← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
What Happens When You Tell Therapists That Whiteness Is a Disease? | Dr. Andrew Hartz
00:46:22
Is your white privilege giving you anxiety? Obviously, no. But for America’s mental health professionals, the answer is increasingly becoming “yes.”
Loading summary
Transcript46 lines
- [00:00]
Andrew Hartz
Well, there definitely is data that over the past decade reported rates of anxiety, depression, things like that are increasing, especially in young people. A lot of people have linked that to social media use, technology, things like that. But I think probably a bigger factor is more people are aware when they have chronic anxiety or an anger problem or a drinking problem to get help. And so there's probably two things that are happening at the same time. There's more awareness and there also might be higher base rates of prevalence. Early on, there was not a lot of politics. I think it came up rarely. It was really about how to do good psychotherapy. And over the course of my training, that shifted. So I completed my PhD in 2019 and I started in 2013. And over that time period, there was really cataclysm, you know, huge shifts. And the extent of it is probably more than what people are imagining. You know, having to read articles that are titled Whiteness is a parasitic condition that argues that white people acquire whiteness at birth and it's an incurable parasitic virus that makes them less moral. Whiteness is pathological narcissism. These types of readings that are being taught foreign.
- [01:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, hello ladies and hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his Own Words. I'm recording on Friday the 20th, and this episode will be up probably the 26th or the 27th of February. Pinch hitting, guest starring both. You're doing both is Andrew Hartz, who is the president and the founder of the Open Therapy Institute. I'm going to tell you his bio in a second. I just want to, you know, some people don't know why is Victor not on the Victor Show? Any number of people are late to the news. Victor's still recovering slowly from major surgery. Regular listeners and viewers know that he has dipped his toe back in the water. So the four episodes a week, two of them are being done. Now Victor's back in the saddle. But we still two others that he has asked that I find really interesting people in a really important zone and have them on as guests. Ask them, they say, yes, have them on and then delve into this area. And we have a very important area here, and that's mental health. Some people might not think, well, mental health, it's just not. It's not the same as trade policy or what. No, it's not. It's maybe even more consequent. So let me tell you about Andrew. He's the founder, president and executive director of the Open Therapy Institute, which is probably like two years or so in the making. Now. He's a practicing clinical psychologist. He was formerly a professor in the clinical psychology doctoral program at Long Island University. That's where he completed his own PhD. He's had, he's practiced all over. He's a man who writes a lot. I first met Andrew at a Manhattan Institute City Journal dinner. We happened to be at the same table and we started talking about mental health. I don't know if you remember, Andrew, I told you I was the chairman of the board of the American Mental Health foundation for a while once upon a time. I don't know how that happened, but it was a fact. But I care deeply about this issue and I think lots of people care deeply because lots of people are needing mental health care and lots of people don't know that it is a battleground of the current woke wars. So I'm going to ask you five, maybe six questions pertaining to the struggle pertaining to what Open Therapy Institute does and some of the great advances you're making and. And we'll do all that when we return from these important messages.
- [04:21]
Narrator/Announcer
Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children. The faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive as long as we keep first things first. We've only just begun. America the Beautiful.
- [04:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Andrew, I haven't let you say a word yet, but welcome. I'm so happy that you are here with us today. Let me just before I get into the current the things that sparked your current interest to create the institute, I just want to be clear myself and maybe our listeners and viewers too. I'm a certain age, I'm a senior citizen now, even though I don't look it. And when I was a young man, clearly were not the amount of people seeking mental health services therapy from psychologists or psychiatrists as there were as there are now. So it seems. I have a ton of people in my family and friends who are on, for example, anxiety medication. I mean, that was not the case a long time ago. So has the demand and the need for mental health. I think the need has always been there. But has the demand for it significantly increased in the last generation or two? So give us the background of like how widespread this is.
