Pompous pretentious psychologists

A blog of psychologist Julie Frederick.

This kind of thing (not to mention the fashion sense) is proof that these people actually think they have some kind of valuable advice that the rest of us wouldn't have thought of.

Does this woman obviously think that ANYONE is going to not spank their kids because they haven't read her silly worthless blog? "Oh, gee, in my decision to discipline difficult children perhaps I should consult the advice of this fiftyish psychologist who thinks she knows anything about ANYTHING."

No one who actually reads this and gets past being disturbed by her scarf is going to be in the target audience of someone who needs parenting advice. They wouldn't have the time to read this kind of drivel.

[url]http://juliefrederick.blogspot.com/[/url]

This woman, Julie Frederick, I happen to know is not the arbiter of normalness. She SINGS HER NAME. I am serious, call her machine.

I looked over her website and she links to Alan Kazdin who's the Director of the Yale Child Conduct Clinic. So she's connected to the right people. Physical punishment is really not a very sophisticated method of raising children. It's quite primitive. I sincerely doubt that her website is designed to stop people from punishing their kids physically. I 'think' she puts stuff like this on her website to let people know that she's not the 'kind' of psychologist that endorses these outmoded methodologies.

Julie Frederick is a $200 per hour child psychologist. She's a member of the Oregon Psychological Association. And I suspect because she's able to take so many forms of health insurance, she's most likely registered in the State.

As an undergrad she was on the Dean's List at Valproso. Later she earned an M.Sc. and Ph.D. from U of Wyoming. Not bad. Not stellar but not bad.

She was an NIMH Training Fellowship recipient. That's not bad. I have some familiarty with fellowship and scholarship selection procedures and trust me NIMH funds are pretty hard to get unless you're pretty good. It requires that candidates are ranked nationally.

She's had a little more post doctoral experience than a lot of candidates. And post doctoral experience is desirable in a candidate, as typically they learn state of the art theory and methods in those years, with zero teaching or administrative load. You're paid to 'think', heal people and do research.

What's your boggle?

Frankly, she seems like she has fine training. Her blog and her website don't say anything that's incorrect.

Her scarf is nice. I like it! I might get something like that for my wife.

I personally would have no trouble bringing a client to see this particular psychologist. She seems 'fine' to me.

True, singing your name is silly. Maybe she has a sense of humor!

What's my boggle?

Well, I don't know what that means. But I suppose it is personal with me also.

I was being analyzed for seizures by a neurologist in a hospital and she came into my hospital room where I was not dressed without knocking and told me that we were going to spend the next three hours analyzing me and giving me a full IQ test when I had't had sleep for three days (I had been sleep deprived on purpose) and I told her that because she hadn't let me know ahead of time I was going to have to wait and look into it.

She got all shrill and said "are you REFUSING" the psych consult and started talking to me in that third person way that they do "the patient is refusing the psych consult" like I wasn't there. I noticed a discernable shift in how my doctor and the staff started treating me at that point, they turned an ALARM on my bed like I was in a stratijacket and the tech started being really abusinve, when I was checked out he pulled the EEG things out of my hair like he was deliberately trying to hurt me saying that he had heard from Dr. Frederick that I had been "difficult" and they threatened to make me stay there a week without permission to leave like I was in a prison.

So I suppose I was making light of something that upset me pretty deeply. This woman treated me like a sub human. I suppose that this is no big deal here. But it is true that I think it is pretty dumb to have a post that says "why you shouldn't spank your kids" when I think most parents already know we shoudln't spank our kids, we have plenty of reasons without this woman who is relatively new on the scene as a parent and acts very condescending about children at all (some of the things she has said to me personally when I was in and out of the office revealed that, she misestimated my daughter's age by like three years even though she claims to be an expert on girls because she took a class or something). This woman caused a lot of problems for me because she basically eliminated the one chance I had to be fairly evaluated by a neurologist because I ticked her off and inconvenienced her.

I suppose I shouldn't say anything about her looks, but she comes accross as so incredibly haughty and pretentious in person, she actually has like a strut that is not normal, and it is very unusual to not WALK normally - think Monty Python Ministry of funny walks- like only a few people have a strange affected walk, even fewer than don't talk normally like she does. She said when she came into my room and wanted me to sign something saying I would pay two hundred dollars for some psych tests that I didn't want she had this bizarre lilting voice, could you sign these PLEEEEEEASE, and date them? Over and over again, the same strange way and I will never forget any of it because it was all SO STRANGE.

I think it has a lot to do with the general philosophy that I have on shrinks, that obviously some people have on this board and some don't. Between this woman and her partner, Normund Akots, they ruined me to the point that I wasn't able to function for three years. Now I am fine, but he made all kinds of reckless calls about the kinds of drugs he thought I should take even though I had made it to my thirties without any signs of mental illness whatsoever and then when I was evaluated by him as a part of my evaluation for chronic pain he threw four diagnoses at me in a row and had me medicated rather strongly even though he ended up retracting them all and contradicting himself all over the place.

