Psychologists’ college silent on Jordan Peterson sanction
Peterson #Peterson
The Ontario College of Psychologists says it’s unable to discuss why it is allegedly taking disciplinary action and trying to force social media training on Canadian commentator and psychologist Jordan Peterson.
In an opinion piece in the National Post , Peterson said he faces more than a dozen complaints from the public. They have all come since his “rise to public prominence,” he said, adding he faced none in the prior 20 years as a practising psychologist in Ontario.
In documents that Peterson posted to Twitter, the college says that Peterson “may have lacked professionalism” in social media posts, and in a podcast appearance from January 2022 — potentially an episode with Joe Rogan, the former Fear Factor host and comedian, in which he claimed there’s no such thing as climate. The specific concerning comments are not identified.
The document, which sets out a coaching plan for Peterson, says Peterson must “review, reflect on, and ameliorate my professionalism in public statements,” and that it will cost up to $225 per hour.
Peterson, who is also a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said on Twitter he has formally indicated that he will not comply; the college’s website indicates that Peterson has sought judicial review of the college’s disciplinary proceedings.
The Post sought comment from the Ontario College of Psychologists, and put a number of questions to Rick Morris, the college’s executive director, but he said that due to Ontario privacy legislation, the college is “not authorized to discuss this matter.”
The stakes are heightened by the controversial professor’s fame and reach, including to 3.6 million Twitter followers.
His tweets on the college’s action prompted several alarmed responses from Twitter CEO Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, who called it all “extremely concerning!”
Peterson catapulted to fame in 2016, following his public objections to specific provisions of legislation that would add protections for transgender people to Canada’s human rights codes. Peterson has since become a widely read and popular cultural critic; his two books, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, are best-sellers. At present, he hosts a podcast for Ben Shapiro’s right-wing media company The Daily Wire and is completing a worldwide speaking tour.
The complaints against him, he says, are due primarily to his views on politics.
He identifies four specific complaints, including making a joke about New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, retweeting Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative party leader, criticizing Trudeau and his former principal secretary Gerald Butts, whom Peterson last February called a “stunningly corrupt and incendiary fool,” prompting threats of legal retaliation from Butts.
Peterson has yet to make public the details of any remaining complaints, beyond noting that in the complaints, he is accused of being “sexist, transphobic, incapable of the requisite body positivity in relationship to morbid obesity and, unforgivably of all, a climate change denialist.”
Peterson has pledged to make public all the complaints and his responses to them.
Peterson’s private practice has been suspended since 2017, which, he says, was “when my rising notoriety or fame made continuing as a private therapist practically and ethically impossible.” Yet, in 2018, Peterson agreed to a plan to improve his clinical practice; while there are few details of what constituted professional misconduct, the complaint against him had to do with the quality of his service, psychologist/patient boundaries and the way he communicates with his patients.
Peterson says that none of the people who have levied complaints against him are — or have ever been — his clients and says that “half” of them falsely claimed to be patients. (The college declined to address this specific allegation.)
Indeed, Peterson threatens to make “every single word of this legal battle fully public.”
“I’m going to say what I have to say and let the chips fall where they will. I have done nothing to compromise those in my care; quite the contrary — I have served all my clients and the millions of people I am communicating with to the best of my ability and in good faith, and that’s that,” he writes.
• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson