Blacklisting Psychiatric Clinicians

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

Having negotiated interfaith collegial relationships in editing several books, and knowing much about the history of Jewish mental health professionals in Nazi Germany, I was not surprised when reports of blacklisting Jewish clinicians started to emerge recently. As the saying goes, when we do not learn from history, history repeats itself.

The history of Jewish psychiatrists being blacklisted—and more—in the 1930s in Nazi-controlled countries is voluminous.¹ By the mid-1930s, and with the cooperation of non-Jewish doctors, Freud’s books were being burned in German universities and Jews banned from medical leadership. Most Jewish psychoanalysts emigrated. Most of the rest died in concentration camps.

Off and on in recent years, there have been media admonishments that, politically, we are beginning to resemble this practice of the 1930s. Just recently, the well-known psychiatrist Sally Satel, MD, provided a possible mental health care example.²

According to Dr Satel’s article and its associated links, on various online listservs in the Chicago area that provide referrals, Zionism has become a sticking point. For example, the Facebook group “Chicago Anti-Racist Therapists” is said to have developed a blacklist conveying that any clinician “with Zionist affiliations” should not receive referrals because they facilitate White Supremacy. Some were added to the list just because, given their names, they might be Jews. The Anti-Defamation League got involved and an investigation is now scheduled for a licensing hearing on possible unethical conduct by the leader.

In the American Psychiatric Association ethical guidelines, collegial relationships are advocated along with societal and personal concerns. However, patient needs come first, not any societal political needs. There are other places in the US and elsewhere that this same issue seems to be arising.

Major professional organizations other than psychiatry are embracing this focus on politics over personal clinical needs, a kind of political and identity priority. This vision is called critical social justice therapy. Yes, politics are very important as far as psychiatry goes: for funding of research and care; for prevalence of certain problems like societal traumas; and for peace, among other things. We can—and should—be concerned and involved with politics outside of the office.

Traditionally, the office has been a sanctuary to care for the particular needs of each patient, and we are experts in mental health care, not politics. Clinicians were supposed to assume a position of neutrality, openness, curiosity, and compassion in their professionalism. The patient’s politics may indeed become a variable to discuss. Staying on the watch for countertransference, where the clinicians’ own problems and values intruded on the patient care, was also expected. It still should be, shouldn’t it?

In essence, when clinicians are blacklisted for political reasons, patients are also potentially being blacklisted from getting the best care possible. Both can be harmed. We are our patients’ keepers, as well as our collegial brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Luty J. Psychiatry and the dark side: eugenics, Nazi and Soviet psychiatry. Adv Psychiatr Treat. 2014;20(1):52-60.

2. Satel S. Inside the campaign to blacklist “Zionist” therapists. The Free Press. August 12, 2024. Accessed August 15, 2024. https://www.thefp.com/p/campaign-to-blacklist-zionist-therapists