I am the L.A.W

Senior Clinician @TheSelfSpace, @BACP Public Protection Committee member (opinions my own) decent ☕ maker, Spoken word & bouldering amateur. #BLM He/Him

[I am the L.A.W @LAW_hite]

@JDaviesPhD My preference has always been mental or psychological distress;

It recognises the concerning or stressful phenomena without attribution to a particular domain. When it's always a complex interplay of intrapsychic, interpersonal and external forces

[I am the L.A.W @LAW_hite]

@JamesEsses This seems a disingenuous take; its not a sexuality, it's relabelling behaviour that has always existed. "infidelity/cheating" adds stigma that only makes sense if it's outside a couples relationship agreement, and the society/context that relationship is located in

[I am the L.A.W @LAW_hite]

@JonathanShedler @rhodeschord I agree, very academic language to a reality that has existed as long as relationships.

I'm intrigued, is the language of "cultural competency" being segmented from broad competency the concern for you? Or the notion that clinicians need guidance to be non-judgemental?

[I am the L.A.W @LAW_hite]

@JonathanShedler Quick and dirty answer is to give a congruent response; if the loss is ambivalent or evoking of existential regret then no, just reassuring that i'll be there when they're ready to return. Otherwise a human response for acknowledging their pain feels important and relational

[I am the L.A.W @LAW_hite]

Sometimes, resistance doesn't look as we expect.

Sometimes it looks like domino tables, shaved ice, music, and refusing to disappear.

Bad Bunny’s halftime show reminded me that joy can itself be a form of protest.

https://t.co/sZ9ZPHPmqI

[Race Reflections @RaceReflections]

A few words of the BAFTA

The recent apology from the BBC for failing to edit out the N word during its broadcast of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts ceremony raises issues that extend far beyond the incident.

The slur (reportedly) shouted while Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting, was aired without being removed or immediately addressed.

I agree with much of what has already been said, that the failure to blank the word or issue an immediate, live apology to the Black actors or members of the Black audience reflects more than a technical oversight.

It suggests;

1) A failure of care.

In moments of racial harm, immediacy matters. The absence of swift acknowledgment communicates that the emotional and psychological impact on Black people was not treated as urgent or worthy of intervention; a common way anti-Blackness shows up; lack of care, compassion and attention to harm.

2) Institutional desensitisation or tolerance to/of anti-Black racism.

When an anti-Black slur can pass through multiple editorial systems without disruption, it raises questions about what harms are recognises as harm, which are reflexively prioritised and which are treated as tolerable if not acceptable.

3) The persistence of a hierarchy of harms.

Public institutions often mobilise rapidly around certain forms of offence. When anti-Black racism does not trigger that same reflex, it says something important about which communities’ dignity is more institutionally protected, prioritised and safeguarded. This is really damaging for all concerned, poisoning race and community relations and keeping certain groups in the lowest echelons of concern.

4)The usefulness of delay/safeguard mechanisms…

Major public broadcasters operate with compliance protocols precisely to prevent foreseeable harm and take corrective and preventative actions when it arises.
When those mechanisms fail repeatedly in relation to the same group, it signals more than a technical lapse; it signals a cultural one…

4) The neurology of racism…

And this takes us to something more deeply troubling at a psychological/neurological level.

Anti-Blackness can reside beneath conscious self and community perception, still laregely restrained by social norms and institutional filters.

When inhibitions are lowered, it can surface in unmitigated forms.

That surfacing is often framed as aberrational or surprising, yet it reveals latency, beyond the individual concerned, this is a more difficult conversation.

We see a related phenomenon in cases involving neurodegenerative conditions, where racial hostility that may not have been expressed; because suppressed by cognitive and inhibitory control appears in old age.

This does not suggest that someone “suddenly becomes racist” nor is it just incidental, it tells us that executive function and the capacity to filter/inhibit inappropriate language and social conditioning is weakened.

So rather than individualising this expression …

We perhaps need to think about how it underscores how deeply racial hierarchies are embedded within the culture, the body, the memory, even when consciously disavowed.

Also speaking to the denial of the racist implications of the BBC’s actions.

Ultimately, the significance of this incident lies not only in the words that was uttered, or the individual who uttered them, but in the institutional response that followed, as I often say the real test for institutional racism.

What is tragic for me is that here too, we are reminded that we cannot extract the social, from the psychic/psychological and neurological/biological functioning.

This is a more troubling reckoning I think for many.

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

Most of what therapists think of as “ethics” is not really about ethics.

It’s about competence: understanding how psychotherapy works and the conditions that make it possible.

