My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have given up their Friday to attend Second Reading. I will be referring to the LGBT+ community as a whole, but in the light of recent events I ask noble colleagues to be respectful when referring to trans people. We must remember they are people who struggle with discrimination in their lives, and that their families and friends who love them are also affected by the words of politicians.
My aim for today is to tease out the arguments but, because of the high number of colleagues wishing to speak, I would be very grateful if noble Lords could resist the temptation to repeat points already made by other colleagues.
The Bill is deliberately couched in general language so we can build on the discussion today and bring forward amendments to make it stronger and more acceptable to more colleagues and external groups.
First, we need to define what we mean by conversion therapy because, in reality, it is not therapy at all. As defined in my Bill, conversion therapy is any practice with the predetermined purpose of changing or suppressing a person’s expression of their sexual orientation or gender identity. These practices are based on the belief that there is a right way to behave and live your life.
According to the Government’s own research, 7% of LGBT+ people in the UK have undergone or been offered conversion therapy. For trans people, this escalates to one in seven. The experts agree—this is confirmed by a thorough government research review—that conversion therapy does not work, because a person cannot be cured of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is not a lifestyle choice but something innate; it is who, and what, we are.
What the practices do achieve, however, is deeply harmful to the recipient. It was summarised eloquently by the UN Independent Forensic Expert Group, which concluded that:
“All practices attempting conversion are inherently humiliating, demeaning and discriminatory”,
and that they
“generate profound feelings of shame, guilt, self-disgust, and worthlessness”.
The consequences can be grave. One 2020 study found that people who had undergone conversion therapy were twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts, and 75% more likely to plan a suicide attempt than the general population. We cannot leave the LGBT+ community unprotected against these harms for any longer.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, whom I have very considerable respect for. However, in nearly 40 years in Parliament, I have never seen a more badly drafted or dangerous piece of legislation. It consists of two clauses. The noble Baroness said that the key issue is where you draw the line. She is absolutely right about that. Unfortunately, the Bill does not draw the line. Clause 1(2) says:
“Conversion therapy is any practice”.
What does “any practice” mean? How is that defined? Does “any practice” include a parent not supporting a child’s decision to dress as a member of the opposite sex? The noble Baroness shakes her head, but where does the Bill say that? In her speech, she said there were all kinds of understandings of provisions, but it is not there in the Bill, and she is asking us to support it. The Bill refers to:
“any practice aimed at a person or group”—
so that includes children? Would parents saying to their children, “You must not take puberty blockers” find themselves on the wrong side of the law? This is an extraordinary suggestion. Would trying to prevent surgery or medical interventions which would be irreversible be “any practice”? The language of the Bill says,
“any practice aimed at a person”—
ie, children—
“or group of people which demonstrates an assumption”.
Are we now going to criminalise people for thinking things? That is what “demonstrates an assumption” means. The Bill goes on:
“that any sexual orientation or gender identity is inherently preferable to another, and which has the intended purpose of attempting to … change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity”.
My Lords, it is always a huge pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, even when I deeply disagree with him. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, on the Bill. Unfortunately, rather like the noble Lord, I feel there are so many flaws in it that I have to say I have great concern about the way it is worded and how it would work in practice. I recognise that the Bill is the result of a huge amount of work. I have produced two or three of my own Private Member’s Bills in this House over many years, and I remember how much detail has to go into them and how many discussions one has, but I feel there are too many flaws in this Bill to let it slide without being at least pretty critical of it.
I remember first becoming aware of the danger of ever being involved publicly with any aspect of transgender issues, for fear of being called homophobic. I feel quite concerned about that, because I received very serious threats when I discussed gender many years ago in the press. I think I was the first person—certainly in Britain and probably in Europe—to treat ladies of the same sex with in vitro fertilisation; that is to say, they were lesbian couples. Yet we could not tell anybody that they were lesbian couples, because we knew that, if we did so, phone tapping was already available and those people would be identified. It was some years before we explained what we were doing, because there was so much concern about sexuality, which was always in the press—as there is now with this subject. So one must be very careful how one words what we say in this House, for reasons of being thought to be prejudiced. There is no prejudice in my mind about this.
