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To hell and back, how controversy almost killed Jordan Peterson

To hell and back, how controversy almost killed Jordan Peterson

After a long hiatus from public life, the psychologist reflects on his hellish illness, identity politics and “snake-pit” Twitter.

Mick Brown

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When I last met Jordan Peterson four years ago, he was on the cusp of what some would call renown, others notoriety. Let’s settle for prominence. Peterson, a clinical psychologist, had spent the first three decades of his career in relative obscurity, teaching at the University of Toronto, churning out academic papers, maintaining a small private practice and producing YouTube videos on his interests in ethics, theology and myth.

All that changed in 2016, when he challenged, on free-speech grounds, a proposed Canadian law, C-16, which he argued would legally compel him to use transgender people’s preferred pronouns. (It became law in 2017.)

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Original URL: https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/to-hell-and-back-how-controversy-almost-killed-jordan-peterson-20220713-p5b1c8