- [06:04]
Andrew Hartz
Well, there definitely is data that over the past decade, you know, reported rates of anxiety, depression, things like that are increasing, especially in young people. And a lot of people have linked that to social media use, technology, things like that. Going back, I don't have at my fingertips data about prevalence rates of diagnosis going back 40, 50 years. But you can think about the breakdown of communities, the breakdown of families, a wide variety of stresses, decreasing physical health, that, that could be increasing rates of mental disorders. But I, I think probably a bigger factor is more people are aware when they have chronic anxiety or an anger problem or a drinking problem to, to, to get help. And so there's probably two things that are happening at the same time. There's more awareness. And there also might be higher base rates of prevalence as well.
- [07:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
Okay, yeah, well, thanks for that. So question one, which has a preamble woke ideology has infected just about everything. So it should be no surprise that the field of mental health, whether it be in the therapist's office or the hospital wards, or psychology textbooks or graduate school curricula, professional associations, should be no surprise that left and ideology has permeated the field and that psychologists and psychiatrists in training are being immersed in propaganda as part of their training. So, Andrew, would you give us an understanding of what is happening at the training level? What is the experience of a student today, or even over the last decade, studying to be a clinical psychologist?
- [08:01]
Andrew Hartz
Yeah, that's a great, great question. I, I would like taking a step back when you frame this as like there was a trend towards intensity, intensifying politicization, mostly driven by the social justice left around identity politics issues over the past decade. That did happen in every profession. You saw that in medicine and in education and in all these fields. And it, it happened in mental health as well. And I think there was kind of an awareness maybe nationally, that politics wasn't just about voting and elections, that all of these important cultural and economic spheres were also at play and becoming politicized. So that I think that is the right context to understand what happened in mental health care. What has happened in mental health care. When I was in training early on, there was not a lot of politics. I think it came up rarely. It was really about how to do good psychotherapy. And over the course of my training, that shifted. So I completed my PhD in 2019 and I started in 2013. And over that time period, there was really cataclysm, you know, huge shifts. By the end, it was like a weekly training every week on race or gender. And it was really obvious that racial categories, different demographic categories were ranked. One was a good category, one was bad. White was a bad category, they're privileged oppressors. Black was a good category. They needed to be praised and celebrated and same for men and women and LGBT versus straight and issue after issue. There was this kind of binary way of framing groups of people that we were really bombarded with. It was very clear that dissent was not tolerated. And so nobody even asked a challenging question often on these topics. And the extent of it is probably more than what people are imagining, you know, having to read articles that are titled, whiteness is a parasitic condition that argues that white people acquire whiteness at birth, and it's an incurable parasitic virus that makes them less moral. Whiteness is pathological narcissism. These. These types of readings that are praised as, you know, great virtuous things that need to be taught, and they are being taught. And there's a very, you know, if people want the best indication, this is probably a textbook by two authors. I think they're siblings, sue and sue, and it's on cultural counseling. And it's just every page is another. It's full of aggression directed at white people. And just one after the other, they have the certain groups they praise and celebrate and the groups they attack on every page. And this really is entering therapies. I was taught by some people that white privilege needed to be centered in every therapy, and so you needed to bring up race in the first session of every therapy. I was at a clinic where the first question you were supposed to ask every patient was, what are your pronouns? You know, this is the extent of it. And you would see, you know, at one clinic where I trained, it was really obvious that if a white girl had anxiety, that was related to her privilege, and if a black girl had anxiety, it was related to racism. And the cure for both was the same, you know, center racial identity and promote activism. And that really is happening. I think for most people looking for a therapist, if they look online in New York or something, they're going to see the activist therapist. They're going to come up, and they're kind of. Sometimes they're fairly easy to spot. But the bias, the culture of how therapists are trained is really infused with this, even if it's not evident on their profile.
- [12:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I want to get a little more into what happens in the room, but back to the. Let's just say the racialization of school one way or another. So you're talking about prioritizing the patients, but also, I mean, you're a white dude who is training, and is there some. There's got to be. What if, you know, I don't know your faith, but let's see, you're a Christian or Jewish, practicing religious person. You don't fit into the priority, the hierarchy, or the intersectionality. How were you treated as a white guy at training? Are you suspect as a therapist?
