Unmasking Abuse: The Textbook Study That Demands Reform in Counseling Education
These textbooks aren’t just teaching—they’re indoctrinating. Here’s why it matters.
To subscribers, readers, and everyone else in the California fire zone, my heart goes out to you. May calm winds and water find their way there.
Over the last few months, I embarked on a sobering project: examining the textbooks used to train future therapists. Specifically, I focused on materials assigned in multicultural counseling courses—classes at the heart of a growing ideological crisis in counselor education.
A Quick Recap
For newcomers, counseling has been ideologically overtaken, and one of the indicators that verify this is that the accreditation organization for counselor training programs, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), requires things like mission statements that reflect counseling in a diverse, multicultural and global society with marginalized populations.
CACREP also requires many other things, including a multicultural counseling class in every training program. In my training program, this class was infamous. Starting in orientation, our professors warned us to focus on lots of self-care, because the program, and especially the multicultural class was extremely challenging, emotionally.
I, like many if not most people, figured this was because learning to help people with emotional issues would involve being exposed to stories of trauma, angry outbursts, and other challenging behavior from clients that you must learn to tolerate and over time, appropriately confront.
Lucky for me, I never made it to that class. Being targeted for my Buddhist beliefs, and being held to a different standard because of my race made for an experience so unpleasant it changed my life and my plans of becoming a counselor.
The Influence of CACREP and The Textbook Project Origin Story
My efforts to warn future clients, students, and the general public, while also calling for reform is what landed me researching textbooks and accreditation standards.
In poking through CACREP standards applying to 472 colleges and universities encompassing 983 degree programs, I happened on the curriculum and pulled that thread. That led me to the textbook, Counseling the Culturally Diverse by Derald Sue.
This book presents a manipulative bind for students at the outset then goes on to present vile racist concepts as a singular truth that must be accepted. It does this while acknowledging that some students seem to take delight in watching other classmates “squirm” as they are forced to regurgitate and internalize this material.
A profession that purports to heal mental illness and encounters people when they are emotionally very vulnerable, yet is dominated by an ideology that tacitly condones sadism should terrify everyone.
That textbook is by far the most popular one used for the Multicultural Counseling class, turning up as the required text at over 100 different colleges and universities, nearly a quarter of all programs.
But what about the others?
I set out to find out, just what books universities are using to satisfy the CACREP requirements, and given that CACREP has requirements for curriculum, just what textbooks, CACREP was willing to condone.
So over the latter half of the fall and most of the holiday break, I looked up the textbooks associated with multicultural counseling classes nationwide. I also pulled down other materials that further illustrate how the CACREP standard shows up in practice.
Disturbing Trends and Surprising Insights in Higher Education
In this pursuit, I also noticed things I didn’t expect. From schools that have closed down, to others that have moved, the state of higher education is striking. I’ve seen hundreds of university websites, and hunted for class information and textbooks, just like any incoming student would. Some schools make this process much easier than others.
I was also struck by how many colleges and universities have turned to heavily marketing branded, shirts, sweats, tote bags, you name it, these houses of learning will slap a logo on it and sell it.
There were also other trends, like Inclusive Access for textbooks, an absence of Ivys, and an online cottage market for counseling degrees that has some schools rolling over 10 different versions of the same class simultaneously.
Were I ever to go back to higher education as a student, I have definitely learned a thing or two about how to evaluate degree programs, ways you can reveal a better picture of who you will be learning from, and questions you’d want to ask during a visit.
In the coming weeks, I am going dig into these observations, while I also go over the meat of what I studied, textbooks for a required class for therapists, acknowledged to inspire some students to take delight in watching other classmates “squirm.”
I’ll point this out one more time. This is a class taught by Professors of psychology and counseling, to students who want to become therapists, a profession that extols the benefits of “unconditional positive regard.” To become a therapist, students must endure a class, that even the assigned textbook acknowledges, inspires some students to take delight in watching other classmates “squirm.” In a word, sadism.
This is a real-life horror show.
Take Action to Address Counseling in Your State
Good mental health therapy can be life-saving, and it can make the difference that brings someone from barely surviving to thriving. It can even confront manipulative and abusive behaviors, and help some people take steps to curtail self-sabotaging patterns.
Those kinds of results rely on techniques and traditions that are culturally based and have been studied and tested over time. Current training programs are corrupted and they are teaching students to do the exact opposite of good therapy.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Addressing the ideologically corruption in psychology professions will require legislative action. The courts can’t reach the major players in accreditation. But with your help, we can, and focusing on counseling, being the leader in bringing about this situation, is a great place to start.
A letter to the editor or your state lawmakers can begin the conversation. If there are laws on the books in your state against teaching divisive concepts, you can follow up with your attorney general or state administration. If you need comprehensive evidence and a full cut-and-paste packet with a customizable letter, that is all laid out as well.
Every great movement starts with one person who dares to believe change is possible.
Today is the perfect day to begin.
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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