The issue of sexuality is extremely curious. Some time in the 1980s—I do not remember exactly when— a couple of colleagues of mine and I started to look at the metabolism of human embryos in culture when they are completely invisible, at day 2. What we found was completely extraordinary: male embryos were more active in their metabolism of sugar substrates than female embryos. We were very puzzled about that. We were so concerned that the data was probably ridiculous and sloppy that we felt that we could not publish it, so we did not; we thought it would be ridiculed. Now, there is new data coming through with more sophisticated work showing that the thing we refused to publish initially was probably correct, and we might have had a world first. Again, that sensitivity about sex was there even in that decision about publication, and that is worth thinking about.
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Winston.
If my family, the state or the Church were to insist that I be homosexual, but I am not homosexual, that would be not only ridiculous but clearly detrimental to both my physical and mental well-being. But that is, effectively, what conversion therapy seeks to do in reverse, and what the Bill seeks to stop: practices that work to cure, change or remove an individual’s rights over their own feelings and sense of themselves. An intervention, the purpose of which is to make LGBT people averse to their own natural feelings, is dangerous and cruel.
During the coalition, I was a Home Office Minister and Equalities Minister for two years under Theresa May. During that period, I was both the originator and architect of the same-sex marriage law, and I also produced the first transgender action plan in the United Kingdom. I worked extensively with both the LGB and T communities, as well as the religious communities. I have some issues with some of the religions, which in my view have quite a lot to answer for. I had an article published in the Telegraph in which I wrote, accurately, that the Church did not own marriage. The torrent of emails I received the next day were a salutary example, not of love, charity and hope, but of the hatred and vitriol that the LGBT community bear on a daily basis. All manner of hideous bile against homosexuality rained down on me: how I was undermining marriage and how people would marry dogs, tables, their relatives or multiple human beings, among many other absurd missives. My message in the article about love, acceptance and compassion, and my plea not to polarise the debate, clearly never landed.
The great organised religions of the world went into overdrive. Cardinal Keith O’Brien said on the “Today” programme:
“If marriage can be redefined so that it no longer means a man and a woman but two men or two women, why stop there? Why not allow three men or a woman and two men to constitute a marriage?”
My Lords, I know that there is an advisory time limit of five minutes but this Bill raises very significant issues, so I hope that noble Lords will allow me a little more time than that. I thought that my noble friend the Whip on the Front Bench would like early notice of that.
I believe that we should apply stringent tests to any new legislation, particularly when criminal offences are created. There needs to be clear evidence of a problem, legislation has to be necessary to deal with it, the drafting must be clear and unambiguous, and the new law must avoid other harms. I believe that the Bill does not pass any of these tests, but I will concentrate my remarks on only the first test: namely, the evidence base for the Bill.
The Government have certainly tried to be evidence-based in their LGBT policies. In 2015, they commissioned an evidence review by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which said that
“the evidence base for an effective assessment of inequality and relative disadvantage by sexual orientation and gender identity is deficient and has major gaps”.
The Government then organised the National LGBT Survey in 2017, which got a lot of responses. The survey found that a very small proportion, 5%, had been offered conversion therapy and that an even smaller proportion, 2%, had actually undergone it. The respondents were a self-selected sample, which has obvious problems, and the survey did not define what conversion therapy was—a problem that we continue to face with this Bill—nor did it define what constituted being “offered” conversion therapy. The best that we can say about this survey is that it is interesting.
In 2021, the Government published three more studies. One tried to correct for some of the problems with the LGBT survey by weighting some of the data. It could not, of course, correct for the underlying problems of the survey, and so we might conclude that this study too is at best interesting.
My Lords, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I support this Bill for LGBT+ people. It can be improved, and I hope it will be improved in Committee, but I have a rather different take on this issue.
I chair the National Commission on Forced Marriage. We have taken evidence from across the United Kingdom and discovered family members forced into marriage across a spectrum of society and not limited to non-white communities. Among some families, having a gay member of the family is unacceptable and contrary to custom and their religion. In some cases, steps are taken to bring that family member into line; we have evidence of this. In some communities, it is a matter of family honour; as they see it, the errant member brings shame on the family within their community. In extreme cases, it can lead to injury or death by defying the family, the community and what is seen as the family’s honour.
