Neeraja Deshpande outlines the demands of the College of Psychologists of Ontario to send heretic wrongthinker Jordan Peterson to the re-education camp:
Jordan Peterson speaking at an event in Dallas, Texas on 15 June, 2018.
Detail of a photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.
Have you seen the “men will literally do X instead of going to therapy” meme? It’s funny: Men will literally join 10 improv teams instead of going to therapy. Men will literally teach you how to open a can of beans for 6 hours instead of going to therapy. You get the drift.
Canada’s most famous public intellectual, Jordan Peterson, brought that meme to real life this week when he announced he’d rather never work again than be forced onto the couch.
I don’t blame him.
The College of Psychologists of Ontario has told Peterson that if he doesn’t go to therapy — sorry, a board-mandated “Coaching Program” with a board-issued therapist — it may revoke his license to practice psychology.
What warranted this ultimatum? A few tweets and a podcast.
According to Peterson, about “a dozen people” from around the world complained to the college about comments he had made on Twitter and on Joe Rogan’s podcast, claiming that those statements had caused “harm”.
In March, the college began investigating these complaints. Then, in November, the college informed Peterson: “The comments at issue appear to undermine the public trust in the profession as a whole, and raise questions about your ability to carry out your responsibilities as a psychologist.”
Among those comments: Calling an advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “prik”. Snarking at environmentalists for promoting energy policies that hurt children in developing countries. Using female pronouns in reference to the transgender actor Elliot Page. Declaring a plus-sized model on the cover of Sports Illustrated “not beautiful”. (This Wall Street Journal editorial has a good rundown.)
With perhaps one exception — a comment Peterson made calling a former, unnamed client “vindictive” — the public statements that triggered this whole affair are political snipes that have nothing to do with his capacity as a psychologist. Nevertheless, the College is demanding that Peterson not only go through a re-education program, but also that he sign off on the following statement: “I may have lacked professionalism in public statements and during a January 25, 2022 podcast appearance.”
Now, no one who has followed Peterson — presumably including the higher-ups at the College of Psychologists of Ontario — seriously believes he would agree to such a request. He has confirmed as much on Twitter. (This is a guy who burst onto the scene in 2016 after refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns.) And Peterson is famous enough at this point to be inoculated against the financial consequences of refusing to submit, which the college must know.
The college’s statement, then, is not a message to Peterson, but a message to other would-be dissenters: Comply with our politics, or risk losing your livelihood.
