When Abigail Shrier wrote her 2024 book Bad Therapy, she found the tip of the iceberg. The rot extends into the very institutions that form and shape our therapists today. Take, for example, a recent exposé in The Wall Street Journal from Naomi Best Epps, a graduate student at Santa Clara University who wrote about how her degree in marriage and family therapy forced her into a certain worldview in order to graduate.
Santa Clara is a Jesuit university — as in Catholic. In her op-ed, Best reveals how she was forced to read graphic material that was sexually explicit. Moreover, she was allegedly not given accommodations that were provided to female Muslim students (i.e., she was discriminated against because of her Christian faith). All of this culminated in her finally blowing the whistle.
In her courses, Best was trained to be an expert “critical theorist,” not a therapist. The class that really crossed the line with Best was “Human Sexuality,” her last one before graduation. This course exposes students to all sorts of human sexuality, ostensibly in the hopes of creating counselors and therapists who will not judge. Instead, it’s a promotional course for sexual deviance. Best was fed the line about treating children with “gender discomfort” and told to begin “gender affirmation” within six months of treatment. She was also told to acknowledge her whiteness when she was working with a client of another race. Finally, she was purportedly given a final exam assignment in which she was to write an eight- to 10-page paper talking about her sexual autobiography. This was to include “early sexual memories, masturbation, current experiences, and future goals with an action plan — all uploaded to a third-party platform for grading.”
As Best pointed out in an interview with podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey, “ethics code 7.04 bars psychologists from forcing students to self-disclose, particularly sexually.”
Best was also forced into group settings where the teacher expected group members to discuss their masturbation habits. What is the justification for conducting a class on human sexuality in this way? The straw man argument would be that if one of Best’s future patients suffered from perversions, she would be able to guide them without judgment.
Herein lies the problem. Her judgment as a therapist is crucial; however, what she was being taught is therapy based on “critical theory” — a worldview of the progressive leftist in which the only immorality is morality.
As Best herself wrote in the Journal: “Therapists are no longer trained to be neutral; they’re trained to be agents of political change. Concepts like modesty and marital privacy aren’t merely treated as optional or even dismissed. They’re seen as oppressive norms to be actively combated.”
Imagine that: a generation of therapists actively trained to undermine marriage, healthy sexuality, and more.
Best continues, “When clinicians are trained to see everything through an ideological lens, rather than with ethical neutrality, the consequences extend far beyond the therapy room.”
Alumni were horrified at Best’s whistleblowing article. One called her revelations “gobsmacking, sordid and sad.” Another noted: “During my own training, I was compelled to share deeply personal family histories in group settings. When I expressed discomfort, I was told, ‘You can’t take clients where you haven’t gone.’ Really? I’ve supported clients through experiences I’ve never faced, including sudden death of a spouse and raising a teen with borderline personality disorder. Therapists often guide clients through uncharted emotional terrain. While our own self-reflection is crucial, disclosure must be voluntary.”
Those consequences are what we are reaping as a society today. We send people to therapists for help, and they come out even more confused and hurt. Santa Clara University has a lot to answer for, but how far does the rot extend? Is this a common practice of every university?
If so, therapy is, in fact, doomed.