Some families arrange a marriage with a person of the opposite sex without consent; that is a forced marriage. Another method is conversion therapy. A family member is subjected to efforts to require him or her to accept that a sexual orientation outside the so-called normal heterosexual relationship is deviant and not acceptable, thereby requiring a change in his or her sexual orientation or the suppression of their sexual orientation.
Freedom of speech is part of our way of life, subject only to necessary statutory restrictions. Everyone has a right to their beliefs, religious or otherwise, but there is no right to impose one’s beliefs on another person, including one’s children. My children have widely differing views, and I dare not tell noble Lords about my grandchildren.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, about puberty blockers. I do not believe that they should be allowed before the age of 18, but that is a different matter.
My Lords, we have all been contacted by many people about this Bill, so I have been looking at it to understand it. Physical abuse, detaining somebody against their will and assault are already illegal, so what is the Bill about? What is it for?
To explore this further, I read a Times article on 1 February—last week. It should have clarified the situation. Others will raise more points in detail but I will concentrate on the article, which purported to clarify the situation. The headline reads: “Conversion therapy? It must be banned. I should know”. The journalist, Emily Sargent, who is gay,
“went undercover to try it and was shocked by the damage it did”.
In brief, she was paid to write this article and, in pursuit of remuneration, she lied and said to a therapist that she was unhappy about being attracted to women. All the sessions were on Zoom. I quote the article:
“When I logged on to our first Zoom call the woman—whom I will call Carol—appeared to be a harmless-looking, middle-aged lady in a cosy, middle-class home”.
It quickly changed. She says:
“The process … quickly became destabilising. I dreaded the sessions, which were making me feel wrung out and depressed”.
She could have stopped.
Emily was also horrified to be asked about her sexual relationships—these were six counselling sessions about sexual relations—and about her relationship with her parents. That is pretty standard for psychologists, of which more later. She then says that she felt “exploited”. One might ask who was exploiting whom: Carol, whom Emily called “empathetic and gentle” and who had been asked to give counselling, or the journalist who deceived her, was paid for the article and could have switched off Zoom at any time?
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In 2018, Theresa May recognised this, receiving cross-party support when she promised a ban. More than five years on, however, we are still no closer to making that a reality. I am particularly looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say because it is in her Government’s gift to help the Bill to progress. After five years of dither and delay, it is well overdue.
Many people have written to me with their concerns, and I expect we will hear some of them repeated in the Chamber today. I want to address these as best I can. I thank everyone who wrote to me, as well as the professional bodies whose expertise I have leaned on. At the heart of this issue, I think most of us agree on an awful lot. I believe there is a great deal of consensus that it is wrong to try to force anyone to be something they are not.
As I see it, there are four themes of objections to the Bill: from those who fear their right to free speech will be lost; from religious practitioners who fear they will be criminalised for preaching and teaching that LGBT practices are wrong; from professionals who work with people who may be questioning their sexuality or gender identity, like psychiatrists and teachers; and from parents who fear they will not be able to talk to their children openly about these issues. When you boil it all down, these all raise the same question: where do we draw the line on what is criminalised? When does a conversation become a conversion practice?
There are many people—particularly young people—who may be wondering about themselves. It is not always straightforward to understand your sexuality or gender identity, and grappling with these topics can be confusing and even distressing. What these people need is not a cure, but space—and support—to work things out. This may take the form of speaking with a trusted adult, like a mentor or counsellor, to explore their own feelings in a non-judgmental way.
However, the difference between that and conversion therapy is that the latter has a predetermined goal to change that person. I want to make it clear: my Bill will not criminalise these sorts of open conversations in any way, nor will it tell people what to think or what to say. Freedom of speech and religious freedom are important cornerstones of any liberal society. As a Liberal Democrat, I have always championed these values, and the last thing I would want to do is to unduly curb anybody else’s rights. Noble Lords are free to say what they believe: the rules on free speech are the same here as anywhere else in British law. Noble Lords are entitled to express an opinion, just not to coerce somebody else into agreeing with them and changing their behaviour as a result.
