Cooney began pushing back, expressing views the therapist had declared taboo such as not wanting to categorize people based on their identities, or asserting that too many people were being shamed and punished for minor supposed transgressions. Finally, her therapist told Cooney their relationship was finished.

Ultimately, the thing she had feared the most—being canceled for her views—had happened, by the person with whom she was supposed to be able to share her deepest secrets. “I was just totally in shock, just kind of dead inside,” Cooney told me.

Cooney is not alone in finding therapy overtaken by the same kind of social justice ideology prevalent in schools, medicine, and the law. I spoke with more than two dozen therapists and clients who painted a disturbing picture of what happens in the treatment room when therapists make the tenets of this ideology central to their work, instead of offering empowering approaches that help patients make better choices and take control of their lives. Some patients, like Cooney, have also found themselves “fired” for expressing unacceptable thoughts.

I spoke to new therapists, some still in training, who describe a profession that teaches the ascribing of oppressor or victim categories to patients, based on their innate characteristics, instead of seeing them as individuals. Several sources said their applications to graduate schools required them to make a written commitment to anti-racism. Some said they’d been penalized for asking the “wrong” questions in class, detailing how this ideological encroachment damages their own mental health.

[Cultural Marxism has spread much farther than people think and it corrupts every institution and industry that succumbs to it. Therapy is perhaps one of the biggest betrayals, because it is intended for intensely personal and individual reflection. Instead, the industry is being co-opted into the reception center of the Cult of Woke. — Ed]