Are you a Zionist who needs a shrink? Good luck

Are you a stressed-out Zionist? Feeling traumatized? Anxious? Depressed? Are friends and family giving you a hard time about your support for the Jewish state? At work, do you avoid any discussion of Israel? Are you worried about antisemitism? Is your mental equilibrium at risk? Maybe you need a therapist.

If so, there could be problems with that.

As psychiatrist Sally Satel has recently noted, “more and more clinicians insist that psychotherapy is, foremost, a political rather than a clinical enterprise.” Calling this approach “critical social justice therapy,” she argues: “Under a social justice regime, therapists who have the ‘wrong’ politics – they might, for example, believe that Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself – must be kept away from vulnerable patients. If, conversely, it is the patient whose politics are perceived to be misbegotten, revising their viewpoint must become the focus of the treatment.”

Continuing, Dr. Satel reports: “Currently, Jewish patients (deemed to be members of a privileged group) are finding themselves subject to attempts by activist-therapists to morally reeducate them; no support of Israel can be condoned as it is declared a ‘settler colonial’ state.”

Social justice therapy is not a fringe phenomenon. In fact, the American Psychological Association (APA) has endorsed it. In a 2023 column entitled “Psychologists must embrace decolonial psychology,” the group’s then president, Dr. Thema Bryant, declared: “Highlighting decolonial psychology is one of my presidential initiatives.” Psychologists, she says, “must choose to advocate for change.” “This commitment,” according to Bryant, “includes a dedication to both dismantling systems of oppression and promoting liberation individually and collectively.”

Dr. Bryant didn’t mention Israel by name. But as she certainly knows – and conveniently fails to acknowledge – Israel is the major focus of decolonial ideology. The Jewish state is the only “colonial system of oppression” that could conceivably be “dismantled.” (The three big so-called colonial countries – the United States, Canada and Australia – aren’t going anywhere.) So when people like Dr. Bryant talk about decolonization, they’re talking about Israel.

Other professional groups, such as the National Association of Social Workers and the American Counseling Association, have also adopted the social justice approach to psychotherapy.

In response to all this, you might say, “No problem, I’ll get a Zionist therapist.” There must be a few out there, right? Well, yes. But good luck finding one. Zionist therapists are literally being blacklisted by their peers and cut off from sources of referrals.

For example, as Gabby Deutch has reported in Jewish Insider, “When someone posted in a private Facebook group for Chicago therapists in March [2024], asking whether anyone would be willing to work with a Zionist client, several Jewish therapists quickly responded, saying they would be happy to be connected to this person.” (Therapists commonly rely on listservs and other online groups for referrals.) “Those who replied, offering their services to this unnamed client,” Deutch reported, “soon found themselves added to a list of supposedly Zionist therapists that was shared in a group called ‘Chicago Anti-Racist Therapists.’” The purpose of the list, according to its author, Heba Ibrahim Joudeh, was to prevent referrals to therapists with “Zionist affiliations.” The group’s administrator called the list a good way “to be transparent about clinicians who promote and facilitate White supremacy via Zionism.”

As Deutch noted, “The only trait shared by the 26 therapists on the list is that they are Jewish.”

Zionist therapists also face exclusion from professional groups that provide referrals. Deutch reports, for example, that anti-Zionism is now the price of admission to the private Facebook group, Therapists in Private Practice (TIPP). Since October 7, prospective members have been required to respond to the following: “We examine privilege and engage in discourse related to dismantling oppressive systems in the field. We support BLM and are pro-Palestine. Are you open and willing to support this direction?”

TIPP moderator Nam Rindani has even removed a number of members who voiced support for Israel, stating in an online comment, “We as Admin call this is a Genocide.”

Then there’s the organization, Inclusive Therapists, which says, “Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world” and advocates ending the “mental health field’s complicity to genocide.” The group demands “accountability, immediate response, and reparative actions for the perpetuation of accumulated trauma” suffered by Palestinians. Of course there’s no mention of the trauma suffered by Israelis as a result of the October 7 Hamas attack. Indeed, according to Inclusive Therapists, the expression of empathy for Israelis who have lost loved ones in terrorist attacks amounts to “framing the Palestinian people” as terrorists, thereby “reinforcing white supremacist propaganda.”

Fortunately, therapists like Dr. Satel are calling out this bigoted nonsense. “These prescriptions,” she writes, “are antithetical to the therapeutic project. According to the principles of responsible psychotherapy, a Zionist therapist should be able to treat a supporter of Palestine and vice versa, never moralizing, ever aware that failing to maintain a clear partition between one’s personal ideological commitments and one’s clinical work will inevitably distort the therapy and fail the patients they serve.” Therapists should concentrate, she says, on “putting patients’ needs, not dogma and grievance, at the center of their practice.”

Let’s hope that view prevails.