132. Colluding with Madness? Dr. Jillian Spencer on the Psychology of Gender-Affirming Clinicians

[@TheQueenOfDreams]

I’m so grateful for all of you who are willing to openly discuss this topic. You are the heroines society needs right now. ❤

[@karenmckay9229]

What a relief to hear you both! Thanks for being out there and standing up for what is right. I trained as a therapist in 2008. I ended up working in foster services, not counselling. But even not having practised for years, I have been bemused at this notion that a therapist is partial, is totally affirming of one pathway, especially a choice that colludes and affirms a notion of a cosmetic/medical fix to a mental health issue and actually is instructed to do this or lose their job! I worked with a client with other dysphoria and I would never have done this - I helped her explore her issues with her (mixed race) appearance which was actually beautiful. You are both exactly right - where is the true relationship where pain can be shared, held and worked through? In foster services we train carers to understand development and how to work with teens through risk and choice with a look at brain development and how risk/weighing up of consequences is among the last thing to mature - into the 20's. Yet with this huge life choice we fling all this away and abdicate being grown ups with them. I get that the trans activists have made this a rights issue and have pushed an agenda. But therapists, teachers, social care workers, many others - and most of all their managers - now need to stop bowing to a set of ideas that flies in the face of all we know. This generation of youth having been so steeped in the social media world needs its grown ups to offer some reality checks and stability.

[@amaryllisequistra]

Well said! 🙏

[@fluffybunny3178]

It is almost like social media was invented to bypass parents and input certain ideas into young peoples brains ...

[@steelcowboy2751]

Well said

[@nicholaslamprey5762]

Great discussion. The point about the “therapist” wanting to be seen as the “good guy” reminded me of the drama triangle. It seems to me the gender affirming model in effect sets up even the best of therapists to fall into the role of “rescuer” never mind those who are completely sold on the ideology. It follows that if the therapist question’s the affirming approach, they will be labelled as the persecutor, potentially by the client, but also by colleagues and others who have been captured by the ideology. Overall the perfect setup for the client to remain in the victim role, the opposite of empowering clients to have agency in their own lives.

[@maramclaine830]

Yes Triangulation is Never healthy. Appalling behavior to separate children from the parents or one parent being lied too. That never ends well for the family

[@californiadreamer2580]

Well said, and on point.

[@amaryllisequistra]

This is one of the best, clearest expositions of the health’care’ side of things that I’ve heard. It’s lovely to hear voices from many countries. Dr Soencer, thank you for being an amazing human being. And of course thank you Stephanie. 55:17 It’s like the whole mental health field has forgotten the decades of good research on developmental psychology. I left a respectful comment on trans psychiatrist Dr Jaimie Talks channel to push back on Dr Jaimie’s notion that there is no regret for trans surgery. I simply listed some detransitioners and suggested dr jaimie rethink the assertion in the light of new evidence. Alas, comment was deleted. Apparently Dr Jaimie doesn’t want to know. I don’t want to target individuals, but this doctor’s comments are full of Eager young people who are so happy to be encouraged to medicalise…

[@HonestHans4]

Dr. Spencer makes so many brilliant points in this interview. It heartens me that somebody with her level of experience, insight, and bravery to stand up against this madness has not just one but several forms of litigation in place to combat it.

[@Catsaresupergreat]

Thank you for your work. I know which hospital this was. This a brave woman. Thank you for giving her a voice. Things need to change urgently here in Australia - and elsewhere.

[@sometherapist]

Thank you!!!

[@springwood1331]

Great episode, thank you. Dr Spencer is a woman of great courage, and I wish her well with her court cases

[@TheMagicOfReality1]

Great discussion and three cheers for Dr Spencer 💪

[@JonFrumTheFirst]

There is a special place in hell for 'therapists.' The recovered memory disaster ruined lives, but it didn't chemically and phisically mutilate children. What we have here is social psychosis on an international scale.

[@megankwisdom]

It really is atrocious how much damage people can do when they think they're "helping." And what's worse is the lack of hindsight we as a society have around these damages.

[@Knuck_Knucks]

Searching inward. Critiquing your own methods while predicting the probability of negative impacts, seems to have been tossed out the window these days. 🐿

[@amaryllisequistra]

@@megankwisdomThe Buddhists call this ‘idiot compassion’…

[@Knuck_Knucks]

Keep on keep'n on Dr. Spencer. Thanks Stephanie. 🐿

[@nastja33]

Love your work Jillian. Thank you for being our Maya Forstater xo

[@natgrace]

Thank you for your honesty. The acknowledgment that clinicians are fallible is an important one. Let the profession return to evidence based practice. Our children deserve nothing but the best.

