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Thread by @Respexy: A lot of people take it as self-evident that incels, redpillers, and other types of lonely toxic men whose violence we fear "need to go to therapy" and I have bad news for you...
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A lot of people take it as self-evident that incels, redpillers, and other types of lonely toxic men whose violence we fear "need to go to therapy" and I have bad news for you about the level of training most therapists have in deradicalizing someone from a hate group.
I have an MSW and have lurked Incel forums for years, and I have no doubt that SOME of the guys who post on those forums could benefit from some cognitive reframing work and maybe antidepressants, but
A. To be honest, I don't see a ton of overlap between "the Incels likely to respond well to CBT" and "the Incels who go on to shoot people", so it's not exactly a safety solution
B. Some of them are in therapy already. They post things like "my therapist is bluepilled as hell but it's nice having someone to talk to" or "my therapist is a normie cuck but I do feel better on the antidepressants"
Also, most therapists are women and you're dealing with a population that innately doesn't respect women! That's kind of a hurdle! And many women and other therapists with marginalized identities would feel uncomfortable and out of their depth taking a client like this.
There's also the question of coercion. If we're talking voluntary therapy, a lot of people will drop it like a hot rock if it challenges their worldview too much. If we're talking about forcing these guys to go to therapy... that is an even bigger can of worms.
I'm not saying therapy is can never be beneficial in these cases! Lots of people ultimately become better-adjusted and abandon the redpill forums -- far more than ultimately go on to be mass shooters -- therapy is probably part of the story for some of them.
I'm just saying it's not a silver bullet and as someone who is training to be a mental health provider, "Stop the next Elliot Rogers" is not really a mission that I was actually trained for.
If my MSW program had offered a course in how to safely work with clients with extremist beliefs and effectively guide people away from misogyny or fascism, I would have signed right up! That was not one of the course offerings at my program and it isn't in most programs.
Also, online subcultures, including the toxic ones, are complex and can be inscrutable to people who don't put in the time to familiarize themselves with them. You're probably not exactly going to be speaking this client's language.
For example, I lurked Incel forums, so if a client told me he identified as an incel, I would know enough to ask some clarifying questions about whether he's the kind who wants to put me in a rape camp or the kind who wants to get a ton of plastic surgery (or both.)
But if literally all you know about a client's toxic subculture is "I think one of those guys killed a bunch of people", you're not going to be able to challenge his beliefs with the precision or subtlety that the task requires.
And finally, "being wrong" is not an actual mental illness or symptom that most therapists treat. People have a right to be wrong, even to be gravely wrong, even to be wrong in a way that is bad for society. Therapy does not enforce a correct worldview.
Unless a person comes into therapy with the goal of "I want to have a more egalitarian worldview" then that can only ever be a secondary goal of the therapist, because therapy is about collaboration toward the client's goals and their well-being.
A skilled therapist could probably, in the process of challenging the cognitive distortions that are causing an Incel-identified patient to be depressed and anxious, lead them to a less distorted view of women. That's certainly something a skilled practitioner could pull off.
But that assumes a patient who is, at the very least, actively participating with the goal of being less depressed and anxious. Someone who is "fully blackpilled" might not share that goal at all.
And finally, I want to say that I used incels as an example here because I'm very familiar with them, but I think our cultural discussions of male violence recently over-focus on incels in a way that lets sexually active men off the hook.
I work in domestic violence services! Sexually active, successfully partnered men are responsible for the overwhelming bulk of violence against women! Traditional therapy is also of very limited usefulness in dealing with those men!
OK, I said "finally" like four times but it's six hours later and I'm coming back with (I think!) one last thought.
A lot of our discourse around mental health and mental health treatment in America is "give people mental health treatment to prevent them from harming others."
I think that is not the most useful framing of the need for mental health treatment! Because not all kinds of harmdoers are interested in mental health treatment or will respond well to it. But it also begs the question of who therapy is for.
A lot of "we need mental health treatment!" discourse seems to posit that therapy is for the people AROUND the patient. So they'll be better partners or better parents (or, in extreme cases, won't commit acts of violence.)
But therapy is for the patient. It has to be. That's the person you have the relationship with. And the reason we need better mental health treatment in this country isn't because people with mental illness are harming others, it's because they're suffering in a preventable way.
As a person with mental illness, I certainly hope that going to therapy makes me a better partner and a better person to be around. But the point of therapy is to reduce MY distress.
People with mental illness deserve treatment because it makes THEIR lives better. Not because we're hoping it will make life better for everyone who has to put up with them.
Mental health treatment has immense value. That value should be framed in terms of its benefit to the people who are actually receiving treatment.
Just a note guys, it actually makes me kind of uncomfortable when people quote tweet this thread to say "So obviously we should just pre-emptively kill everyone with those views." That's not my take and I don't think that's the inevitable conclusion of what I said!
I don't believe in the death penalty for those who *actually* do grave harm, and I certainly don't believe in it for people we have simply judged as *likely* to do grave harm.
But also, my thesis here isn't even necessarily, "All these people are beyond help and there's no hope of ever deradicalizing them." It's more, "Simply shipping them all off to the nearest therapist who takes their insurance is unlikely to do the trick."
