{"id":79189,"date":"2023-01-10T05:00:08","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T10:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=79189"},"modified":"2023-01-09T15:03:50","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T20:03:50","slug":"repent-wrongthinker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/01\/10\/repent-wrongthinker\/","title":{"rendered":"Repent, wrongthinker!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neeraja Deshpande<\/a> outlines the demands of the College of Psychologists of Ontario to send heretic wrongthinker Jordan Peterson to the re-education camp:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jordan Peterson speaking at an event in Dallas, Texas on 15 June, 2018.
Detail of a photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

Have you seen the “men will literally do X instead of going to therapy<\/a>” 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<\/em>. You get the drift.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I don’t blame him.<\/p>\n

The College of Psychologists of Ontario has told Peterson that if he doesn’t go to therapy \u2014 sorry, a board-mandated “Coaching Program” with a board-issued therapist \u2014 it may revoke his license to practice psychology.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What warranted this ultimatum? A few tweets and a podcast.<\/p>\n

According to Peterson, about “a dozen people” from around the world complained<\/a> to the college about comments he had made on Twitter and on Joe Rogan’s podcast, claiming that those statements had caused “harm”.<\/p>\n

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.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/em> “not beautiful”. (This Wall Street Journal<\/em> editorial<\/a> has a good rundown.)<\/p>\n

With perhaps one exception \u2014 a comment Peterson made calling a former, unnamed client “vindictive” \u2014 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<\/a> 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.”<\/p>\n

Now, no one who has followed Peterson \u2014 presumably including the higher-ups at the College of Psychologists of Ontario \u2014 seriously believes he would agree to such a request. He has confirmed<\/a> as much on Twitter. (This is a guy who burst onto the scene in 2016 after refusing<\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neeraja Deshpande outlines the demands of the College of Psychologists of Ontario to send heretic wrongthinker Jordan Peterson to the re-education camp: 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,28,53],"tags":[828,1204,87,139,661],"class_list":["post-79189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-cancon","category-media","category-politics","tag-bullying","tag-jordanpeterson","tag-ontario","tag-psychology","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-kBf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79190,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79189\/revisions\/79190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}