- [13:14]
Andrew Hartz
Well, you know, I was the only. I kind of. At one site, I kind of blew things up. I'd say this was probably as formative a moment of anything in terms of why I wanted to found the open therapy institute. But I was at a. I was the only white male in my program and in the room with supervisors and faculty and everything, maybe 15 people in the room. And one of the trainees, woman of color, says that she has a white male patient and she hates him not because of anything that he said or did, but just because he's a white male. And the response in the room was, we totally understand why you'd feel that way, and you're brave and courageous for saying it Now. I actually didn't say anything, but the topic came up at the same meeting, you know, the next week, and I finally felt like I had to say something, and I just said, you know, I'm the only white male in the room. How do people feel about me? And obviously that got crickets. I got no support at all, not surprisingly. But once I had kind of indicated that I didn't feel that I deserved to be hated for my race or gender, everything at the program became challenging. I'd try to reserve a room, and there was an issue, and I couldn't get this or that. And there was gossip and problems from that point on. And it was a struggle just to get through the year. Incidentally, the woman who made that comment was later given a faculty appointment. And so I think it's hard to say when they say they want to dismantle whiteness and whiteness is evil, but don't take it personally. It's pretty. And I should say from their language, they have a really complicated thing. For them, whiteness is a system of blah, blah, blah, whatever. They've defined it as something, but it's obvious, communicates white people and their culture and history, and that's unmistakable. And the literature is full of aggression directed at white people, direct and indirect. It's kind of rationalized as, oh, no, whiteness is just a system or something. It's not actually people, but it's everywhere. And clearly the trainees are internalizing it. It's impacting their patients, and it's impacting the culture at these institutions.
- [15:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, we'll get to the couch if there is other couches anymore, I don't know, but I have to pay a bill here and happily pay it to our listeners and our viewers. If you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. Physical gold, not as speculation, but as insulation. And our reputation at Victor Davis Hansen, in his own words, matters to us. Which is why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability and an A rating from the Better Business Bureau. For years they've guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships built on trust. And right now through their extending a special liberty offer for our listeners to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in the bank or under a mattress, wherever you keep it, if you believe as I do, as we do, that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious. Call 8447-909191-84479, 09191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 844-779-0919-184479-09191 or visit protectwithVictor.com History rewards those who take the long view. And we thank very much the good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, happily carried on the Daily Signal. Andrew, by the way, this is a current ball and you don't have to answer it. It's very speculative. But I wonder of those social justice warriors looking for professions. I wonder if mental health is one that is much more inherently attractive than say, becoming a podiatrist or a chiropractor. I don't know. Have you ever thought about the attractiveness of this to those who want to inflict woke on everybody?
- [18:37]
Andrew Hartz
Well, there's a big I think it's 90, about 90% of therapists are on the left, so there's a big imbalance. They're a lot more likely to be atheists and agnostic, much really high. So there are certain things like that that make them very different from the general population. Social work as a profession is. Even has aspects of their ethics code and their training that explicitly stipulate social justice activism. People, you know, it's really in social work it's almost officialized that you need to be a social justice activist. I don't think they all are actually. I think there are therapists who do good patient centered care there. But a lot of the codes and policies and training and requirements and things are. Do explicitly foster it. But yeah, I mean and, and if it's. If you're. Especially if you have certain approaches to therapy, you can see how it's totally embedded in this ideology. There's a, you know, feminist approach to therapy, feminist approach to couples therapy, you know, queer theory approaches to things. So there's some of the approaches that are just totally saturated.
