I have previously written about the Bob Newhart Show from the 1970s. Bob Newhart played Bob Hartley a psychologist to a zany group of mostly neurotic patients. Newhart played his typical, low key monotone character. Something that was not unusual about the show was that Dr. Hartley was a man, which was common at the time. About the time the fictional psychologist would have finished his graduate training male psychologists outnumbered female psychologists nearly 4-to-1. The Wall Street Journal reports that ratio has about flipped in favor of women psychologists.
“The main consequence of the feminization of psychology is the topics that are worked on,” says Seligman. “From the 1960s through the 1980s, it was aggression, conflict and trauma, but not love, meaning, friendship or cooperation.” Then, in the ‘90s, the prevailing areas of research flipped, becoming less violent and more humane.
While one would like to think that the sex of your counselor would have nothing to do with the advice they give, it likely does have some effect on the lens through which they view the world and their patients. Beyond that, it also influences the type of research being performed in the academic field of psychology. As a result, there is less research being done on the therapy needs of men and boys.
For decades, the field of Freud and Jung tended to prioritize males and pathologize females. (Think hysterical women and refrigerator mothers). But the landscape of mental health, from research psychology to psychiatry, has since skewed, in some cases overwhelmingly, female. In the U.S., men now account for only 18% of social workers and 20% of psychologists, down from 38% and 68% in 1968 respectively, according to the American Institute of Boys and Men (AIBM), a research and advocacy organization founded in 2023.
“The lack of male representation in the mental health professions couldn’t come at a worse time,” says Richard Reeves, founder of AIBM and author of “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to Do About It.” American boys are falling behind in school and tumbling into perilous internet rabbit holes. Suicide rates among men ages 25 to 34 are on the rise. Men are trailing women in the workplace. Popular discourse is dominated by phrases like “toxic masculinity,” “the male loneliness epidemic” and “male malaise.”
The increased study of women obviously has some positive benefits, especially for women but also comes with biases regarding men.
“They are greatly influenced by models that look at how boys and men are flawed rather than about how boys and men are different.”
While psychologists claim that the gender of a counselor should not matter, some men prefer to open up to a man. The reasons include some men feel more comfortable, better understood and less judged by other men. This is especially true of men who work in male dominated fields (i.e., military, police, firefighting). Men experiencing conflict with their wives may perceive a female counselor more likely to take their wife’s side.
Furthermore, psychologists who question the effects of a female dominated psychology field are sometimes viewed suspiciously or branded as men’s rights activists. Yet, it makes sense that having researchers and counselors of both genders can lend insights into the mental health of men and women. The overwhelming disparity of female psychologists is something we should be concerned about.
WSJ: What Will Happen When All the Male Therapists Are Gone?