I have a Ph.D. (so what?)

Wow, two weeks, and I thought I was keeping up.  Life gets confusing when there are so many virtual conversations running through it.  it wasn't this way before all this e-stuff and i-stuff.  There was a times when I went to work and came home.  I read magazines, tormented my kids, watched the Celtics and went to bed.

Now there is email, list serves, national small group conversations, international strange group communications, family pictures, and even friends who expect messages and responses.  All of this is good, but it clutters up the mind. And I don't even do Facebook.  It's not good for therapists to "friends" with people.  We are not really too likable anyway.  We tend to be shy, overly intellectual, too observant, and make people uncomfortable.  If you meet an really out-going, energetic, up-beat psychologist; you know he either is all schtick, or else he hasn't been paying attention.  All of us good therapists are sullen and depressed by how much we know about the world.

And, speaking of depression.  The reason I have not been on this blog is that I have been in hot correspondence with other psychologists about the imminent demise of our profession.  It may not be obvious to you, but the opportunity to see a Ph.D. Psychologist for psychotherapy is rapidly slipping away.  We are being replaced by medications, neurological brain scans, and Master's level therapists.

I don't know if any of you care what degree your therapists has, and probably most of you who have been in therapy may not even know what the difference is between a psychiatrist, psychologist, MSW, MA, LICSW, MFT, and various other types of after-the-name letters that can make one seem to have the experience and/or training to help people having difficulties.  I know that when many people don't know what to do they go to a psychic.

But, although psychotherapy done by a Ph.D. Psychologist has been reimbursed as a health insurance benefit for over thirty years, and will probably still continue to be covered, most people are being steered by those insurance companies to lesser trained people, who get paid even less than we do, and we have not had a fee increase in twenty years.

Even psychiatrists are seeing their role diminished as PCPs are being told to give anti-depressants to anyone who cries, and nurse-practitioners are now writing lots of the prescriptions for psychiatric medicines.

I know I can make the case that a Ph.D. Psychologist is more learned, better supervised, and probably has a more comprehensive understanding of all the many factors, physical, emotional, cultural, familial, genetic and inter-psychic, that determine how and why people think, feel and behave the way they do.

But does this make them better therapists?  And how can we prove it?
AND
Does this matter to anyone by Ph.D. Psychologists.

I'm afraid not.

Puff, we disappear.