You can be passionate but still begin from a place of neutrality. The point is to limit or lessen whatever preconceived notions you have about them so you can connect with them.
Let's face it, as a therapist you're going to develop feelings about your clients, either positive or negative, as you get to know them. Therapists are human too. You can still be passionate about helping them and advocating for them.
What does the therapist mean by he/she doesn't like men as a group? What am I there for? How does the therapist's dislike for men as a group exist alongside their own position either inside or outside of that group?
Consider that the therapist is a man who says, "I don't like men as a group". What does that mean? He is one. Is he saying he hates himself? Probably not, right?
He may mean he hates the expectations upon men, he hates the idea of 'men' as a construct, he hates they dynamics of typical male behavior (which most men actually do) and alsonhates the compulsion to do it, he hates the grouping dynamics, or any number of things. Saying you dislike a group, any group, is a catch-all phrase that can actually mean a lot of things. We don't use language well when discussing groups. We can't seem to keep the duality of being an individual and also part of a group in context when we're thinking and talking about it. It muddies communication and understanding. That's one od the reasons why there's always all these new terms popping up. We're trying to wrassle with clear contextual meaning in a linguistic sense. With mostly limited success and a lot of failures.
You will find the same breakdowns amongst women therapists. Both about men as a group and also about women as a group. They will have more empathy for women struggling with group dynamics they don't like because they too, are a woman. But they need to have sympathy for men in the same position, struggling under the mantle of manhood, and have become well versed in those dynamics.
If I went to a woman therapist and she said she disliked women as a group, meaning she disliked the construct of womanhood I would most likely be okay with that because so do I, for the same reasons. And I am one, a woman, too.
If I went to a man therapist and he said he disliked men as a group, meaning the construct of manhood I would most likely be okay with that because so do I. I hate that for you men. It's so limiting and it's lessening and intruding into your lives in some pretty profound and impactful ways. It hurts and diminishes so many of you, in opposite but every bit as tangible ways that the mantle of womanhood hurts women.
If I went to a therapist (man or woman) and they said they disliked men or women in a "they don't deserve to live" sort of way, that's it. I'm gone. This person is incapable of being of any help to me in any kind of way. And I certainly don't want to contribute to their success with my time or my money. Far as I'm concerned, they need to find themselves a new line of work.
Make sense?
