Retired From Psychology Today: How am I Doing?

Friday, January 15, 2010 2:33 PM

Yesterday was a tough day for me. I received an email from my editor at Psychology Today which said “call me”. I knew this was bad news. I also knew that my most recent post was entitled “Betrayal”. This was my favorite post, but I also felt it to be risky. I received many comments, both positive and negative. Amongst the negative comments were statements which claimed that I was betraying my patient by blogging about him. I responded by saying “this is fiction”. By that I meant that I do not have a 24 year old male patient who was betrayed by his mother, but I do have many patients who have gone through that experience. I changed the details of my patient so as to describe my psychotherapeutic process. The details of the patient are not important. The key elements involve how one goes from pain to healing. I was trying to describe an instrument of change. Still, I had a funny feeling when I responded that that this was “fiction”.

I am caught in a bind. If I describe an actual patient after obtaining consent, then I still risk violating patient privacy since the client is entitled to change his mind later on, but by that time, the damage would have been done. On the other hand, if I make up a patient (based on actual patients), then I may lose credibility with my readers. To me, this was an easy choice. Patient privacy trumps everything else and as such, I needed to create an imaginary patient.

This conflict about patient privacy versus writing fiction made me pause. During my reflection on this issue, I called my editor and she told me that I was “retired”. The co-occurrence of my thinking about patient privacy and my termination seemed to me to go hand in hand. That is, although I do not have any clear reason for my cessation as a Psychology Today blogger, it is my hunch that my blogs, such as “Betrayal” in which I described the therapeutic process, created a liability issue for Psychology Today. Of course, I could be completely off the mark, but that is how I piece together this puzzle.

What about my feelings? Am I angry? Do I feel betrayed?  I loved blogging for Psychology Today and I feel disappointed. Psychology Today provided me an opportunity to try to take my ideas about psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis to the public. I was excited to get comments, both good and bad. I was imagining developing my writing  into articles and then maybe even a book.  I thought that this venue was my first step. I do not feel angry or betrayed since I understood from the beginning that there had to be mutuality. I was giving them content and in return they were giving me public access. When my content presented a dilemma for them, I was done. I knew that. Disappointment prevailed.

Where do I go from here? I am going to continue on this blog, but I am considering working on my graphics to make it more appealing. Some of my readers have suggested that I try http://psychcentral.com/, and so I will do that. Perhaps that will be my new venue. I am going to talk to people to get some ideas about my next step. However, in the immediate future, I plan to just breathe in and breathe out. It is time for yoga.