Can a Therapist be an Abolitionist?
A few weeks ago, an interesting question was posed by scholar and activist, Feminista Jones (@feministajones on social media): "Can you be an abolitionist and a licensed social worker or therapist?" After reading various responses and critical engagement around the question, I wanted to offer my 2 cents to the conversation based on my studies and experiences with abolition.
Before getting to the heart of this blog, let me state that this is not intended to take shots at Feminista Jones or anyone who believes that therapists cannot be abolitionists. There is too much in-fighting that goes on in online and offline movement work and I do not want this post to play a role in that. If you have come to this blog seeking or expecting beef or conflict, this may not be for you, and I highly encourage you to investigate where that comes from. I give this disclaimer knowing that misogynoir is rampant, and that tone often gets lost online.
First things first, I want to briefly acknowledge a few relevant pieces of my positionality as it relates to and impacts what and how I write. I'm a Black American man with a Ph.D. in Counselor Education. I study abolition and the intersection between police violence, trauma, mental health, and marginalized social identity, particularly that of Black Americans.
Upon reading and reflecting on the question, my immediate answer was, "Yes, one can be an abolitionist while also being a licensed clinician."
From my understanding, the heart of the conflict highlighted in the question is that, due to ethical and legal functions embedded in the roles of mental health professionals, due to expansions of the prison industrial complex that have led to what we often call the mental health industrial complex, places mental health professionals in the capacity to actively participate in carceral systems through soft policing. Some examples of these obligations are often reflected in state law and ethical codes that speak to the need to break confidentiality for safety related issues such as suicidal and homicidal ideation and plans and mandated reporting of child and elder abuse.
The tension an abolitionist therapist would experience would be that these roles and functions disregard autonomy of clients while also placing them in the crosshairs of violent carceral systems. For example, calling police on a client who is experiencing a mental health related crisis can result in increased odds of experiencing police violence, as indicated in the Fatal Force database’s report of the 20% of fatal police shootings of those experiencing a mental health crisis in their data tracked since 2015. Moreover, this same database highlights the increased risk of fatal police violence People of the Global Majority may experience, notably Black Americans. Beyond fatal encounters with police, one can find several narratives of harm, restricted agency, abuses of power, and negligence within experiences of those who are committed to medical and psychiatric facilities when experiencing mental health related crises.
Make no mistake, carceral systems are rooted in violence, social order and control, and oppression and are legitimized in our society under the guise that they function to maintain safety. I would like to clearly state that carceral systems do not maintain safety and that they often manipulate us into believing that we (those not being actively targeted) are made safer when others (those targeted by carceral systems) are removed from communities instead of offering them needed care and resources that create collective safety for all.
With that in mind, I'd like to highlight why I think therapists can, in fact, be abolitionists.
Carcerality Does Not Define Us
What I mean here is that the depth of who we are, our purpose in life, and how we try to achieve and enact that, is not defined or determined solely by the systems or institutions that we operate within based on where we live and our need to make a living in a capitalist society. My life and purpose extend beyond my employment or chosen career. My identity as an abolitionist transcends any professional role or title I hold. I will still be an abolitionist regardless of what I do, but the roles I operate within give shape and can certainly place limits on what that looks like.
Moreover, while it is certainly true that a role within carceral systems can override our held identities (e.g., the infamous Stanford prison experiment), I do not think this precludes a therapist from being an abolitionist. It does, however, highlight how essential it is for an abolitionist therapist to be vigilant in resisting carcerality institutionalized through norms, laws, and ethics. Moreover, it is essential for an abolitionist therapist to be actively engaged in community with other abolitionists as resistance to socialization of carceral logics in their respective professions. This would also apply to any profession or career path beyond the broad mental health field.
Lastly on this point, I want to draw comparison to identity under white supremacy. White supremacy says that I, as a Black man, am criminal, morally flawed, and deviant. Thus, I need and deserve to be controlled and punished. Back to the main point, this oppressive ideology does not define me despite the violence it would orchestrate towards me. I am radically opposed to these definitions of Blackness and must actively resist any internalization and socialization of these beliefs towards myself and others like me fostered by this oppressive logic. This is similar to the identities and roles of abolitionist and therapist. We must actively resist carcerality and oppression embedded in our roles.
