I kind of feel like we all need to collaborate on a paper about this. Though I was unfamiliar with the term “epistemic injustice,” it is a familiar concept (eg the axiom that history is the written record of the victor) and one i have thought about a lot in relation to therapy. More than in other helping professions, psychotherapy is prone to neglecting the perspective of the user/client. It’s easy to see how that can happen, the therapist imagines that all they hear is the perspective of the client. What is largely missing in the literature are the types of truths that come up again and again on these boards: the perspective of the client about therapy and the therapist expressed free of repercussions within the therapeutic relationship.

In addition to sucking at stuff related to abuse, another aspect of CBT (many other forms of psychotherapy as well) that is steeped in epistemic injustice is a non-acknowledgement of the role of systemic oppression in the lives of patients. The experience of racism, for example, does not constitute distorted thought that needs correcting. And yet because there is so much focus on the individual, there is little acknowledgment that they are ok and the world isn’t. This kind of BS is a form of gaslighting in itself and is very unjust.