THERAPY AND COUNSELING INDEX

In general, the human sciences are possessed of considerably less certainty than the "hard" sciences. On top of that, very many therapists and counselors fail to keep themselves adequately informed of what the social and behavioral sciences *are* learning. Given all this, and given that human nature abhors a knowledge-vacuum, it is particularly easy for ideology and speculation to take the place of real knowledge in the counseling professions. Though many in these professions do much to assuage human suffering, all too many do harm because of biasing influences on their beliefs. In earlier years, notoriously, certain anti-female beliefs were common among counselors; in recent years, anti-male and anti-father attitudes have become all too common. The general discussions (labels beginning with A) and case histories (labels beginning with B) below are meant to reveal problems of gender bias in this arena, in hopes of spurring needed reforms.

This document was one of many submitted to the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission in the course of our complaint against The Family Centre. It outlines some of the reasons why a test-case of this kind is so important.

This is MERGE's extended reply to the one extended response written by The Family Centre in the course of the investigation of our complaint against their family-violence brochure. Their response was, to put it mildly, very revealing.

After MERGE launched its complaint against The Family Centre's biased literature on family violence, they replaced it with a set of four closely similar brochures. This is MERGE's response, submitted to Alberta's human-rights commission in the course of its investigation of our complaint. After the investigator sided with MERGE, The Family Centre opted not to have any literature specifically describing the problem of partner abuse, but simply to mention in its general literature that it provides services to victims and perpetrators of both sexes.