We maintain confidentiality not because it’s an ethics rule, but because no one is really going to open up to us unless they know that what’s said in therapy stays in therapy. Without confidentiality, real psychotherapy can’t happen.

We avoid dual relationships not because it’s an ethics rule, but because entangled roles impair our ability to think psychologically, recognize relational patterns, and respond effectively as psychotherapists.

We don’t promise cures, make exaggerated claims, or traffic in hype, not because ethics guidelines prohibit it, but because psychotherapy works only when words actually mean something.

We’re transparent about our credentials and training, not because it’s an ethics rule, but because if we spin the truth, how can our patients believe anything else we say?

We maintain therapy boundaries not because of rules, but because we understand the raw power of transference and countertransference—and because we know that the more secure the boundaries, the deeper the work can go.

We don’t diagnose or give clinical advice outside a professional relationship, not because it’s unethical, but because real psychological understanding requires a comprehensive, in-depth assessment. That can't happen outside a clinical context.

Professional ethics begins with clinical competence.

[I am the L.A.W @LAW_hite]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[I am the L.A.W @LAW_hite]

Prevent closure of the Sickle Cell Day Unit - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/3oMXVvvoMI via @Change

[Kareem Carr, Ph.D. @kareem_carr]

Reporter: "There's no scientific evidence to prove that a black woman and a white woman are genetically different."

I cringed listening to this. The reporter is directionally right, but the explanation is so mangled that it's clear she doesn't know any biology.

So the dude screams out, "They have genes that code for skin color," basically implying that black people have special black genes that code for black stuff. That's not how it works.

FACT: As far as race is concerned, we all have the same genes.

What differs is that we have different variants. And when I say "we," I mean human beings in general. You can have different gene variants than your parents or siblings, not just people of another race.

FACT: There are no race-specific gene variants in the sense people mean. Virtually every common variant found in one population is found in others.

Many of the same skin-color variants are shared across populations. Lighter variants are just less common in African populations, for example.

We are all one human race. We all arise out of the same set of basic genetic building blocks.

FACT: Frequencies differ between groups, but that would happen no matter what groups you picked geographically.

Geographically close groups tend to be similar. The people we lump together as being the same race are usually physically close to each other, which is why it almost seems to make sense. But geography is the best way of thinking about human variation, not race.

FACT: Because African populations contain the greatest genetic diversity, you can find two Black individuals who are more genetically different from each other than either is from a white individual.

This isn’t just theory. You can literally demonstrate this with computational genetics.

SUMMARY:

It's not that groups don't differ. It's that the groupings themselves are statistical artifacts, crude social categories imposed on continuous geographic variation.

This is why the overwhelming scientific consensus on race is that race is a social construct.

[I am the L.A.W @LAW_hite]

@GrumpJersey @StuartLock What's the contradiction between inflexible and inconsistently applied?

[I am the L.A.W @LAW_hite]

@eternalflamebry Cecilia Reyes!

[I am the L.A.W @LAW_hite]

@JamesEsses Yes this has happened to me (alot), yes it happens (alot). but we don't like to think it happens

[Erin Stevens same handle elsewhere @aclientfirst]

BACP Trustee voting is open! if you are a BACP member, please check your emails and cast your votes! Remember you can email me on [email protected] if you have any questions for me.

[Diane Abbott @HackneyAbbott]

Even after two U-turns the welfare bill remains a vicious and damaging set of proposals, just as the charities say.
It should still be opposed.

https://t.co/Bmik8t13iq

[Dr Jay Watts @Shrink_at_Large]

I’m ashamed to live in a country that just passed a welfare bill condemning hundreds of thousands to deeper poverty and despair.

I’m ashamed of a Labour government that refused to work WITH disabled people to build a benefits system based on dignity, not punishment.

#BinUCBill

[Erin Stevens same handle elsewhere @aclientfirst]

I'm standing for the BACP board! Voting is 15th Jul-15th Aug so if you're a BACP member, look for an email from Mi Voice with a link to vote around then. I'm interested in anti-oppressive practice & ethics and I'Il be answering questions sent to [email protected]

[Dr Jay Watts @Shrink_at_Large]

Proud to be a (non-celebrity!) signatory to the #TakingThePip letter sent to Starmer and the government. We “demand that the government withdraw its inhumane and catastrophic plans to cut disability benefits.” This is nothing less than “cruelty by policy.”https://t.co/UFMk7plZ4H

[BPAS @BPAS1968]

No woman should ever have to go through this again.

Members of Parliament have a moral duty to decriminalise abortion and end the threat of police, prosecutions, and imprisonment once and for all.

https://t.co/56ffvTNHI3