- [20:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, before we take a break, here's another long winded question. We suffer through it for all my Catholic friends at slent offer it up. The shingle is up over the door and the woke modern therapist sits in the armchair, looks at his patient or client. What is the woke therapist's frame of mind? Does he see his duty as doing battle with say a Jewish client who may be treated not as a guy with marital problems, but as an advocate of Zionism? Or if the client is a middle aged white guy who is having panic attacks, is he supposed to be seen through his pigmentation as opposed to the issue he's presenting? So in a nation where there are millions of people seeking aid for their mental afflictions and anxieties, do these patients know that many a therapist's office is more so an arena of ideology than it is a place of healing? And could you tell us some of the. You may have already to go over old ground here but you tell us some of the disturbing situations, the manifestations of ideology and partisanship that have become common in mental health practices.
- [21:10]
Andrew Hartz
Yeah, great question. So if I was going to try to, you know how I understand the framework of a lot of these therapists? They would see, they would frame it this way. Racism is wrong. We shouldn't. If somebody comes in and they're super racist, you're not ignoring that isn't normal. You know, that's not necessarily neutral. You'd want to address it and that would be a positive thing to do because you know that's the right thing to do. And it'll, you know, so. But then their definition of what racism is just has expanded and expanded and expanded. So if you think that a firm, you don't like DEI policies policies or affirmative action policies, that's racism. If you voted for Trump, that's racism. If you want less immigration, that's racism. So they've kind of taken a kernel where maybe somebody who's really consumed in racial hate to the point that it's impairing their therapeutic process in their life. Of course you need to engage that, but they've expanded it to be beliefs that the large majority of the population supports. And those are all racism. So they all need to be confronted the same way. And they've kind of taken, taken it step by step to expand it. I think in terms of how actual therapy sessions are, again, I would say there's probably a few different categories, degrees of bias. You know, there are the really activist people. They are real, they're writing this stuff, they're training people, they're practicing this way. But there's also therapists who are just extremely biased. And you go into their office and you see political, you know, left leaning political magazines are in the office. They've got a rainbow flag or a BLM flag or things like that in their office. And they very clearly have judgments. And a lot of patients, you know, if they have ocd, they need to address a problem, they have a phobia, they put up with it. They just think, well, you know, I'll just not talk about that part of my life. But the judgments are often there and that will harm the treatment and the outcomes, even if it's at that less overt level. And then there's also therapists who I think are very well meaning and want to do good work, but they don't recognize the way that their biases are impacting treatment. They have blind spots, they don't understand issues and they don't have empathy for certain dynamics. A couple's therapist could be more likely to just frame the man as the aggressor and the woman as the victim. And they do that reflexively. And they've just never thought about the fact that they might have a bias against men. Or they're treating a Catholic patient and they suggest, hey, maybe you want to get divorced. Maybe that's the, you know what you want here. And that's just not on the table for them. So there are all these kinds of more subtle things that are just blind spots that well intentioned therapists make. I do want to say I think there are a lot of really great therapists out there and I don't want to overly terrify people that the whole field is totally crazy. There are enough good people, it's just too hard to find them. I think it's.
- [24:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
But that, but that's part of what you're. We're going to talk about.
- [24:31]
Andrew Hartz
Yeah, yeah.
- [24:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
One of the things you're trying to accomplish. I'll say this before we leave. Those who are watching this can see over my shoulder a William F. Buckley mayoral campaign poster from 1965. I would not want, as a conservative, I would not want to walk into a therapist's office to see that poster on the wall. I don't want the flavor of ideology or partisanship anywhere in this field. But anyway, all that blathered, we're going to come back and start talking about Open Therapy Institute when we come back from these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Guest starring pinch hitting is Andrew Hartz, who's the founder and the president and the CEO. I don't know. Do you take out the garbage too, Andrew? What don't you do at the Open Therapy Institute did not exist two years ago, three years ago. Now it exists and it's burgeoning, it's flourishing. First of all, just give us the website address so people know where it is to find it.
- [25:36]
Andrew Hartz
OpenTherapyInstitute.org Pretty simple, folks.