This guy basically was just messing with my life like it meant nothing to him, and my life totally tanked into the garbage can while he was doing it. All he cared about was his professional reputation and referrals from my doctor, so he ended up saying REALLY terrible things about me that got me cancelled from the program when he felt ctiticized and he needed to come up with a story about how I was seriously crazy and plagued with all kinds of personality problems to cover himself. He even told me stuff like he thought that abuse I received when I was a child might have been my own fault - really bad stuff.

I mean Akots' tactics are on par with getting a woman in the sack as part of the job, because if you use your profession and its power and influence for personal reasons, that's what it amounts to. He declared me crazy for personal reasons and that's misuse of his profession pure and simple. His office, which includes her (Akots and Frederick) has anti-patient policies, including having their secretary say 'we don't release charts to patients' which is ILLEGAL.

Akots told me that he wouldn't give me my chart until I threatened to sue, and even told me that it made him feel VIOLATED, which is not only disgusting because the last thing I want as a thirty year old woman is to be told that I am making some old bald guy feel violated it is a serious abuse of my medical rights. He intimidated pressured and insulted me so I wouldn't ask for my chart (insist on it was what he put in my chart notes) meaning that I asked and he said no and I had to ask again.

He told me that only a difficult patient would ask for my chart and that I should evaluate whether it made me look like a normal person to have asked for it because none of his other patients had ever done that.

I seriously doubt that with the speed at which his secretary refused, but I ended up feeling glad when I was through that I distinguished myself from the rest of his patients.

I was convinced at the end of my riding of the mental health pine that not one single thing that happens to a patient of Akots and Frederick is for their own good, that these people have marketed themselves to doctors because it is big business to take problem patients off of the hands of busy doctors in the age of aging baby boomers with pain problems and they have managed to convince some of them that they can declare their problem patients crazy so the doctors don't have to feel bad that they can't cure them all.

It is really bad stuff what goes on in these people's office. At the end of three years, after Akots had told my doctors that I had all kinds of mental problems that he had not one single piece of evidence for other than I have insomnia (which is a primary problem according to my new neurologist) I had depleted financial and physical resources to fight my way back to the way I was before I started seeing him and he had started throwing around all kinds of suggestions of psych meds I should be on even though he isn't a doctor.

At the end of seeing Akots and Frederick the only suggestion after being pinned down as to what he thought I should do about my chronic pain was to take more narcotics. My pain doctor even said in my chart that he thought that Akots' rec's were reckless and unappreciated.

So basically my comments about Frederick are from the perspective that NO psychologist has anything useful to say and my experiences combined with a philosophical abhorence of the field in general make any practical consideration that she has totally absurd and baseless.

I have a Master's degree from Stanford myself so I reject the theory that if someone has a degree from a good institution they can do or say anything they want without criticism. I know plenty of people from Stanford and elsewhere who don't have a clue and hide behind their educations if anything.

This woman is in my long opinion having worked with her and her office unkind, maladjusted and obviously working to promote herself at the expense of the sick helpless people that are unlucky enough to have to come in contact with her, and I suppose I was just being lighthearted about some of the other aspects that aren't that tragic in scope or consequence.

Again, if you are of the opinion that any psychologist heals people, then perhaps you had best go to the real psych forum and let us have our rant here. There are people on this forum who have no where else to go with our very real view that these people are ruining lives for their own profit with bad science and no actual methodology that is even as good as placebo according to some research. These are people that according to studies cannot tell the sane from the insane and they are given power to make influential decisions in people's lives and experiment with them like they are rodent.

Healing peole is not what this woman is about. It is shameless self promotion for profit with bad science and bad intentions.

And I know without a shadow of a doubt that Julie Frederick does NOT have one SHRED of a sense of humor, she has never smiled naturally in my experience. She has that kindergartener squint when you smile look that deprives her face of warmth. There is no CHANCE that she sings her name to be funny. It is the most strange and unfunny thing I have ever heard, and even things that should be funny normally for her she reacts like you have just gotten called into the principal's office.

Actually, I really think you had best not be on this forum. It is kind of like if I went on a naturopathy forum and told them all that I thought naturopathy was quackery all the time. It is simply a philosophical difference that will probably not be breeched.

For example, if you were to go to the sixteenth century and say how can you criticize that doctor he has all of the proper education from all of the theological seminaries and has been given several awards by all of the Archbishops, etc.

Psychology is in the opinion of many of the people on this board a dark art, and the amount of education, the amount of money they make, etc. is not a good thing, it is the indication they are able to fool and take advantage of even more people.

This is probably not something I will be able to convince you of if you think that psychologists heal people, but perhaps you will be able to share that opinion with others on another board.

