The Dark Side of Multicultural Counseling: Intentional or Inevitable?

Did Counseling Have an Agenda for Seizing Institutional Power All Along?

Oct 21, 2024

Is the polarizing effect of multicultural social justice counseling an unfortunate consequence, or is it part of a deeper, intentional strategy? One troubling aspect of modern counseling is that its advocacy-driven mission was crafted by people who claim to understand psychology and group dynamics yet seem blind to the real-world consequences of this course of action.

In the adoption of an advocacy mission and multiculturalism as a value, the profession acted with a blindness to both the realities of how groups function, and to the possibility of their own fallibility.

It is a curious choice, to say the least.

It’s also not something that happened once and was corrected, but a situation where the profession has persisted down the same path despite the consequences, conflicting evidence, and the compromising of values that had to take place, long before dissenting counseling professors and students like myself were mobbed.

To glean some insight, we can look to early records where educators were making choices to fix what they believed was a weak position for the profession amidst aggressive competition.

In the monograph Counseling Futures, Gary Waltz and other leaders in the counseling field discuss what they believe is the optimal direction for the profession. Printed in 1991, it was developed in the wake of a Chi Sigma Iota sponsored program looking into the Future of Counseling. This happened along with a National Conference of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) which took place in St. Louis.

Additional documents were created after the conference by Dr. George Gazda, Dr. Bruce Shertzer, and Dr. Garry Walz purportedly “to aid the user in reflecting and action upon their images of the future.”

The premise itself is the best indicator that wisdom has left the building.

Baseball legend Yogi Berra put it most bluntly, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” So we begin from a place of hubris.

As early as the introduction we see problems in the tone when Dr. Garry Walz called Chi Sigma Iota, their “comrades in arms.” This language, which sets a mood of epic struggle, persists throughout the monograph.

This indicates trouble in that using such language suggests an underlying belief they as a group are under threat. On an individual level, you could call this a schema–a belief structure through which new information is interpreted. This phrasing in particular suggests a tribalistic us vs them mindset, pushing everyone in the group to harden the distinctions between in-group and out-group. The lack of any dissenting voices pointing out catastrophization suggests that this was a shared way of thinking.

The first Chapter begins with rationalizations on why it’s a good idea to make firm predictions about what is yet to come. In speaking of their certainty about changing demographics they go so far as to state:

In imagining the future demographics has one distinct advantage over all the other methods–it speaks to what exists and is now present and does not involve guesswork or tenuous projections. We can speak with great clarity as to how many high school students there will be in a decade because those students are now in elementary school. By carefully analyzing census demographic data we can describe future needs and conditions with an accuracy unparalleled by other methods.

Imagine that being said on the 27th of October 1929. It may be comforting to think with our level of technology we have everything under control, yet to this day, disasters, disease, economic collapse, famine, and war reiterate otherwise. Still, the top leaders of the counseling field already believe they know the truth.

Continuing on, hubris is combined with anxiety. Right away they reference Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock with the breathless earnestness of a teenager discovering for the first time that the world is bigger than his hometown. On Future Shock:

It is his central thesis that the acceleration of change is so great that unless man learns to control the rate of change in his personal affairs as well as society at large, he will be doomed to massive adoptational breakdowns.

The reality is that the future is unknowable, be it triumph or disaster. However, if you predict disaster, you can live out a self-fulfilling prophecy by taking actions that bring about the catastrophe you expect. Like doomsday cults, the monograph seems fixated on future catastrophes, making rigid predictions that justify extreme interventions.

Part of the counseling leaders’ future focus is on a radical transformation of society that is just around the corner. Counseling Futures conveys that with their pondering on what is yet to come, the profession will be able to develop a strategic plan, which will allow them to act, “with a proactive stance that focuses upon making a preferred future happen and become a living reality.”

The authors take that so far, they state that in their desired future:

It will be essential that contemporary counselors be personally committed to helping clients gain an understanding of the strengths and benefits of living in a multicultural society.

This is unethical by their own code.

You would think that with John Loftland’s work on doomsday cults in 1966 and Leon Festinger’s 1958 study of a failed prediction of cataclysm that a group of mental health professionals, professors no less, would have some awareness of the dangerous dynamic they were creating. If there were voices of dissent they were not recorded here.

By 1998, anyone in the profession who might have spoken up in favor of a more moderate line of thought was already excluded. The Chi Sigma Iota Counselor Professional Advocacy Leadership Conferences were invitation only and when they had their plan of action to adopt multicultural advocacy as a hallmark of the profession all laid out, listed under Obstacles you repeatedly find:

Many members of counseling associations including those who work in counselor education are not professional counselors and do not share our passion or efforts for advocacy;

Listing dissenting voices as obstacles is a clear indicator that tribalism was already deeply ingrained, and the dehumanization of outsiders has begun.

Today if you look at current textbooks, the language used to describe people is polarizing on its face. Whiteness, Blackness, White supremacy, oppressors, white identity, black identity, this is not language that inspires unity. That is obvious. So obvious, that at least one textbook goes out of its way to gaslight and manipulate students into going along with accepting their culpability if they are white. If they are black, they are disempowered.

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How This Looks in Counseling Training Programs

If we put that together with how university programs are accounting for the CACREP dispositional standards the picture becomes even uglier. For example, the University of Tennessee’s current counseling program handbook, defines the quality of openness (one of the required dispositions for an acceptable professional identity) as such:

Demonstrates an openness to learn, grow, and change behavior based on hearing about new concepts and ideas, including openness to learning about bias, power and privilege. This also includes a willingness to receive and integrate new ideas into thinking and behaviors (cognitive flexibility.)

Student performance is unacceptable if:

Was dogmatic about own perspective and ideas.
Ignored or was defensive about constructive feedback.
Showed little or no evidence of incorporating constructive feedback received or willingness to change own behavior.

Student performance is optimal if:

Solicited others’ opinions and perspectives about their own work
Invited constructive feedback and demonstrated interest in others’ perspectives
Strong evidence of incorporation of feedback received to change own behavior.

This openness is being judged at all times, including through instruction such as in the Cross-Cultural Counseling class. The most recent textbook for that class has an entire chapter on:

Information regarding White supremacy and its development and sustainment among individuals and families of European and European American descent… Additional discussion of multicultural and social justice counseling strategies with White clients is also provided.

By what is communicated here, students must accept this indoctrination or they will not make it through the program. It doesn’t matter if these ideas of racialized identities are divisive and poorly defined, or if they go against student’s current religious beliefs or practices. The end justifies the means.

While this might seem like the focus is entirely on white supremacy, for this version of white supremacy to be true, it requires that all people of color are incapable of succeeding on their own merits.

Is there a deeper intentional strategy at work here? From where I’m sitting this is at best gross incompetence.

Find Good Therapy and Stop the Madness

The good news is that there still are therapists who stand outside this ideology. And if you are willing to take a stand, we can bring an end to this indoctrination with some collective action of our own.

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About

Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.

Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.

You can also find my work at Minding the Campus