The APA recently released a new set of clinical guidelines for psychologists, in particular focused on men and boys. (For reference, a similar set of guidelines for women and girls was first issued eleven years ago.)
These guidelines talk about negative outcomes for men and (particularly unusually in a document intended to provide guidance for treating men and boys) talk about ways in which men and boys may negatively impact the lives of others around them. The guidelines controversially identify "traditional masculinity" (or, in some later parts of the text, simply "masculinity") as the source of all the problems particular to men, and do so while citing highly questionable research.
Guidelines include numerous assertions about what sort of psychological "science" - or more correctly, gender ideology wrapped in a scientific veneer - clinical psychologists should believe in.
- Clinical psychologists should be social constructivists.
- Clinical psychologists should be intersectionalists.
- Clinical psychologists should buy into the importance of microaggressions.
- Clinical psychologists should believe in male privilege.
- Clinical psychologists should be trying to push for change "institutional, cultural, and systemic" level.
Summary of problems from one expert insider who pointed out the problems with this in the draft version: https://www.scribd.com/document/3853476 ... n-and-Boys
From one Psychology Today writer: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1083 ... 67137.html
The short version: This is bad science and essentially an entirely ideological document that will, if embraced by practitioners, continue to drive men away from seeking help for psychological problems and fail to cause them help. It's driven by a political agenda, a clear attempt to conscript clinical psychologists into being soldiers of cultural change - a role that is at odds with providing effective therapy to men and boys.
For a pointed example on the quality of the science, microaggression research is extremely weak from a scientific perspective.
This is not to say that 100% of the document is bad, but what we have here is something that has more to do with feminist ideology than with either psychological research or good clinical practice.