My little Bill team and I had an excellent meeting with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London last week, who used the phrase “good prayer”, putting the pastoral needs of the person first, accepting them for what they are, and not trying to push one’s own beliefs of who the person ought to be. Yesterday, the Church of England issued a new briefing and reflection on conversion therapy. It is excellent and I urge anyone with concerns in this area to have a look. The Church of England, the Methodist Church, the Quakers, the Hindu Council and the Buddhist dhamma centre have already supported a ban.
We see it in the medical field, too. Through a memorandum of understanding, all major psychological therapy professional bodies in England, alongside the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of GPs and NHS England, have agreed a set definition of conversion therapy—the same one we have adopted in the Bill. That is why, before any attempt to prosecute, the Bill would require police to demonstrate both action and motivation to be present.
I appreciate that these are complex topics, which I look forward to exploring in detail in Committee. I am very open to any amendments which do not undermine the effectiveness of the ban. It must be comprehensive, clear and inclusive of all LGBT+ people. I hope we can find it within ourselves to come together this morning to find a way forward, to deliver the change that the LGBT+ community so needs.
What exactly is gender identity? That is not included in the Bill. I notice that the Scottish Government currently have a consultation document out, in which they attempt to define gender identity. Their definition is:
“an individual’s personal sense of being or belonging to a particular gender or genders, or of not having a gender”.
That is the definition, and we are expected to criminalise people on the basis of something which is so fluid and not defined in the Bill.
The noble Baroness said that this is not about attacking free speech. Of course it is an attack on free speech if parents do not feel they can give guidance to their children. It is an absolute basic duty of parents to give guidance to their children and to prevent them from suffering any harm. The Bill criminalises advice given in good faith.
I noticed that the Bill also applies to Scotland. The Scottish Government have a consultation document out at the moment. In this Bill, the penalty for telling your child not to take puberty blockers, or whatever they are, is
“a fine not exceeding level 5”—
that is, an unlimited fine. I suppose we should be grateful for that, because in Scotland they are proposing seven years in prison. The world has gone mad.
In this House, we normally introduce legislation to fix a problem, not to create new ones. This Bill undermines the family and attacks free speech, freedom of thought and even religious belief. It is a dangerous, crude piece of legislation in a hugely complex and controversial area that is not suited to private legislation. It has all the characteristics of something written on the back of beer mat after an unruly discussion in a pub. I very much oppose it. I know we have a convention in this House not to vote against Second Readings, but were we to divide on it, I would certainly kill it now, for it is a dangerous thing that brings great discredit to this House and Parliament as a whole.
When you start looking at the data on transgender, the problem we very much have is that far more is not known than is known, and the definitions are extraordinarily difficult. I could refer to any number of papers, but one by Ristori and Steensma is good; it has a big review of about a thousand different cases that have been published. The incidence itself is a problem: it is assessed in that paper as being likely to be about one, two or five—[Interruption.] Oh, my medical practitioner is calling me because I am in pain. I apologise; my phone should have been off. I have a problem with my hip and cannot walk. I struggled to get into the House this morning, but I felt that this was an important debate to speak in. Forgive me.
When I look at this subject, I can see that there so many doubts. For example, the incidence is not very clear. In fact, the incidence seems to change from childhood to adulthood. At the highest level, perhaps 25% of people who really want to be transgender go on to be transgender—actually, it is far less than that who do so. Secondly, it is very clear from my own practice in reproductive medicine that a number of people who have had transgender procedures have deep regrets when they are in the post-menopausal stage of life, so much so that they occasionally become deeply depressed. It does not happen often, and of course most of the time we can see clearly that there are many people who are completely happy with their new gender assignment. But that is not invariable, and we do not understand that.
The basic problem is this: we are at risk of legislating for a piece of biology that we really do not understand. We do not understand the underlying mechanisms. We do not even have the figures to know how common this is, and we do not know the follow-up. None of the papers looking at the incidence have followed up patients for long enough to get a clear view of what is really needed. Therefore, any kind of legislation putting this into law is wrong. What we might want to do is to call for research. We can argue that, rather than having a regulatory authority for human fertilisation and embryology—which is now completely unnecessary, because there are ways of doing that—we could certainly consider a statutory authority for this sort of treatment. There is so much more to understand and learn in following up these patients, so that would be very useful. But it would be quite wrong for us to pass this Bill, and I cannot see that any serious amendments would help it progress.