- [25:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
Pretty simple. So now tell us about it. Tell us about this thing you've erected that's growing. There is a problem. We've just stated problems and you are a solution to it. Part of it. Several parts of it, maybe. So state the problem, please. Like what inspired you to do something and if we could, if we could use military terms you don't have to use. But looking at, you know, this is a battle, there's several fronts. There are all kinds of aspects of mental health where these problems are happening and need to have some pushback or counterattack. So tell us what prompted you to start Open Therapy Institute and where are you fighting fights right now?
- [26:22]
Andrew Hartz
Yeah, so I think the central problem, if there's one issue, it was if I got a referral from somebody who says this isn't maybe in 2020, hey, I voted Trump and I wanted to see a therapist who's not going to judge me for that, where I can be open about it, being hard to self censor, feeling attacked from my beliefs or whatever. Where can I find somebody? I would say I have no clue. I don't know where you can go. There's nowhere. That was the answer in 2020. And I wanted there to be a place where people who wanted to find a therapist who were concerned about bias, they wanted to find somebody who got them and got their values. I wanted them to have a place to go. And so that became a difficult problem then because it's like, well, you need a collection of therapists who are in a membership that people looking for a therapist can contact them to get these people. But even the therapists signing up, they haven't been trained on any of these issues. So they might be nice people, they might be attuned, they might get it to an extent, but there's no literature. What's it like to be canceled? How does self censorship impact a person? What is it like if you're falsely accused of sexual misconduct? I mean, I know somebody had six accusations in a row at the university. They won all of them. They won all of them. But they had to go through. It's just years and years of false accusations. And so there's no literature on this stuff. It's just almost entirely absent. So we were like, okay, we got a group of therapists, but we need to write a literature. So we launched a journal to document these issues. And then we launched trainings to train therapists in how to work on these issues so that when patients reach out to us, they can be confident that this is somebody who's not just well meaning, but really has a knowledge of the issues that people might be coming in with.
- [28:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, tell us. I was going to end with talking about the journal, but let's flip this around because I want to ask you about psych mental health associations and their roles in the current fights. So let's understand. Open Therapy Institute. If I go there, I could be a therapist because I'm seeking a network. I'm seeking training.
- [28:42]
Andrew Hartz
Yeah. So we have a membership. You can apply to become a member if you're a therapist. There's a vetting process, there's an application, but if you're aligned with us, you should do fine. And then we share therapy referrals. So we're in 48 states. I think we're still waiting on somebody in Iowa and New Mexico, but we're in every other state right now. So if you're looking for a therapist, you can contact us and we share information from our vetted members based on what somebody's looking for. So. So therapists looking to expand their practice or work in this area can sign up to become a member. And anybody seeking A therapist can also go to the same place and find a therapist.
- [29:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
Okay, so you're helping the professionals, you're helping the. I don't know if you want to call them clients or potential clients. But then also Open Therapy Institute wants to be a voice in the public square. So you mentioned the journal, which is Frontiers in Mental Health. I think right now, if people want to find it, it's on substack.
- [29:51]
Andrew Hartz
You can go to our website and opentherapyinstitute.org and click on the journal page. And we've got our two issues up from Frontiers. It is going through a transition. It's going to be re released in a couple weeks. We've put all the articles through peer review. So it's going to be reemerging as a peer reviewed journal called Open Inquiry and Mental Health. And that's going to be happening in the next couple weeks. But we, you know, we're cataloging, we're trying to catalog every issue. I mean, political issues are intensely emotionally dysregulating for people and they lead to family conflict and they lead to marital conflict, conflict at work. People get angry at them, they lose friends over them. These are, these are big issues and they're really important to people. And we want to catalog all the different challenging issues of how they come in, whether that's related to trans issues that come up in families, whether that's related to faith issues. We had a really great training on psychotherapy for gun owners and how that can be skilled and effective and not just pathologize guns like I think a lot of the field does. So trainings on men, young men, family dynamics, self censorship, cancel culture. We wanted to discuss all of these issues in terms of how do they impact people and how do they actually come into therapy sessions. And that was really what the journal was launched to do.