In fact I suppose it is more unusual to think that a person on the anti-psych forum is defending psychologists because they have credentials. All psychologists have credentials to practice psychology or they wouldn't be able to do it, but I think there is a certain kinship of people on this board that says whatever hoodo voodo degree these people have is not qualification enough to make the assessments they do about people's lives, that the entire science and industry is flawed and there are serious harms being committed in the name of what you call healing people.

People need to go to a doctor or a minister to be healed and leave the psychologists to crawl back under their perspective rocks. That might not be your philosophical bent, and so I am questioning whether you need to criticize mine on this board. On a board supportive of psychologists because they have credentials, I certainly won't be arguing this, but this is one small place where some of us are trying to express a kinship because we feel we have been harmed. I hope I am expressing myself to at least someone, because I feel that at a certain point I really feel that going on a forum where there is going to be a difference of opinion so big from the body of other posters it really makes people seem like they are just a forum troll and makes it seem like you are the one with unusual intentions.

Sorry for saying "What's your boggle?" I was trying to be lighthearted. Your original post only criticized her scarf, her voice and her singing her name.

I'll read over this post when I can and get back to you.

Hi there,

Here's a statement on Ethical Standards for the Oregon Psychological Association. Now, she's a member of this organization, so have a look, and if there's an item she's failed on, in terms of ethics, that's a really good place to start.

http://74.125.95.104/search?q=cache:RyE ... =firefox-a

Ok I read over your post and I can help with only a few items. It's a very difficult situation to assess given I don't have first hand knowledge. So I'll respond to what you say, and I cannot respond to what happened, because no doubt there are other 'facts' I cannot access, and you'll no doubt introduce these as you write further. So please do not be angry at me because I have not been told and therefore don't 'know' some critical facts that are hidden from me. I can't read your mind. Remember, all you gave as an introduction to the problem was your feelings that these people were pretentious and pompous and that the psychologist had a bad scarf and she sounded shrill when she sang on the phone. So you can't blame me too much if my first reply was a tad 'glib'.

Please note too that I have no problem with your assertion that these two psychologists were pretentious and or pompous. However, there are many pompous and pretentious people in the world and we all still have to interact with them, sometimes even in the health field. It's too bad, but every human has to live with the personality quirks of other people. Was it Jean Paul Sartre who said "Hell is other people"?

I associate with a lot of psychologists and some are pompous and pretentious, but I attribute that to them being rich and Republican. Yet I'm sure there are pompous Democrats, I've just never met one. And more often than not, I find pretense and pompousness to be quite common among the uneducated (Oh what a horrible thing to say!). And this makes sense. Pretense is to 'pretend' you know something you don't, or you 'pretend' to be something you are not. And pompousness comes when you're on uncertain footing and need to puff yourself up. So it makes sense that if you're not versed in the matters you are discussing, you might have a tendency to be pretentious and pompous as a defense. But I don't want to color all uneducated people the same way, maybe 99% of uneducated people are sharp as knives and modest and humble beyond belief. I have absolutely no idea what occupations or political viewpoints or education levels load highly for pompousness and pretentiousness. And I bet neither do you. My point is: My observations might be completely skewed by my perceptions, as might your own. Further, I can't meet these people and assess if they are pompous and pretentious or not. So it's just impossible to confirm or deny such character. So let's move on to substantive 'non personality' issues like competence that can be discussed without the rest of us having to meet the psychologists in person.

A greater issue concerns her competence. So I might ask some questions here about what she's done.

So I suppose I was making light of something that upset me pretty deeply. This woman treated me like a sub human. I suppose that this is no big deal here. But it is true that I think it is pretty dumb to have a post that says "why you shouldn't spank your kids" when I think most parents already know we shoudln't spank our kids

Ok I can help on this one. A significant number of parents still practice spanking. And a good many don't. As I said "I 'think' she puts stuff like this on her website to let people know that she's not the 'kind' of psychologist that endorses these outmoded methodologies." So that's probably why she has that item on her website. But I can't speak for her. Maybe she just wants people who spank their kids to know it's not kosher. I don't know. But it's really not a big deal, is it?

I suppose I shouldn't say anything about her looks, but she comes accross as so incredibly haughty and pretentious in person, she actually has like a strut that is not normal, and it is very unusual to not WALK normally - think Monty Python Ministry of funny walks- like only a few people have a strange affected walk, even fewer than don't talk normally like she does. She said when she came into my room and wanted me to sign something saying I would pay two hundred dollars for some psych tests that I didn't want she had this bizarre lilting voice, could you sign these PLEEEEEEASE, and date them? Over and over again, the same strange way and I will never forget any of it because it was all SO STRANGE.

I walk funny too but I don't think that's a serious malfunction. Sometimes we have to be accepting of fashions and habits that other people possess. I'd not worry too much about a funny walk. It's not going to affect care or treatment. Or the sound of her voice. I think both of these annoy you because you two did not get off to a good start.