Abolition is More Than the Dismantling of Oppressive and Carceral Systems
As I have read it, many responses suggesting that therapists cannot be abolitionists, seem to highlight the potential role conflicts created by carceral systems. Thus, one cannot be against the carceral institution while being employed and embedded within it. I'll get into why I think this isn't particularly true in my last point, but I want to highlight that abolition, as I have been learning from Black feminists, speaks of abolitionist praxis as being more than focused solely on dismantling carceral systems or even solely having an institutional focus. Instead, abolition is equally invested in creating logics, practices, communities, and structures rooted in justices of care, healing, accountability for harm, and transformation. Moreover, it is essential that abolition is intrapersonal, interpersonal, community-focused, and systemic (see the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies for a description of levels of advocacy for further insight). Thus, it is possible to operate within a carceral system or in a role influenced by carcerality while also embodying and enacting abolition.
A very useful academic article on abolitionist safety planning by Drustrup, Kivlighan, and Ali does a great job in identifying how an abolitionist therapist can work with suicidality in ways that center abolitionist values rather than the carceral logics of policing. My personal takeaway from this article has been that maintaining safety in the context of therapy shouldn't be confined to having clients sign informed consent. Instead, one’s entire practice of therapy should entail a collaborative and anti-carceral approach to maintaining safety as a client needs and defines it. Moreover, as an abolitionist therapist, doing one’s part to create a world, environment, and relationship worth living in does not need to counteract a client's authentic expression or desire for suicide. I contend that a carceral therapist responds to suicide by seeking to institutionalize a client while an abolitionist therapist bears witness to suicide, supports their clients and others in understanding it, and collaborates to sustain life to the extent that it is possible while acknowledging that 1) this is not limited to providing therapy and 2) we don't have control over all things and that attempting to seek control over others is a slippery slope to carcerality.
Additionally, I recently co-wrote an article on abolitionist substance use counseling despite anti-drug policing. I share these as just two examples that highlight that abolitionists in this broad field do exist and are actively engaged in abolitionist dreaming.
Even beyond academic articles, I highly recommend to those struggling with the tensions of being a therapist and abolitionist (or related liberatory praxis) to approach those who have resolved/are resolving this tension with humility and curiosity regarding their process and community for doing so. Many of these therapists actively share their wisdom and insight via Instagram and related platforms. Here are just a few who we might consider learning from and being in community with on Instagram (note that some of these accounts may primarily self-identify differently and that I am only including those who seem to have a public account that explicitly shares abolitionist thought and content): @pat.radical.therapist, @red_maat, @laradacounseling, and @realdocv.
We Are All Part of the Policing Apparatus in the United States
I recently wrote a book chapter that is under review where I traced the history of policing Black American men. As one would imagine, this quickly led to a need to look at chattel slavery as an early iteration of racial caste before being reformed to the globalized and militarized system of mass incarceration that we see today. An insight that stood out to me as I read the works of critical historians and scholars like Michelle Alexander, Leslie Alexander, and Glenn McNair, has been the ever-expanding scope of the policing apparatus of Black Americans and other marginalized groups. I learned that the enforcement of slave codes was not solely the ordained role and responsibility of early iterations of law enforcement and slave patrols. Instead, every single white person could police enslaved Africans and Black Americans regardless of whether they used this power. The insidious nature of racial caste via chattel slavery even allowed other enslaved Africans and Black Americans with the right and responsibility to maintain subordination under racial caste through chattel slavery.
When we think about the ever-expanding nature of the prison industrial complex and its targets, essentially every single person, regardless of identities, roles, and positions we hold, is ordained with the right to internalize and engage in policing and soft policing tactics towards those who hold less power. This reality does not exclude any of us from being abolitionists or pursuing abolition. On this point, I'm drawn to the importance of transformation under an abolitionist praxis. Inherent in this value is the reality that we all have a responsibility to transform from the carceral logics and practices we inherit, adopt, and internalize from existing under pervasive carceral systems. This point certainly extends to therapists and does not exclude those operating in this role from being abolitionists. If that were the case, none of us could achieve abolition.
Lastly, the underlying assumptions shared above may lead some to conclude that therapist cannot be abolitionists interestingly bears eerily similar logic to a common carceral critique that abolition is utopian and not realistic. This carceral logic primarily functions to inhibit abolition and abolitionist dreaming. Thus, I wrap up this blog by highlighting that instead of spending too much time ruminating and reflecting upon closed questions like "can you be an abolitionist and a therapist?", we might consider instead asking ourselves the following questions towards abolitionist dreaming:
How can we as therapists pursue an abolitionist future with ourselves and those we care for?
How can we resist and combat carcerality embedded in our respective and collective professions?
How do we need to transform our professional identities and the structures that define and oversee them to align with the values of abolition?
To what extent does our current conceptualization of what it means to be a therapist need to be dismantled or abolished while recreating roles rooted firmly in healing?
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