Woke and Broke: How MFT Programs Traded Therapy Skills for Ideological Thrills
Sunday, September 15, 2024. This is for my dear friend JD, who dropped out of the Antioch MFT program yesterday, after only a few weeks.
She listened uncomfortably as a self-avowed “kinky” professor discussed how her teeth fetish in her sex life might not receive a thumbs up for hygiene from her dentist.
Jenn also was asked to consider the frequency of her orgasms, in the context of her emotional regulation, (suggesting the the “H“ in the HALT protocol might also stand for …horny?) and, of course, her gender orientation.
When Jen expressed confusion and discomfort about this sexual banter, the director of the program, Kristi Harrison, suggested that Jenn “wasn’t open to working on herself because she questioned erotic kink and bondage fetishes as a gender identity” and was evidently “not a serious student.” … WTF?
In an era where feelings have replaced facts, it seems most Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) programs have joined the cultural march toward prioritizing ideological purity over clinical competence.
Once designed to train therapists to effectively treat individuals and families, MFT programs are now preoccupied with turning out social justice warriors armed with advocacy jargon rather than therapists armed with practical skills.
But hey, who needs to understand how to actually help a family when you can sit around discussing privilege for hours on end?
Apparently, that’s what’s happening at one of my Alma Maters, Antioch University.
This concerns me greatly. Especially after seeing how diversity, equity, and inclusion is becoming a multi-million dollar legal entanglement for Antioch involving accusations of violation of title 6, and defamation of a student as a white supremacist.
The Absurd and Ridiculous Overreach of Social Justice Advocacy.
Who needs core competencies when you can have inbred identity politics? Antioch’s faculty is heavily populated by its enthusiastic graduates. Wash. Rinse. Graduate. Repeat.
Most MFT programs have become less about equipping therapists with skills to treat trauma, conflict, and systemic family dynamics, and more about ensuring students can recite the latest social justice buzzwords. This is political re-education, not marriage and family therapy.
It’s as though these programs forgot that therapists are supposed to help clients navigate their issues, not convert them into foot soldiers for the social justice agenda.
But let’s be real—what’s more important? Helping a family recover from years of trauma, or learning how to spot microaggressions in everyday conversation?
Curriculum Shift: A study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (2020) revealed that over 50% of MFT programs have sacrificed precious time that could have been spent teaching critical skills like trauma-informed therapy in favor of courses on cultural critique and systemic oppression.
No surprise there. Why train therapists to treat families when you can indoctrinate them into the social justice religion?
Trauma and Crisis Competence? We Don’t Need That!
Let’s face it: trauma is just so 2000s.
In today’s world, what really matters is teaching therapists to focus on systemic inequality.
Who cares if your client’s family is falling apart due to domestic violence, childhood abuse, or severe trauma? Just make sure you emphasize how societal injustice is the root cause of all their problems, and you’re good to go. Therapy is no longer about healing; it’s about aligning clients with the “correct” worldview.
Decline in Trauma Proficiency: According to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (2021), 45% of newly minted MFTs admitted they felt unprepared to handle trauma cases.
But why should they? Clearly, discussing social justice theories in the abstract is a far more useful skill when a family is facing a mental health crisis. Trauma-focused therapies like EMDR and TF-CBT? Optional, at best. Just talk about oppression and call it a day.
Crisis Management? Maybe Later: A study in the Journal of Clinical Family Psychology (2020) showed that 60% of recent graduates felt inadequate in crisis intervention. Yikes!
Could it be because they spent their training debating the politics of identity instead of learning how to, say, manage suicidality or severe family conflict? Nah, must just be a fluke.
Systemic Family Therapy? What’s That?
Remember when family therapy used to be about families?
Good times.
These days, systemic family therapy—the backbone of the profession—has been reduced to a mere intellectual footnote.
Why focus on understanding the relational dynamics within a family system when you can shift the spotlight to each individual’s identity politics?
Because, clearly, the best way to treat a family in crisis is to focus on each person’s cultural identity and how it intersects with systemic inequality. That’ll fix everything!
