Jordan Peterson is known as someone who doesn’t mince words, and this is especially evident when reading through the 56 pages he recently released documenting the Ontario College of Psychologists’ censure of his social media posts.
The documents, released on Jan. 4, pertain to the most controversial few tweets the clinical psychologist has made out of thousands. It’s about the complaints against him from a dozen people—many of whom seem to be fellow psychologists—that the college has decided to investigate.
“I’ve helped perhaps millions of people with my lectures and books, etc. But any one person anywhere can complain to the College about anything I’ve done and threaten my licensure, smear my reputation, and tie me up in red tape,” Peterson said in a tweet last year, after the first of these complaints were brought to his attention.
“No more,” he concluded.
Peterson told the college he was going to ignore the paperwork that came with each complaint. He refused to spend hours and days, he said, going through the formal process of defending himself against the complaints.
“The process is the punishment, and those who levy complaints (which ’must' be investigated) know this full well. And I’m not participating in it anymore,” he said.
The college’s communication of this requirement was included in the documents Peterson released, which cover years of communications on the matter between himself and the college. They include the complaints against him, and the tweets the college has criticized.
They also include several pages in which Peterson details to the college the efforts he has already made to seek out the best social media coaching possible, in his opinion. He outlines the difficulty with which one comments on many controversial topics.
“It is a very difficult matter to maintain proper communication with tens of millions of people when addressing the most contentious issues of our times,” he wrote. “There are times when what constitutes the appropriate tone (as well as the appropriate content) is difficult to determine.
The Complaints
Peterson redacted the names and personal information of the complainants, but published the rest of each complaint. All of them answered “yes” to the question of whether they are clients of Peterson’s, though Peterson said none of them were his clients.Some of them identified themselves as psychologists, including one from Australia. One described himself or herself as a “member of the public.”
The college notified Peterson that his public comments being complained about may be considered under the professional code issues of “disgraceful, dishonourable, or unprofessional conduct,” and “provision of information to the public.”
Regarding the latter, the information must be “accurate and supportable based on current professional literature or research” and “consistent with the professional standards, policies, and ethics currently adopted by the College.”
The first complaint documented, from Jan. 5, said “Peterson encouraged people to commit suicide on Twitter.”
It referred to a thread in which Peterson said the global population will peak at about 9.5 billion and we can still have a sustainable and prosperous world. Scientist Roger Palfree replied that he disagrees, saying “Any arguments I have heard for supporting such a large human population completely overlook the huge loss of species and ecosystems resulting from our self-absorbed attention.”
Peterson replied, “You’re free to leave at any point.”
A Feb. 18, 2022, complaint criticized him as having “publicly opined that no Children’s Aid Society intervention is required in a public review of the Ottawa trucker protest.” The complainant said the removal of children was for their safety.
In Peterson’s tweet, he had questioned what it meant to “have children removed from the area.” Peterson said: “‘children removed?’ how, exactly? Why, exactly? By whom, exactly? Sent to where, exactly? And for how long, exactly? Think this through, Canadians. This is a bad decision.”
A complaint included Peterson’s retweet of Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre’s criticism of COVID restrictions. Poilievre tweeted, “COVID has become a never-ending excuse for power-hungry authorities to replace our freedom with their control,” and it went on to make demands, such as to reopen businesses and “let our truckers drive.”
One complainant criticized Peterson for speaking against gender-affirming surgery. “He has failed to advocate for the autonomy and dignity of transgendered persons,” the complaint said.
Several of the criticisms related to his statements on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. They claimed Peterson provided inaccurate information to the public.
For example, one complainant said of Peterson’s comments on COVID vaccines during the podcast: “He is operating outside [his] domain of expertise, using [the] title of psychologist as a means of conveying information which is harmful to [the] public.”
The same complainant took issue with this statement of Peterson’s: “Well, it’s just poor children and the world has too many people on it anyways.” Rogan had replied, “You’re being facetious.”
In his communications to the college, Peterson referred to this comment. “I respectfully submit that anyone truly listening to that podcast and not merely focusing for a moment on that statement out of context (and who has bothered to familiarize themselves at all with anything else I have ever said before leveling such an accusation) would note instantly that I do not for a second believe and never have that ‘it’s just poor children’ or ‘that the world has too many people on it.’
‘A Very Narrow Pathway to Traverse’
On Sept. 6, 2022, Peterson sent an eight-page letter to the college outlining the measures he has taken to provide himself with social media coaching.He said he continually takes “very difficult and very private and public steps to note my own errors, to assess them in great detail, and to move forward, properly corrected, toward more effective and less unnecessarily contentious public communication.”
His circle of “coaches” include editorial teams at his publisher Penguin Random House, expert thinkers from both sides of the aisle, religious leaders, and more. He said he recently engaged in a discussion on his messaging style with two divinity professors from Cambridge, as well as “the most prolific communicator for the Democrats operating on the national front in the US,” and two major conservative thinkers.
He included emails he received from people who support him, by and large, but who criticized some of his tweets or public statements. One told him he was being too “contentious and angry.”
One was an email from novelist Gregg Hurwitz, whom Peterson described as one of his “liberal/left political friends.” Hurwitz criticized Peterson for his tweet about the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Peterson had tweeted, “She looks like she can play the part. And that’s what matters. Intersectionality rules! Competence is a ruse!”
Hurwitz outlined why Jackson is competent and also said, “Your tweet sounded like a racial slur. If I didn’t know [you] as I do, I would have thought you intended it as such. I know you didn’t intend anything of the sort.”
Peterson said he appreciates these criticisms and tries to improve. He said he is trying to improve his tone, to use “minimum necessary emotion” and “minimum necessary force” in his communications.
For example, he said, when he reads some of his articles aloud on YouTube or his podcast, he realizes anger has taken hold and he has tried to remain calmer.
Questions to the College
Finally, Peterson included a list of questions he sent the college. They included seven about the social media coaching (such as how qualified the coaches are, how he would be judged as having improved). They included three questions asking how the claim that he had caused harm with his posts was determined as valid.He had several others regarding the disciplinary procedure, and the complaints (including if any were rejected as spurious or if every complaint was considered worth investigating).
He has submitted an application for judicial review with the Ontario Divisional Court.
He said he would not submit to the coaching. He said the college insists he can accept the coaching without admitting wrongdoing. “This is a palpable falsehood.” He said it would be “ precisely tantamount to admitting to wrongdoing.”
“The same can and should be said about the insistence that this investigation is not about free speech,” Peterson continued. “This is precisely and absolutely what it is about, and to say otherwise is deceitful and false.”
The college told The Epoch Times that it could not discuss Peterson’s case due to confidentiality issues. It did not reply by publication to follow-up inquiries of a broader nature about the general criteria for investigations and discipline of psychologists.
