Even though I was perturbed, I’d not yet written off Dr G’s
referral (but I was turned off by what I’d learned so far).
Before I dove into the mountain of paperwork required to see
the doctor I decided to call back to ask what type of therapy the doctor practiced. When the person answering the
phone couldn’t answer what I thought was a perfectly reasonable and simple
question I tried to help her by asking, “Does he follow Freud, Yeung? Is he a Behaviorialist?”
You can’t really hear silence
but it’s not like she was saying anything so that’s all there was on the other
end of the line. When she did speak it was to mispronounce the names of the two
long dead fathers of what we now call ‘talk’ therapy.
I went from being frustrated to disturbed that she couldn’t
answer me.
But, realizing that she probably wasn’t get paid enough to
know more than how to say “Doctor’s office” and “Please hold” I cut her some
slack and asked if there was anyone else in the office who could help me.
So, using one of the skills she had at her command she put
me on hold for a moment, after which another female voice came on the line and
introduced herself as the office manager, understood that I had a question and asked
if I could “please repeat the names I’d said earlier.”
“Sure”, I said and parroted my query.
“Fried?” “You who?” was her response and that pretty much told
me all I needed to know (if not about the doctor, then about who he surrounds
himself with and who he chooses as his representative to the unsuspecting and often
unbalanced public).
“Umm,” she stammered, “I’m not familiar with those names she
said, “but I think it’s the last
person you said.’
“You’re the first person who’s ever asked that question. I’d
ask the doctor but he’s in with a patient at the moment.”
“Think!...you think?!” I thought to myself. (Horrified) that
she identified a type of thereapy that a doctor practices (behaviorism) for an
actual person, I wanted to ask if she was pulling my leg but what I said was,
“I think that’s all the information that I need, thank you.”
Setting aside the fact that she was the ‘office manager’ and
the one person in the practice who should know the doctor’s credentials and
methods I wondered, “Hadn’t she ever seen a Woody Allen movie or any Rom-coms
based in New York City?”
They’re filled with therapist humor. Someone is always;
either going to a shrink, making fun of shrinks…or is a Shrink.
I clicked off the line knowing that I wouldn't be clicking
on their website, wasting anymore of my time or printer paper anytime soon.
Update: I was later
corrected by a clinical psychologist (who just happens to be a dear friend) who
told me that the doctor I was referred to (and was asking about) was a “Psychologist
and not a “Psychoanalyst” (a disciple of Feud) so I was asking the wrong
question.
Okay…my bad, so the
“Freud, Yeung, Behaviorist” query didn’t apply….but still?”
Not to absolve myself
of my personal responsibility but shouldn’t they have known that I was barking
up the wrong type of analyst’s tree?
Fortunately the
following link can explain the Three ‘P’s” (The
Psychiatrist, Psychologist, and Psychoanalyst) so that you don’t sound
like me…the fourth “P”(a ‘Putz’) when you’re shopping for a therapist:
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