Within a year, he had to resign after allegations of inappropriate sexual activities alleged by three priests and one former priest. There were many leading religious institutions and religious leaders who said the most hideous, vile and unkind things about homosexuality.
I bring this to the Chamber because, although this is a measured debate and my noble friend has introduced it in a measured way, in the secret recesses of our land and other lands conversion therapy can be a hideous process. I received multiple death threats. However, since same-sex marriage came into being, I have to say that the world is still turning—apparently.
I worked very closely with the trans community to produce the first trans action plan ever in this country. At that time—this was 14 years ago—trans was barely heard about. It had not yet become a punchbag as part of the culture wars, and the action plan was largely focused on access to medical care because there was so little in place for that community. I have never met a community so vulnerable and up against what must be one of the hardest situations to find yourself in. It is a community that needs to be supported, not vilified.
Because the changes that may be made during gender transition are so serious, it is right for us to ensure that care is taken, particularly when a child presents as gender dysphoric. There is no legal surgery in this country before the age of 18, but it may be the case that puberty blockers are beneficial for a boy who is definitely trans and who will later become female, so that he does not have to later face the issues of having gone through puberty and having developed the masculine features which later will be so challenging for him in his new identity.
There is a genuine and great need for services to support young people who are expressing gender dysphoria. It is a great shame that the Tavistock clinic failed in its duty—and fail it clearly did. However, the desperate need remains, and the current provisions are nowhere near good enough. Developmental psychotherapists who can work with children who need proper support absolutely must be available. With something as fundamental as your very being, that means sessions every week over whatever period is needed. Such a developmental psychotherapist, or other appropriate care support, is there not to advocate for or against anything but to hold that child safe until they find their own way forward, without bias, prejudice or pre-conceived rights or wrongs, and without the influence of religion, societal norms or anything else—just the best interests of the individual, their well-being and mental health.
I am so glad that my noble friend Lady Burt won the ballot and was able to bring forward this important Bill to stop the hideous and dangerous practice of conversion therapy.
The Government commissioned Coventry University to conduct a research review and a qualitative study. It reviewed 46 pieces of research in order to determine what forms conversion therapy takes and who experiences it. The vast majority of these pieces of research were North American studies, and only two came from the UK. If you go into the report’s annexes, you find the problems that Coventry University identified with most of the research that it reviewed. This included a lack of randomised controlled trials, reliance on retrospective self-reporting, self-selecting samples, and the use of a wide variety of conversion therapy methods without differentiating between them.
What did this research survey find? Not very much. The much-trumpeted finding is that there is no evidence that conversion therapy is effective at changing sexual orientation or gender identity. This is not relevant to the Bill. We do not ban something because it does not work unless it is itself harmful—to which I will return. The review found that no studies dealt with effectiveness in the context of gender identity, hence its conclusion—that there is no evidence to show that conversion therapy does not change gender identity—is best ignored.
The report also says that there is
“an increasing amount of quantitative evidence that exposure to conversion therapy is statistically associated with poor mental health outcomes”.
That sounds important, but the report explicitly found no causal connection between the two. This issue of causation is important, because there is considerable evidence that LGBT people in general have poorer than average mental health, and no attempt has been made anywhere to identify the impact of this.
The qualitative study was undertaken to identify the outcomes of conversion therapy. Coventry University interviewed just 30 people, including six who identified as transgender or non-binary, of whom three said that they had been offered conversion therapy. More than two-thirds of this sample said that they were Christians and 93% were white, and so the sample is both tiny and demographically challenged. From this base, the report highlights self-reported harms from conversion therapy. However, the detailed findings contain a somewhat grudging concession that one-third reported benefits from conversion therapy. So there we have it. From a rather flimsy research base, there is no evidence that conversion therapy actually causes harms, and while there are some reported harms from the tiny sample of 30, there are also reports of benefits.
Lastly, the Government Equalities Office produced a report which supplemented the Coventry research and concentrated on the differences between conversion therapies aimed at sexual orientation and those aimed at gender identity. This adds nothing of substance to the other studies. The small print records that there is next to no evidence on gender identity conversion therapy other than in relation to self-reported harms.
