To the Board of Trustees and Leadership of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy,
We are a group of UKCP-accredited psychotherapists writing to express our serious concerns about Sue Parker Hall’s candidacy for UKCP Chair. We are specifically concerned that UKCP members preparing to vote in the upcoming election on Feb. 10 may not have been aware that in her role as a psychotherapist she has publicly espoused and promoted far-right views and conspiracy theories.
In one video on the conservative/far-right platform Rumble, Sue Parker Hall appears in her professional capacity as a psychotherapist, in association with the World Council for Health, an organisation responsible for spreading health misinformation during the pandemic, to assert at length that COVID prevention measures were ‘manipulated events... planned and orchestrated’ by the government and public health organisations using cultic thought reform techniques: ‘The responses seemed to be spontaneous or immediate, but actually, we know that they were planned well in advance.’ She is joined on this video by Dr Christian Buckland, the anti-vaccine activist and former UKCP Chair who stepped down in June last year. She states:
‘The government, the Behavioural Insights Team, media, social media, health service, all promoting a mono-narrative on what was happening at the time [of COVID]... I’m inviting people to reflect on how these eight characteristics [of a totalitarian environment] may have affected you and others that you know, and also to widen it out a bit and think about how it’s been used in the service of other ideologies, such as climate change, critical race and gender theories, the Ukraine-Russia conflict etc.’
(“Undue Influence: Inoculation & Recovery.” Rumble, uploaded by World Council for Health, 24 Aug 2022, rumble.com/v1h75yv-undue-influence-inoculation-and... Accessed 6 Feb 2025.)
She speculated in the same video that those whose views differ from hers on issues such as COVID-19, climate change, Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas hold such views due to cultic techniques of manipulation and brainwashing by the government or ‘deep state’. In an article on her Substack, she also attributed differing views to brain damage caused by the COVID vaccine:
‘If the intention of those who wish to inject us is to harm or kill us, which is the conclusion [Dr Michael] Nehls has come to, the injections need to be administered on a regular basis to keep the neuroinflammation going. Under these circumstances, the hippocampus shrinks and erases parts of former memory, maybe nice happy memories from the past, and the personality is diminished. With such reduced storage capacity the hippocampus is forced to limit what it can remember so old narratives are expelled and new narratives override them. Because the hippocampus prioritises storage of novel experiences it will replace old narratives with whatever the new thing is; the technocratic elite can keep creating a new shiny crisis that knocks out the last shiny crisis – Naomi Wolf says “any fear based narrative can be implanted, like cassette change” – Covid-19, climate change, Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Hamas to name just a few of the most recent ones.’
(Parker Hall, Sue. “When There’s No Place to Meet: The Case of the Shrinking Hippocampus.” the flutter of a butterfly’s wing, 4 Apr 2024, sueparkerhall.substack.com/p/when-theres-no-place-... Accessed 4 Feb 2025.)
Although we acknowledge that to read is not the same as to endorse, Sue Parker Hall also appears from her Substack profile to follow and be willing to be publicly associated with a considerable number of newsletters promoting far-right and conspiracy theory content, including COVID denial, QAnon conspiracy theories, support for Jan 6 insurrectionists, anti-LGBTQ+ narratives, anti-immigration misinformation, climate change denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
(https://substack.com/@sueparkerhall/reads. Accessed 4 Feb 2025.)
She has also appeared on a podcast promoting Qanon content discussing her ‘great awakening’ to Qanon beliefs.
(“How to work with Great Awakening RAGE! #Qanon.” The Sean Morgan Report, 7 May 2020, podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-sean-morgan-repo...)
Sue Parker Hall runs support groups for ‘differently aware’ therapists which discuss a range of issues embraced by Qanon/conspiracy theory believers, including ‘globalism, great reset, world banking system, nanotech, Russia Ukraine, transgender issues, Israel Palestine, child/human trafficking, satanic child abuse, WHO/WEF’ and ‘critical race and gender ideology’.
(eventbrite.co.uk/e/free-support-group-for-differen...)
We believe the views and beliefs expressed by Sue Parker Hall in her public presence as a psychotherapist to be in direct conflict with the UKCP’s core values of inclusivity and ensuring that policies are informed by data and evidence. We also note that her statement in support of her candidacy for Chair does not fully, accurately and transparently represent the values and beliefs she would bring to the role of Chair of the UKCP.
In a video on Rumble, Sue Parker Hall refers to people who reject conspiracy beliefs as ‘indoctrinated’ and describes her approach to persuading people towards conspiracy thinking (‘waking them up’), including by lying:
“A new concept that I’ve created is titrated conversation… titrated conversation is people cleverly orienting their conversation, their level of disclosure or non-disclosure, to the environments that they find themselves in. These titrated conversations derive from a continuum of honesty ranging from the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth at one end, to lying and lying by omission at the other… This is my kind of methodology for if we are wanting to wake people up, this is how we do it, in gentle, titrated ways, testing out the environment.”
(“Undue Influence: Inoculation & Recovery.” Rumble, uploaded by World Council for Health, 24 Aug 2022, rumble.com/v1h75yv-undue-influence-inoculation-and... Accessed 6 Feb 2025.)
We believe that ‘titrated conversation’ is incompatible with the UKCP’s core value of integrity and has no place in the election of its leadership. We believe UKCP members voting in the upcoming election have a right to be fully informed about the views, values and epistemic stance of the candidates they are voting for, and to understand to what extent they are aligned with the stated aims and values of the organisation they belong to.
We therefore ask that the UKCP leadership seriously consider whether, as voting opens, they have done enough to ascertain that the candidates for Chair have been honest in their campaigning, in line with the UKCP Election Code of Conduct, and to ensure that members have the information they need to vote for a candidate who reflects the values and aims of the UK and will fairly represent their voice in the organisation they belong to.
Sources:
psychotherapy.org.uk/about-ukcp/elections/...
https://sueparkerhall.substack.com/
https://fair370.substack.com/welcome
rumble.com/v1h75yv-undue-influence-inoculation-and...
rumble.com/v21bbz4-the-seven-level-model-an-holist...
rumble.com/v20ji06-the-seven-level-model-mind-heal...
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/manmaid/id1528776531...
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/proof-the-deep-state...
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-sean-morgan-repo...