- [31:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
But you've discussed them in a way that's not necessarily strictly professional. I would not read a journal of the American Chemistry association and expect to get anything out of it but Frontiers in Mental Health. I just want to read two titles to let people know, like how you very directly confront issues. Codify. Here's one article codifying how activist politics became embedded in social work standards and practices. That's the kind of a piece I would think I could read a National Review or City Journal or some other. Here's another article. How therapists often fail religious clients. And I think they're written in a way that is very approachable to anyone, you know, an iq.
- [32:15]
Andrew Hartz
It's a unique project that kind of emerged because we're in this unusual situation as an institute, but I think. So we're on. It's the journals on substack. I think we're the first peer reviewed journal to be on substack. And that kind of says a lot about how we're written. We really want this to be something that anybody can pick up and read and understand, but that it's at a level of thinking that this has been peer reviewed and it's been cited and people can really trust it as quality professional literature. But we really wanted to keep it accessible. So it's open access, but it's. And it's for the public, but it's at peer review quality. And I. So it's an unusual publication in that sense.
- [32:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Okay. Well, I have one final question and that will be about the professional professional associations around mental health. And we'll get to that after these final important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words, guest starring today, Andrew Hartz, the CEO, president and founder of Open Therapy Institute. Andrew, there seems to be something. I've written this and I got to read it. Too bad. There seems to be something especially pernicious about the practice of mental health or goodly segments of it where the client, the person seeking help, the person who has an affliction is held in contempt because of who he is, his race, his pigmentation, his nationality, his religion. I'm curious about the particular role professional institutions and associations and their journals have played in this dissent. There's culpability there. Could you talk about. Because we see this culpability too in other science fields. Covid. Right. I mean, Lancet look at these professional associations or some of the psychiatrics or excuse me, the pediatric associations related to kids and transgenderism. So I have to believe this culpability here from the mental health associations. Is there and would you talk about it if there is?
- [34:35]
Andrew Hartz
Yeah, they vary. I think some of the worst has been Division 39 of the American Psychological association of the APA. That's the Division that focuses on psychoanalysis. They have really gone off the deep end. They had a president of that division who made statements like every therapy should center Palestinian liberation and that type of thing. So really activists really unhinged. Their last conference, maybe it was two conferences ago, but had a talk about sex with animals. That was a panel discussion that they had, I think kind of normalizing that. I don't know. So there's some places that have totally gone off the rails again in a way that people can't even imagine, probably, but I think that that at root, if I had to guess, it's that or they're so easy for activists to capture professional associations. So apa, I think half of psychologists are members, and I think 10% of members vote in elections. So that's 5% of psychologists vote in elections at APA. So with 2.6% of psychologists, you can win all the elections. So if 2.6% of your field are really motivated activists, they can capture your professional organization. And most professionals are too busy and they don't have the time or energy or desire to fight all these battles over the professional organization. So they're really capturable. And then they can spout whatever they're spouting, like whatever their weird belief is, as if this is what all of the field thinks, and it's not even close. Universities are another problem. They're much more biased than the field as a whole. I think it's 17 professors on the left for every conservative in psychology. It's a big split. I mean, if you go to the Ivy League, it's worse. So it's just, you know, so the universities have a different issue where it's really hard to get faculty with different viewpoints in the training. And so they kind of get into group think and spiral. But the, the professional organizations are capturable. Some of them have staved it off a little bit, and others have really been, I think, frankly, destroyed by. By these trends.
- [37:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, well, to continue war analogies, maybe bad ones, but. But Open Therapy Institute may be the Normandy invasion. I mean, there's no one else fighting this as you are. Would that be fair to say?