I must also refer to the findings of a survey carried out by the Ozanne Foundation in 2020; I anticipate that some noble Lords might refer to it. It reported some startling findings, including that conversion therapies had included beatings and rape, which are of course already criminal offences. Freedom of information requests to police forces have unearthed not a single documented case of violent conversion therapy in the past five years. Like other reports, it suffered from many methodological problems, including self-selection, incomplete reporting and retrospective reporting. It was demographically unrepresentative and quite simply does not constitute robust evidence.
I do not believe that there is a sound evidence base for the existence of a conversion therapy problem, let alone the harms that might be associated with it. The fact that LGBT lobbyists assert that there is a problem does not constitute evidence on which responsible legislators can rely. I know that, if the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, seeks to progress this Bill into Committee, many noble Lords, not all of whom are due to speak today, will want to engage closely in that process.
It is crucial to distinguish between well-meaning efforts to discuss an issue and the line being crossed by coercion. There are occasions, especially with teenagers, when a person is unsure about his or her sexuality; the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, referred to this. Discussions should be able to take place with parents and other responsible adults to explore where that unsure person stands. If a person has real difficulty in coming to terms with his or her sexual orientation, there is absolutely no reason for them not to seek and/or receive healthcare, including therapy from qualified providers. That is not conversion therapy, of course.
If the discussion is open and unpressurised, I cannot see how it could possibly become an offence under the Bill. However, if there is an assumption that it is wrong or a sin to be LGBT+, and the discussion has the intention of coercing the person into a different point of view, it has gone too far and would fall within the offence in this Bill—rightly, in my view.
As we all know, children and young people are particularly vulnerable. I can see nothing wrong with an open discussion on the issue of sexual orientation with a young member of the family, but if it moves to coercive behaviour, that is clearly unacceptable. It is important to recognise that parents have responsibility for their children naturally and, although some might not realise it, in law until the age of 18. They do not, however, have the right to impose their beliefs or views on their children. This Bill, as I hope it will be amended, would help LGBT+ people be protected from unacceptable efforts to make them conform to a heterosexual way of life that does not conform with their sexual orientation.
Emily Sargent concludes:
“There is no doubt that a ban on these practices is wildly overdue”,
but she does so without any evidence in her article that I can see. Personally, I am against banning things just because someone does not like them—as, indeed, I am against pointless legislation.
We are also told that the therapy does not work. The Library briefing says that, in a government survey of 108,000 LGBT people, fewer than 3,000 had undergone this therapy—presumably all voluntarily. So what is the problem that the Bill wishes to solve? I note the BMA’s briefing, which I will read from now. The BMA says that it “strongly supports” the Bill and that:
“Talking therapy is recognised as a legitimate clinical pathway to those questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation. Such therapy is typically explorative and patient led, and thus cannot be seen as seeking to supress or deny an individual’s understanding of their gender identity or sexual orientation”.
It concludes, rather illogically, that it wishes
“to ban conversion practices in their entirety”.
I ask again: what is the purpose of the Bill? Is it to ban talking therapy, which the BMA calls “a legitimate clinical pathway”, or is it to ban physical assault, which is already banned and illegal? It seems to me, I am afraid, to be purely virtue signalling to placate a very small, outraged minority who think that their choice of lifestyle must never be questioned or discussed, however gently, by parents or anyone else.
I would like to conclude on a lighter note; I find it amusing, although others may not. Some 43 years ago, when I was young, I did SAS selection. At the beginning, Derek, who was running the course, said to me, “Andrew, somebody in the MoD has been persuaded that we can identify potential SAS officers using psychologists. You have been chosen”. So I filled in a long questionnaire, then met a man who asked me lots of questions. I had just trained a dog and had put that down as an interest, so we talked a lot about it. After some 20 minutes, he suddenly said, “You haven’t mentioned your mother”, to which I replied, “But you haven’t asked me about her”. At the conclusion of the selection, Derek told me that the psychologist had said I was totally unsuitable and could not possibly pass selection. The lesson I drew from that was: what do psychologists—or indeed therapists—know?