I just realised that 5 years ago today, something huge happened to me
Dr Jess writes about her experience of having to go up against an entire system five years ago today, on the day her memoir is published
‘Five years ago today, you passed your PhD viva, you know…’ Jaimi said to me this morning whilst we ate breakfast.
‘What? Really?’ I stopped eating. Today is the day my new memoir is published. Underclass is flying off the shelves - but I hadn’t realised the significance of the date. Or of the book coming out on the same day.
‘Yeah. Weird, huh?’ She replied.
Very weird.
How had I not remembered this?
Maybe I got so caught up in the nerves of the memoir coming out today, that I didn’t even realise that it was all so… connected.
The reason this is such a big deal for me is because the memoir is the first time I have spoken in detail about what has been done to me as a working class psychologist. I have never spoken about the levels of bullying, abuse, stalking or discrimination I faced during my PhD. I have never spoken about having to take action against my beloved university. Or being labelled a conspiracy theorist during the corrupted ‘investigations’, only to have every single one of my complaints upheld and proved at a tribunal months later.
I was nearly stopped from doing my PhD viva. A group of psychologists planned to have me kicked off my doctorate.
Underclass is the first space I have had to really reflect on how middle class professionals and academics operate. I assumed that I had been accepted on to my PhD on merit - because I was smart, and because I was capable. I hadn’t realised how much of it was based on class, image and appearances.
I was not at all prepared for what was going to happen to me, and what is still happening to me.
I grew up on a large council estate in one of the most deprived areas of the UK, Stoke on Trent.
As it stands, Stoke on Trent has double the child poverty rate of the rest of the country, the highest infant mortality rate in the UK, double the amount of children receiving free school meals, the second highest rate of premature death, and the worst area in the UK to be born with congenital birth defects (Etherington et al, 2023).
People in Stoke on Trent are living on the lowest incomes in the country, benefit sanctions have drastically increased, and resourcing has been cut repeatedly by central government. Our area is dying. Our people are suffering.
When I was 11 years old, I decided I was going to become one of three things, and I wrote it in a letter to myself entitled, ‘Plans for when you are an adult. Do not open until you are 18 years old!’
I wrote that I would become a psychologist, a social worker, or the Prime Minister. I worked in social work for years. I became a chartered psychologist in 2019, and there’s still time for the last one!
But I have faced much more discrimination than I expected. I never went to a brick university when I was younger to get my undergraduate degree, because I had two babies by 19 years old, I was working full time, and I couldn’t afford to go to university. Instead, I did my degree with The Open University, by working all day and studying all night every day for 4 years whilst my babies slept.
When I went to do my PhD to become a psychologist, I was faced with classism for the first time. I had never mixed with middle class people before. I had always lived and worked with other people in poverty just like me. In that way, I had also never encountered classism before, because we were all the same… and because I didn’t even know what classism was.
I assumed because I was smart enough to get on to a prestigious PhD programme at a top university, I would be welcome there. I imagined university to be like a utopia of academic discussion and debate. Where I could finally go to use my brain. Where I would meet lots of other intellectuals who enjoyed discussing complex issues without becoming angry or annoyed. I was so wrong.
I never expected what would come next, and how it would continue to shape my career for years to come.
A psychologist I had never heard of or met sent emails around my department where I was doing my PhD, asking people if they knew I was tweeting about being from a council estate.
I had tweeted this:
They were not happy about this tweet at all.
They did some more digging, and found out that I was also a teenage mum, that I had a baby from rape at 17 years old, and that I spoke openly about my childhood.
They found an interview I had given as a victim of abuse, where I had spoken about being sexually abused as a child.
I was quickly sat down, and advised to stop speaking about being from a council estate, about being raped or abused. The message was loud and clear: You cannot be a psychologist AND be a victim. You have to be sufficiently different from those we study and help. You cannot be the same as them.
I was shocked to hear this come from psychologists who worked in trauma and abuse. There was a resentment there. A feeling that I shouldn’t be in the same circles as them. In one email written by a psychologist in my department to another, they said ‘To let someone like her become a psychologist would bring the whole field into disrepute’.
When this happened to me back in 2018, I was absolutely heartbroken. The place I thought a smart young woman would be welcome became somewhere I was being relentlessly bullied. The psychologists around me even attempted to claim I had undiagnosed mental disorders and personality disorders as they plotted to have me removed from my PhD.
I had done nothing wrong - other than speak publicly about my real-life experiences.
And so, here I am, exactly 5 years to the day that I was awarded my PhD – and in my new memoir ‘Underclass’ I have chosen to speak about what really happened to me in academia, and to talk about why I will not hide parts of myself in order to be ‘taken seriously’. Frankly, if being ‘taken seriously’ requires me to remain silent about parts of my life that made me who I am today, then I don’t want to be ‘taken seriously’ by these people at all.
What a farce our industry of psychology and academia is, if we resent and look down upon traumatised or victimised people so much that we don’t want them to ever become a professional with us!
I will continue to bring my whole self to my work and to my life at all times. I am a victim. I am working class. I was raped. I was abused. I did grow up in poverty. I am covered in tattoos. I was a teen mum. I do have a northern accent.
All of those things are true – and I am not ashamed of any of them. I am a great psychologist, and hundreds of thousands of women relate to me because they know I am real, and I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not frightened of being complex and multi-faceted, I am who I am.
What good is a psychologist who isn’t even at peace with themselves?
What good is a psychologist who can’t even admit their own struggles?
‘Underclass: A Memoir’ is out now in Hardback, Kindle and Audible
Order your copy of Underclass from Amazon here
Listen to Underclass on Audible here
Get a signed copy directly from me - shipping worldwide here
This is just amazeballs. Those psychologists should have their licenses revoked if they are that elitist and prejudiced- how can they effectively treat patients if they cant respect them, or are choosing to only treat wealthy patients? Is that illegal?
To work for the public good is an honor and privilege NOT A RIGHT. I wonder how much they charge their victims, er "patients"?
Keep up your amazing work. Don't let anyone tell you different