- [37:34]
Andrew Hartz
Yeah, I think we have a unique mission in the field. There are organizations that emerge to address trans care and particularly especially for kids and helping detransitioners and things like that. And we work with those organizations pretty regularly. But I think in terms of just broadly addressing sociopolitical bias in the profession and the way that it damages care, I think we were unique in having that mission.
- [38:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
So you've. Again, two years from nothing from an idea to something that's proving to be substantial. How do you see Open Therapy Institute in two, three, five years? Do you have those dreams or do you just.
- [38:18]
Andrew Hartz
Yeah, I mean, we can, partly because we're interdisciplinary. We have social workers and counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists. We have everybody in the field. So we really do have the. And like I said, you know, 10% of the field is conservative and another 20% is really not activists. So it really wants to do good patient centered care, maybe more. So the potential membership that we could get might be a third of the profession. It really isn't hard to see us over time getting 10, 20, 30, 50,000 professional members and becoming a major point of contact and therapy resource for people in the country. So that potential is really there. And in terms of serving clients, it's the same thing. I mean, if you're looking for a therapist and you don't want somebody woke, you don't want somebody who's going to attack you for your beliefs, you want somebody who's going to get it. There aren't a lot of options out there. So I think the potential to become a really large point of contact that we have lots of divisions that do have multiple journals, multiple, you know, regional chapters grow into all kinds of things, education interventions and graduate programs and all that can emerge. I think we want to have a textbook that we're developing and a course curriculum to train people in these issues. So lots of stuff can happen. I think that there's a. I would say, I think there's an impact. I get it. When people see how bad universities are, they kind of say, hey, forget it, screw them, let them burn. Let's get away from these places. When people see how bad Hollywood is or something, they say, oh, I hate it, screw them, let them burn. But the problem is you can't just always retreat in these institutions. You have to fight to save what's valuable in them or you really pay a cost long term. So hopefully we can get enough people together to help change the field.
- [40:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, well, millions of people need mental health services and they don't need them as ideology or partisanship. So the fact that you're, I'm just thrilled that you're, you're doing this. I believe most people would think every. There's a potential for everything in, in America or the world to have some ideological aspect. I could see a macaroni factory somehow, you know, But I don't think people know the depth, the intensity to which this has inflicted the mental health field. And the consequences of that seem to me so dire.
- [41:09]
Andrew Hartz
And it's really interesting how many people just kind of accept that this is the way it is. I've heard so many people who are religious who don't talk about that in therapy because they think, oh well, that's not something, that's an important part of your life. You shouldn't be hiding parts of yourself. And people do that with politics too. Or they just accept the person's bias and they deal with it anyway or they just don't talk about parts of their life. People need to have higher standards and expect to be able to find somebody who really gets them and has compassion for them.
- [41:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, you are a warrior and doing great things. I'm so glad that you're doing what you're doing. I again encourage people to check out Open Therapy Institute, look at the journal and continued success. Andrew, thanks for coming here today and pinch hitting for Victor. And thanks folks for watching Listening Again. Victor is he's doing two out of every four shows so come back if you've been away. He's back in the saddle, partially side saddle. He'll be in the full saddle. Hopefully in a few weeks he'll be totally recovered and recuperated. So thanks again. Andrew Hart thanks folks. Thank you. The Daily Signal we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. God bless. Bye bye. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like share and subscribe to be
- [42:41]
Andrew Hartz
notified for more content like this.
- [42:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
You can also check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.
- [42:53]
Andrew Hartz
Lifelock how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
- [42:57]
LifeLock Representative
One in four taxpaying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.
- [43:01]
Andrew Hartz
What do I do?
- [43:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
My refund though.
- [43:02]
Andrew Hartz
I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix this.
- [43:04]
LifeLock Representative
LifeLock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage.
- [43:10]
Andrew Hartz
I'm so relieved.
- [43:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
No problem.
- [43:11]
Andrew Hartz
I'll be with you every step of the way.
- [43:13]
LifeLock Representative
One in four was a fraud. Paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.