I’m starting to wonder if Jess thought her viva was harassment
All jokes aside, it's very likely she did see questions from her supervisors as an attack. According to her, she triumphantly battled through her PhD despite hordes of hostile academics who were determined to keep her from completing it on the basis that she was a single mum/too poor/too working class/too much of a survivor. While I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that she did face classism and other prejudice during her time at university, her behaviour has repeatedly demonstrated that she interprets even the most legitimate, reasonable, courteously worded question as an attack. In one of the earlier threads a poster said that she began to doubt Jess after she asked an innocous question, not intending it as a criticism at all, only to get her head bitten off because Jess saw malice in it - this stuck with me as it suggests a person who really does read hostility into anything that isn't unqualified agreement and praise.
Her defence of her Etsy-esque products is incoherent and contradictory. In the same breath she says that the cards aren't based on "therapeutic theories", but are reflections based on "academic research on these topics". That brings us back to square one.
What research?! What, exactly, are the studies the cards are based on? What did the researchers attempt to find out, how did they measure it, why is it important? If the research doesn't involve therapeutic efficacy, why does it mean the cards will be beneficial for women who have experienced violence? Where is the relevance? She is once again throwing out a few academic buzzwords to try and quiet any doubts that might be rising among fans, in the hope that people might still trust her enough to accept the academicese at face value without asking further questions that her non-answers raise. Such as:
1.) Who is on this "ethics board" that she speaks of? Why isn't there a list of names on the Victim Focus website, with a description of what exactly their qualifications are and how they function as a committee?
2.) What does she mean when she says the cards are "peer reviewed"? The aim of peer review is to assess accuracy, quality, and rigor and - in the case of therapeutic tools - validity and efficacy too. This means that the project being peer reviewed has to be very clearly defined. Jess has half-suggested that the cards aren't intended to be therapeutic, so again, what exactly are they for and how did the peer reviewers evaluate how closely they match up to their purpose?
3.) Again, who are these mystery peer reviewers who are only mentioned in the abstract? We know Jessica has asked people who currently hold no higher qualification than an undergraduate degree to "peer review" for her, and these were people whom she knew to admire her and hold her in high regard. In at least one case, the "reviewer" was an employee - someone dependent on Jess for a salary. Peer review is supposed to be carried out objectively by appropriately qualified professionals. Do these "reviewers", whoever they are, meet these criteria?
She can play all the semantic games she likes and obfuscate as much as she likes, but all she is doing is cementing her reputation among academics and clinicians as an unprofessional charlatan. She views it as harassment when academics and clinicians explain why we think this, no matter whether it's done publicly or privately, and no doubt the story she tells her fans will be that we're just too frightened of her powerful mind to accept that everything she says is right and everything she does is amazing. But she makes herself look even less credible with every outburst, to the point where even people with zero knowledge of psychology are eventually going to struggle to take her at face value.