[@springwood1331]

@natgrace adults too, as many that go.to therapy are vulnerable, and they shouldn't have to deal with an activist when they think they're getting a therapist

[@natgrace]

@@springwood1331 Absolutely! I mentioned children specifically because Jillian is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. 💚🕊💜

[@rvastrik]

Visual cues in the therapy room can take away the opportunity for open thinking. The tuning is provided.

[@AndrewOrr-m6w]

The phenomenon might be reasonably viewed as narcissistic compassion. Certainly empathy without boundaries, constantly reinforcing the virtuous feelings of those clinicians who participate as primary sources of G.A.C., and perhaps also those who are secondary sources of G.A.C. when colluding by providing medical ( hormonal) intervention. The phenomenon is an inexplicable stain on the medical and paramedical professions.

[@nybergjm]

It saddens me that the psychodynamic model isn't taught much anymore. The reaction formation is a great concept, which I think explains a lot of what we're seeing with people's reactions to trans-identifying males (particularly women). I agree totally that we're dealing with an unwillingness to examine factors occurring below the surface, with clinicians instead choosing the easy path of appearing like the "good guy" (also seeing some potential parallels with the "nice guy" phenomenon when it comes to platonic relationships?).

[@TantrumOperator]

Thanks to Dr Spencer and Stephanie for insisting in speaking truth 👍

[@sometherapist]

Our pleasure!

[@imathumb]

aw man, i was born in brisbane, australia 😞 this hits too close to home! im now in canada, but it felt like this ideology hopefully didn't reach as far as my sleepy hometown 😪 thankyou SO much for your important work ❤🇦🇺

[@collyernicholasjohn]

Brisbane has the largest gender clinic in the southern hemisphere.

[@irenalovesart4064]

Thank you for having jillian on. She is a warrior who sounds like an angel. Thank you jillian for sacrificing years of your life to fight for Australian children and families. You genuinely live your values

[@mhaitsma]

Great interview. Really impressed with the level of knowledge

[@collyernicholasjohn]

What a gutsy woman. Her kind of fortitude is rare IME. She’ll be vindicated as more and more actual science as opposed to trans junk-science comes to light.

[@SandiDurnford-Slater]

Amazing. So insightful. When is the paper coming out? I would love to have access to it for my counselling psych doc research.

[@sometherapist]

Not sure, but you can contact Dr. Spencer directly!

[@kathartzell4856]

Great conversation!

[@rvastrik]

31:03 - imagine a medical student in an endocrinology exam answering a question about the side effects of puberty blockers that there are generally none and ten other people thought so.

[@RB-jl2qb]

Thankyou for this great interview

[@mrlawilliamsukwarmachine4904]

18:23 “TRANSWOMEN ARE WOMEN !!” (Repeat x 3)

[@carolinekaye8926]

You are not being fair at all to homeopathy. Very, very upsetting to hear your casual dismissals. Homeopathy is not about chemistry, it is closer to physics. Did you know that research demonstrating its efficacy was halted because affirming this would be damaging to big pharma. Isn't big pharma making a shedload from the trans situation? Homeopathy is about treating the whole person, not just symptoms. It can be very powerful when a skilled homeopath practices it. Please be more open to gentle systems of medicine, and in this case join up with your own project here. You are falling into the same trap as the trans victims of propaganda. This is the first time I felt disappointed in your otherwise excellent podcast series.

[@sometherapist]

You are entitled to your opinion, and I am to mine. Homeopathic remedies do not contain active ingredients. That renders their effects entirely attributable to placebo. I do believe in treating the whole person. Personally I use herbs and nutritional supplements with active ingredients.

[@roxytocin8639]

Stephanie, I think your videos are great. So I was really glad to see that the "dynamic" captioning that appears "write large" on the main screen in the opening "teaser" segment wasn't continued through the rest of the video. I realize some people think it's a big plus to see large "in your face" lettering moving across the screen spelling out the words someone is saying "in real time" as they utter them. But I think you & other content creators should know that for other people, this new way of employing & showing off voice-to-text technology makes videos unwatchable. I dunno why, but personally when I try to watch a video with that "dynamic" captioning writ large in the middle of the screen, I quickly come down with aching eyeballs & a frontal headache. I say that as even though I often use & very much appreciate traditional subtiltes & "closed captioning," and I am not at all put off or bothered by the dynamic lettering/wording that scrolls across the bottom of screens like a Ticker tape in the kind of "crawl" long used in newscasts.

[@jcortese3300]

I think a lot of people watch videos in places where they can't turn on the sound (like at work) and need captions, and small outfits with modest budgets may turn to AI to get their videos captioned. It's not showing off, it's an accessibility thing, but it can certainly be done better and less intrusively. In the end, nothing's better than just making captions by hand.

[@Knuck_Knucks]

Is that not simply a closed captioning function? It can be toggled off. I did not experience the script you describe or any script / captioning while viewing this episode. 🐿