Thank you for your post, Isis. I was aware you had a psyche background/training, so not only is your take interesting in itself -- it's of value. Very rarely do we hear those in the mental-health field speak so frankly. You're to be applauded
On the Gold Coast some years ago was a woman who advertised herself as a psychologist with particularly emphasis on children and teens. She was receiving recommendations from parents whose children attended the same private school as ours
Some months later, at a specialised-interest group I was attending, several women - having been shocked to their core at what they'd just learned - began comparing notes re: the psychologist in question
Apparently, she had told several of those women (and their husbands) that their child had suffered 'oxygen deprivation' during birth, resulting in areas of their brains (and she had produced charts to illustrate) being 'dead'. That and more. The parents had been informed their child would 'never achieve much' but nevertheless, with therapy, blabla, could become contributing members of society ... etc
Those women and their spouses had shed anguished tears after this advice. Their focus had changed. Maybe their 'brain deadened' child should be steered toward less ambitious career choices? Maybe they should go to live on the farm at the back of beyond, with their grandparents, to learn basic skills? Maybe this, maybe that
And through it all, the 'psychologist' continued to rake in up to $300 per session with the now worried-sick parents as she ran their 'damaged' child through endless tests
The children thus described were of course mortified - because the psychologist didn't spare them her 'expert opinions'. Those kids began to regard themselves as being at the lower end, intelligence-wise. They lost enormous amounts of confidence, dropped-out, felt themselves unworthy, etc. And of course, some of their parents began with the blame-game against each other. What had the mother done wrong during pregnancy, for example. And as always, the 'there's nothing wrong with MY side of the family' slurs began. Impossible for the children at the centre of these marital storms not to hear at least some of it
Then the news. The 'psychologist's' own daughter had run out of the house and finally sought refuge in a big dump-bin at the rear of a supermarket. And the 'psychologist' had been discovered trying to whip her own daughter with lengths of plastic packing ties, to try to force the girl home. Poor kid was hiding beneath boxes and rubbish
A locally respected psychologist in Southport confided that he and his peers were having a very difficult time getting the 'psychologist' deregistered, according to parents who took it further. The fight was ongoing. And throughout, the 'psychologist' continued to ply her trade, reap in the dollars and to inform further parents that their child was 'brain damaged'
It was said that the locally respected psychologist had told a concerned parent that the 'rougue pyschologist' was a 'fat middle aged woman who'd picked up her qualifications basically by distance education' (his words, reportedly, not mine) at her kitchen table, as her own dysfunctional family raged around her. Upon gaining her 'qualifications', she decamped to the Gold Coast, had her straggly hair cut in a monk's cap style, got new glasses, grabbed herself half a dozen King Charles spaniels (which were either sick from neglect or had died) and set up shop at the back of Mermaid beach where she separated parents from their child and worked the kids over, telling them they were in the 'lower this and that', complete with charts to show how poorly they rated, but 'never mind, we'll see what we can do with you'. As this was going on, the parents sat glumly in the garden, worried both about their child (whom the 'psychologist had to herself behind locked gates) and the sick looking dogs seeking food from them
Despite driving her own child into a dumpster at night and regardless of the havoc this 'psychologist' was wreaking on people and their children, it was proving near impossible for the authorities to drag her out of circulation. Oh, and she proved litigation-mad into the bargain, apparently
Made me wonder how many like her are currently in circulation
So thanks again for your qualified words of caution, Isis. You may well have saved some poor soul or their child from the growing world of mental-health ******y
