A critique of the “APA GUIDELINES for the Psychological Practice with Boys and Men”

APA GUIDELINES for the Psychological Practice with Boys and Men

This paper was released in 2018 and has made the rounds as it were. I will be exploring one paragraph in this on page 9: (Italicization Mine).

Rationale

Although privilege has not applied to all boys and men in equal measure, in the aggregate, males experience a greater degree of social and economic power than girls and women in a patriarchal society (Flood & Pease, 2005). However, men
who benefit from their social power are also confined by system-level policies and practices as well as individual-level psychological resources necessary to maintain male privilege (Mankowski & Maton, 2010). Thus, male privilege often comes with a cost in the form of adherence to sexist ideologies designed to maintain male power that also restrict men’s ability to function adaptively (Liu, 2005).

The Flood & Pease 2005 Citation

The Allison Baily Citation. (where the Flood & Pease 2005 Citation gets its definition of “privilege.”)

Now that I got the references out of the way. I’m actually pretty shocked at how vapid and spurious this particular reference is. The paper in general reads like feminist propaganda, which has no place in psychology or mental health services and treatments. If the paper uses mostly feminist ideology to explain psychological phenomenon, the APA has just lost a lot of credibility. The APA needs to realize that the mentally ill need to believe that the therapist has their best interest in mind, not some political ideology. This goes against best practices and the concept of evidence-based medicine. This is no different when the APA (American Psychiatric Association) listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. It wasn’t/isn’t a disorder in actuality. It should have become apparent that behaviors that cause no harm to others should not be pathologized despite being “contrary” or disapproved of by the culture at large. The idea of “toxic masculinity” is a political one that remains undefined in medicine, and by extension, there doesn’t exist any scientific research that has shed any light on this phenomenon. While it is undoubtedly true that there are male behaviors which are disruptive to one’s own life and others’, the current guidelines push away males who wish to seek treatment because of the overtly political nature of this guideline. By all means make the case for the existence of a pathology, but base it on scientific research, not on grievance studies papers’.

Comprehensive Critiques:

A critical review of the APA Guidelines from a Psychologist’s Point of view

This paper was released in 2018 and has made the rounds as it were. I will be exploring one paragraph in this

The Flood and Pease 2005 Citation

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9833.1998.tb00124.xhttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1016/S1449-4035%2805%2970123-5