Where is a Shrink when you need One?

Omnes te moriturum amant. Everybody loves you when you are about to die.

An interesting saying, wouldn’t you agree?

Here is another interesting factoid about who else loves you… and your secrets.

Given the amount of hype, time, and money spent in the field and realm of psychoanalysis, one would imagine therapy would by now have become more affordable, or bar that outcome, more available to the general public. At least to the people residing in the Collective West.

As it happens, psychoanalysis is following its own counterintuitive trend whereby the more people use their services, and the more practicing psychologists and psycho-the-rapists there are, the faster their hourly rates grow. Quite the perversion of the market supply principle, right?!

Don’t worry, folks. The same can be said about lawyers. And their social utility has never been proven. Talk about a useless caste of posers: lawyers and shrinks, eh!

When a doctor dies, he takes a bunch of patients with him to the grave. When a teacher dies, a generation goes woke. When an engineer dies, a bridge loses structural integrity and crumbles. But when a lawyer dies, a bunch of client secrets die with him. As for when a psychotherapist dies, the same bunch of secrets is supposed to die with them.

But the reality is so much different that it bears explaining.

In Canada, but I reckon the spirit of these laws exists elsewhere too, psychotherapists and psychologists operate and are bound to abide by certain regulations that stunt the privacy and confidentiality of the patient-therapist relation.

The thing is that I am old fashioned and I care about privacy. But I am not dense to believe it exists outside the individual. I reckon that if you want to keep a secret, then you ought to keep your mouth shut. Because once you open your trap, your secret becomes public knowledge.

But still, I do care and some may even say I am obsessed with privacy. But it is a newfound obsession. Let me explain myself.

There used to be a time when one could go to their confessor and share their transgressions, whatever these might have been, in the hope of getting a remission or absolution of their sins.

This privilege was also extended to doctors, lawyers, and others like them, who needed to establish a privacy bubble founded on trust with their patients, clients, etc.

On paper, the system worked and it worked well enough to establish the reputation of these professions or callings, to the point where people actually confided in their priests, doctors, and lawyers.

In time, however, certain agents of the State, the ever perfidious and over-encroaching State, started to come between individuals and the ‘holy trinity’ of their private confessors (priests, lawyers, and doctors). In the name of enforcing the social contract, and always acting ‘for the greater good of the many’, these nimrods railroaded the Church into sharing the secrets of the sinners with State agents. Or created laws that made a mockery of the private nature of the lawyer-client / doctor-patient relationships.

Most of these agents were Communists or Bolsheviks. That’s why one should never trust the Left.

Case in point

The following are the legal exemptions in Canada mandating Privacy breaches. Yes, you heard that well. In this country, certain circumstances render Privacy null and void. For the sake of accuracy, I will only refer here to the regime applicable to psychotherapists and psychologists.

1. When a therapist in the course of their profession becomes aware that their patient/client poses a threat to himself, they have a duty to report them to the appropriate authorities. For the sake of clarity, let us not mince words. They ask their patient if they are suicidal. If the answer is affirmative, then Privacy is dead. And out to the authorities goes their report.
2. When a therapist finds out their patient/client is about to or intends to or has designs to hurt or poses a threat to others, the expectation of Privacy is out of the picture. The authorities are notified.
3. When a therapist becomes aware their patient/client has or will sexually molest or abuse minors, Privacy is gone and the police are notified.
4. When the Provincial College or Board of Psychotherapists and Psychologists decides to audit the practice of one’s therapist, the session notes must be produced for review and the patient/client notified of the same. Again, Privacy becomes a figment of the past. Because what was once the secret of the individual and had become a shared thought, is about to become an open secret, which is to say public knowledge. So, no secret at all. At this point, you might as well start airing your laundry by shouting it from the top of your lungs in the public square, like the town’s crier. Same results. More honest. Less hassle. Why not cut the middleman then?
5. When the therapist’s supervisor wishes to review and oversee the session notes, again your therapist is bound to share them. Privacy, my ass!
6. And finally, upon a court order, your therapist must surrender all session records to the court. Your Privacy is at this point but an empty word. It is a Joke played at your expense by an overreaching State.

But let us assume that the first three criteria are objective. Let’s conflate suicide, with criminal intent, and sexual abuse, and let’s say that these are good reasons for why your Privacy should come second. Agreed. In these circumstances, your right to kill yourself, your capacity to hurt others or sexually abuse minors, should not stand in the way of the authorities trying to save you and others by preventing your criminal actions.

Incidentally, truth be told, I am with the Romans when it comes to suicide. I believe that when a person decides to end their life, it is their right to do so. Nobody should have the right or feel the need to intervene. But what do I know, right?! Society knows better… or does it?

That takes care of criterion #1, #2, and #3.

But what about #4, #5, and #6?!

Let’s consider the audit mandate of the College of Psychologists of Ontario.

In Ontario, this overseeing body called the CPO has become so politicized to the point where they pointlessly censored eminent clinician Dr. Jordan Peterson not once but twice. Once in 2018, and again in 2023, when they took away his license to practice psychotherapy in Ontario. The stated reason was beyond absurd, the CPO alleging that Peterson “lacked professionalism in public statements”, and ordering him “to undergo social media communication coaching”.

This was an abuse of power, given Jordan Peterson’s public position on many hot-button issues, position which contradicted the official narrative. That is how a man beyond reproach with an international following numbering in the millions, and who upholds Canada’s reputation on the world scene, has lost his license to practice his trade: via censorship. It has come to that.

After this blatant abuse of power against a man of means and with a lot of influence like Peterson, what could anybody else expect from the CPO? A fair shake? Come on! Let’s be honest. I wouldn’t let the CPO anywhere near my session notes if I had a say in the matter.

The same goes for granting your therapist’s supervisor access to their session notes.

Bottom line, if you had to use psychotherapy services, choose wisely. Pick someone who doesn’t have to report to anybody else. Be smart. Don’t be a boobie.

As for a court order allowing a judge to peak a boo at your session notes, come on already. What is this, an all inclusive buffet for all who want to know your deepest secrets?! WTF.

I really mean WTF, people.

And still they have the audacity to talk about Privacy in this country. What Privacy? This word is a joke. The whole country is a joke. The fact that we continue to have a conversation about Privacy and Confidentiality with so many hands in the freaking cookie jar, tells us how utterly corrupt and pestilential and toxic our society has become.

The rot is not just stagnant. It is omnipresent. It sickens me. I am disgusted by the Hypocrisy and laisse-faire attitude of most if not almost all Canadians.

Canada is worse than Communist Romania. This country sucks big time.

If we enumerated all the authorities who had their hand in the cookie jar of patients’ private affairs, we’d have the police, the CPO, the court system, other clinicians, public health authorities, in essence all levels of government (municipal, provincial, and federal). Because why!? Because they all have a need to know. An invented one, but still that’s how they take Privacy and remake it into a Joke.

This is how they morphed Privacy into State Business. Their reasoning is that of tyrants immemorial. What, you want to keep Secrets from Us? Who do you think you are? A Free Man? Get the fuck out of here! We own you. If you want to have Secrets, that’s because you are a bad guy. So, no secrets for you!

That is the message they are telling everybody.

But coming back to the difference between lawyers and the-rapists, that is evident in their hourly rates. Lawyers, good ones, are not as cheap as the most expensive shrinks.