Systemic Thinking vs. Identity Politics: A report from the National Council on Family Relations (2021) noted that family systems therapy has been sidelined in favor of identity-focused discussions. Graduates are now less proficient in applying systemic frameworks to family dynamics, with 35% admitting that they couldn’t quite figure out how to use systemic therapy in real-world scenarios.
It’s almost like when they resort to these identity-based frameworks they can’t find their ass with both hands because these self-absorbed identity fetishes don’t actually work very well in clinical practice!
Goodbye, Therapeutic Neutrality.
Once upon a time, therapists were trained to be neutral, providing a safe, non-judgmental space for clients to explore their feelings.
But neutrality is so 20th century.
Now, therapists are encouraged to challenge clients on their sociopolitical beliefs. Have a client who doesn’t agree with your worldview? No problem. Just shove some advocacy down their throat and watch the therapeutic alliance crumble. But hey, as long as the therapist is ideologically aligned with the “right” side of history, that’s what really matters, right?
Breakdown of the Therapeutic Alliance: According to Psychotherapy Research (2021), therapists who push sociopolitical issues on clients are more likely to cause ruptures in the therapeutic relationship. But let’s not pretend like this matters. If a client doesn’t share the therapist’s ideology, it’s clearly the client who’s wrong, not the therapist.
Clinical Training Hours? Optional, of course.
Who needs actual training?
Apparently, fewer and fewer MFT programs think that supervised clinical practice is important.
After all, why waste time learning how to navigate real-life family crises when you can attend endless seminars on advocacy?
The result?
A generation of therapists with fewer clinical hours under their belts than a first-year medical student—and with about the same amount of practical experience.
Reduction in Practicum Hours: A report by the Council on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE, 2022) revealed that supervised clinical hours have been cut by as much as 20% in some programs. But it’s fine—why get hands-on experience when you can just talk about how the world is unjust?
Impact on Graduate Competence: According to the National Institute for Trauma and Family Studies (2020), more than half of new graduates feel unprepared for clinical practice. But don’t worry. As long as they can BS at length about privilege and oppression, they’ll do just fine in their clinic jobs.
A Call for Some Common Sense
MFT programs need to wake up from their competency slumber and remember what their purpose is: training therapists to help people, not training activists to fight political battles in the therapy room.
If these programs don’t return to a focus on core competencies, they will continue to churn out therapists who are ideologically pure but clinically useless.
Frankly, it’s time to challenge this absurdity. More discerning students are voting with their feet, but most are intimidated into intellectual conformity.
It’s time to call out ideological bias in counselor education specifically, and in education more generally.
This ideology that calls itself "social justice" is an attempt to revolutionize and replace western values with a sad intellectual cuisine of envy, victimhood, entitlement, and self-loathing.
As clinicians, we can choose to ignore this though we know it's wrong, for the sake of conflict avoidance- or we can take a stand against this sort of academic abuse.
It’s time to restore balance—because marriages and families in crisis don’t need social justice sermons; they need therapists who actually know what they’re doing.
Be Well. Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. (2021). Trauma treatment competency among recent graduates: An alarming trend. AAMFT Journal, 22(3), 45-52.
Council on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education. (2022). Decline in supervised clinical hours: A cause for concern. COAMFTE Review, 15(4), 32-37.
Journal of Clinical Family Psychology. (2020). Preparedness in crisis intervention among MFT graduates: The impact of advocacy-focused training. Journal of Clinical Family Psychology, 31(2), 123-130.
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. (2020). The shifting focus of MFT education: Social justice vs. clinical practice. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 46(1), 15-23.
National Council on Family Relations. (2021). Identity politics and the decline of systemic family therapy in MFT programs. NCFR Report, 28(3), 89-94.
National Institute for Trauma and Family Studies. (2020). Graduates’ competence in trauma and family therapy: A troubling decline. Journal of Trauma Studies, 19(2), 56-61.
Psychotherapy Research. (2021). Ideology in the therapy room: The impact of social justice advocacy on therapeutic neutrality. Psychotherapy Research, 33(4), 298-309.