This is hardly surprising. Dr Phil is supported by and is supportive of the state. He makes enough money in a year to buy a whole pacific Island, especially an island that is sinking like Tuvalu. In endorsing the state, he is endorsing and at the same time denying the violence of the state.

‘You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge” Is one of Dr Phil’s catch cries. But how many psychologists make a practice of acknowledging the fact that our modern western democracies rely on, and would collapse very quickly without the use of large-scale violence.

And it’s not just Dr Phil. The APA (American Psychology Association) did a report on the moral dilemma faced by psychologists in using their practice for the use of torture. It was psychologists that designed the torture practices used in Guantanamo Bay, and at Abu Ghraib for example. The use of sleep deprivation, special disorientation, light torture, sexual shaming. The last report by UNRWA into the torture of their personal by the IDF has examples of the following techniques. Physical restraints, sexual shaming, rape, and physical torture such as shooting knees with nail guns, being forced to kneel on gravel. 8,000 Palestinians are currently being held by Israel. All of them are tortured. And this torture is not only endorsed, but designed by psychologists.

Here living in the Australian state, there is a collective trauma that exists from the fact ‘we can’t change what we don’t acknowledge’. People would readily deny the effects of colonialism and violence on First Nations people and asylum seekers and refugee’s alike, the incarceration of children as young as 10, the poverty that traps people in violent situations, and the violence that is exported to other countries so we can have cheap food and clothes from the shops.

Because acknowledging this violence is a commitment to organize collectively to change it. And that is what psychologists like Dr Phil and other proponents of the state fear most.