Dr. Lucas Klein: “DEI Activists Are Coming for My Profession”

Psychoanalysis, at its core, aims to understand the origin points for suffering. Dr. Lucas A. Klein wants you to know that if radical DEI initiatives collapse the field of psychoanalysis, the Holmes Commission was the origin point.

Dr. Klein is a clinical psychologist, adult psychoanalyst, former forensic psychologist, the host of Real Clear Podcast, and a visiting fellow at Do No Harm. He knows a thing or two about the human condition, and he believes the principles underlying DEI are not only illogical—they’re dangerous.

“Psychoanalysis is among the last in the field of mental health to enter this battle, and it deserves some congratulations for having held out this long. Other professions fell long, long ago,” he says.

“But DEI activists are coming for my profession, and it’s making a mockery of it. I’m not going to give up the seriousness of my field without a fight.”

In 2020, the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) created the Holmes Commission to find evidence of racism within the association. Three years later, it released a stunning 421-page report calling for the restructuring of the entire field of psychoanalysis.

It instructed therapists to “apply an analytic lens to the matters of race, racism, and white supremacy.” It also tasked entities associated with the field to hire a DEI ombudsman and “monitor resistance to change.”

Amazingly, the authors of the report themselves admitted they don’t have any data to prove or disprove systemic racism in the field, and that the report’s findings were enhanced with the “personal experiences of commission members.”

For Dr. Klein, enough was enough. He published a pointed takedown of the report’s findings on his professional APsA listserv. It set the field ablaze for a few weeks.

“I received a torrent of private support from psychoanalysts throughout the country and throughout the world, and I’m still getting positive responses from analysts,” he says. “It’s not surprising, but it is sad they felt they had to do so privately.”

Dr. Klein expanded on the hazards of critical social justice for an op-ed in the City Journal, in which he warned against making race central to the patient experience:

“Such racial fixation contributes to the unmaking of psychoanalysis. The point of our craft is to help people delve deep into the true and specific cause of their problems, not tell them that they’re victims or evildoers whose problems are unsolvable. We’re supposed to empower people with a truer sense of who they are, not immobilize them by shoving them into a predetermined spot in a power structure.”

“That approach cultivates helplessness, anger, and obsession—not empathy, understanding, and resolution. Mental problems worsen when the unconscious goes unconfronted.”

Sadly, Dr. Klein is watching his warnings come to life at work. He often meets new patients who walk in the door feeling anxious about the possible politicization of their experiences.

“I’ve had patients come to me worried I’m going to view their experiences through the lens of race. I’ve had parents of teenagers worried I’m going to trans their kids,” he says. “Each went to other therapists first who brought up concepts about race and gender when they were not applicable.”

Dr. Klein is not sure that APsA will ever get back on track, but he steadfastly believes the intellectual foundation of psychoanalysis is worth saving.

“We may need to start a new organization that reaffirms classical psychoanalytic values and theories to the exclusion of modern woke ideas. Those cannot be entertained. You really can’t middle around on this,” he warns.

We couldn’t agree more.