEIR property, and no one is allowed to end the life of THEIR property without permission.
"Psychiatrists" are Nazi medical experimenters. This is the full-faced truth of what we are dealing with.
The only complete therapy is justice. The rest is just cope or distraction.
This commenter has been paused for 30 days for personal attacks and failure to engage other commenters with humility and respect.
Thank you! I am pausing him permanently.
My practice is evidence based. There is no evidence base on the therapeutic value of critical theory. Zero. People who advocate for critical theory as a treatment strategy have to first prove that it is necessary to treat a recognized mental health condition, that it is safer than doing nothing or using an alternative established treatment, and that it is effective in measurable terms. Advocates for critical theory have failed to do this.
Thank you for talking about this, Nathan. Zander
I did a year of MSW study and as someone who truly bought into genuine liberal principles... Free speech, the idea that rigorous critical analysis (the goal of the academy) was reading the strongest arguments for competing perspectives and negotiating my way between them... And as a multiple oppressed "white fella" (my only privilege being my race) I do find the emphasis on oppression unhelpful, as someone who was always committed to climbing out of homelessness etc etc. My greatest privilege as a kid was my love of reading and academically inclined intelligence, and I do note that despite having both parents who left school at 15, there were lots of books in my home, unlike my Aboriginal peers who had none, illiterate parents- and no "houses" to live in. But now, the urban Aboriginals in my sphere have often been more privileged than me - my urban Aboriginal best friend owned her own home, I live in social housing, and the Aboriginal psychiatrist (married to another doctor) at the hospital is way more privileged than me, the student who has not guilty by reason of insanity on my police record.
Given the apparent ubiquity of mental health challenges amongst youth, it seems self evident that privilege doesn't preclude suffering. I'm just not convinced that the emphasis on oppression helps the oppressed. I do know that Aboriginal wellbeing indicators have nosedived in my remote community since I was a kid, despite improvements in standards of living. People were better off when they didn't have houses. Certainly happier when there was no TV, let alone internet, to hatch envy and dissatisfaction. I know that I'm happier without all the awareness raising that goes on, much more blissful ignorant of all the terrible things that could happen to me. And of my oppression.
Thank you for your thoughts on this. My focus at the moment is on primary education rather than social work courses specifically, although I'm sure much of what you have described resonates well with many other fields and experiences, including my own university experience. I'd be very interested to hear your take on a recent article of mine where I touch on the effects of incorporating a highly politicised topic such as diversity into a mainstream classroom. Hope you don't mind me attaching a link here: https://samuelkammin.substack.com/p/supplementation-or-tokenism-bolt
Try all of William m Epstein's books backwards from psychotherapy and the social clinic in the United states soothing fictions
I’ll also add, beyond my experience with a particularly toxic and corrupt dept, that the “no judgement” ethos enforced was also awful and usually contrary to what clients actually wanted. We were dealing with population whose lives were littered with bad decisions and lacked good role models. They didn’t want “no judgment” or told everything was the fault of systemic racism. They wanted guidance, answers and less BS. Clients who wanted to hear nothing was their fault were system lifers and all they wanted was better tools to manipulate the systems.
I dropped out of a BSW program 20 years ago because even then it had become a farce. I had gone into SW because I thought it had more merit and real world value than psychology. What I found were ideological bullies and idiots. The dept specifically recruited single moms on welfare, women who usually had caseworkers themselves, because they qualified for generous grants and scholarships. Some of these students were barely illiterate. There were also several black male athletes in the program because the black male dept head was happy to pass them even if they turned in no work and barely showed up to class. .
I remove comments that substitute personal attack for argument. Telling a writer they 'haven't done the reading,' that their experience doesn't entitle them to a view, or dismissing them with 'girl bye' isn't discourse — it's enforcement of an in-group norm by social pressure. This publication exists precisely to examine that dynamic in professional contexts. You're paused for 30 days. You're welcome back if you'd like to engage with the actual arguments.
Yes, you have to be careful to “lift up” voices that only state truths you want to hear. Comfortable lies that align with your ideology is why SW is such a mess. I am forever grateful I got out and got another degree. 80% of people who got BSW and MSW degrees from the university I was at were only there because they were given passing grades and degrees with little to no effort. It was little more than a degree mill inside a university. The dept head was eventually forced out due to embezzlement to avoid criminal charges.
All by design, I suspect. After the lunatics infilttated the professions, they needed a way to keep someone else from doing it to them, and pushing out all the non crazy people with nonsense seems to be their go-to tactic.
This commenter has been paused for 30 days for personal attacks and failure to engage other commenters with humility and respect.