I have a Master's degree from Stanford myself so I reject the theory that if someone has a degree from a good institution they can do or say anything they want without criticism. I know plenty of people from Stanford and elsewhere who don't have a clue and hide behind their educations if anything.

Did the psychologist boast about her credentials? Or did she insult you? Or did she threaten you?

I recall I did list her credentials. Mea culpa. But that's not her boasting, that's me 'evaluating'. It seems to me after over 20 years in the field she's done all the right steps towards training herself up to be competent. So it would be a bit of a shock to me to find that she's incompetent, given that national rankings required for NIMH funding require that she be in the 'Top' of her field (top 1%, or 5% or whatever the funding during those years dictated). That's all I was saying. I just did the resume check to reassure you and readers that she's not a fraud, she's genuinely qualified.

And it is true that incompetence can happen despite one's resume. But I just don't see any evidence of incompetence yet. Maybe you can tell me more that gets to the incompetence point.

I can see a lot of bruised feelings and a lot of anger towards these people. I assume you were not committed on a legal warrant that removed your right to walk freely in and out of the institution, is that correct?

Did you spend about 3 years in their care? How long were you 'incarcerated' in the hospital? Are you still in their care?

What diagnosis do you remember? Was there psychosis or a psychotic episode? What drugs were prescribed?

The chart issue is tricky. I personally don't need to see my chart, as I know little of the science behind my sickness. Why do you need to see your chart? Also, what tests did they perform? EEG? MRI? CT? Can you read 'em? The reason I ask is because a lot of vital information in a file can relate back to the scans, which most people haven't a clue how to read.

Most important to me was this note of yours:

People need to go to a doctor or a minister to be healed and leave the psychologists to crawl back under their perspective rocks. That might not be your philosophical bent, and so I am questioning whether you need to criticize mine on this board. On a board supportive of psychologists because they have credentials, I certainly won't be arguing this, but this is one small place where some of us are trying to express a kinship because we feel we have been harmed.

Can you please say how specifically you were harmed? I bet it would be very illuminating, because as you say, there are people who've been 'harmed' by the system and it would be useful for everyone to know. Personally I don't have a grudge against psychologists, and I respect their training. But I'm not a member of their club and I'm not averse to criticizing anyone for incompetence. Also, this PsychForums bulletin board is not aligned towards or against psychologists as a profession. It seems to me to be pretty neutral.

BTW I was hospitalized recently for about a month, for other health matters, and the doctors and nurses came into my room without knocking many times. I'm a male. I don't think there's anything deeply wrong with that, especially if it's a female doctor and a female patient. Maybe I don't have enough context to understand. But I'll await your reply.

Hi there,

Thanks for the substantive reply, this is a tricky situation. Julie is an interesting case. I actually read something about walking and talking as being some of the things that VERY FEW people don't learn how to do the same as everyone else, it communicates whether people have been properly socialized into thier societies etc.

Basically affecting an 'ideolect' or something that is a manner of speaking that doesn't declare someone an insider in their community is VERY UNUSUAL. So is walking in a fluid manner. Monty Python's Ministry of Funny Walks is actually a humorous way to say something that is quite sophisticate in terms of sociological observations.

Frederick's not walking or talking normally is a manifestation of the fact that she either chooses to be different than her social group or she was not able to properly socialize, either way it is a strange thing for someone like that to be giving advice on whether someone else is normal.

My evaluation for seizures was basically something that I wasn't aware was going to limit my freedom as much as it did. I didn't know that I wasn't going to be able to come and go of my own free will, but once I was admitted to the hospital and I was wired up to the machine (with the EEG wires stuck to my head) they made a lot of the fact that I wasn't able to go home without their permission. It was the closest thing that I have ever felt to being incarcerated in my life. But none of it was committment to a hospital, as I have had no incidents of mental illness in my life. This was supposed to be evaluation for neurological function.)

I was't comfortable with the situation when Ms Frederick came in my room. Again, she is very snooty and cold and just wasn't interested in putting me at ease. She walked into my room with her squinty smile that says I think I am a million bucks and you are trash (Freud said patients are trash and this woman clearly reflects that view).

She said "Did someone tell you I was coming" with a sneer on her face (uh, no, and she wasn't worried about it). I have had babies and surgery and stuff and many people still try to make you feel comfortable when you aren't dressed by giving a little knock at the door or whatever.

She said "I'm a Psychologist" with that sneer and came in and INFORMED me that we would be spending the next three hours doing evals. The woman came in with my lunch, and she SENT HER AWAY without even saying anything about it, or apologizing at all to me about the inconvenience. When she left she did nothing to reorder my lunch so I went from 6 am to 6 pm without eating anything.

Again, she spread out all of her forms and when it came to the money part she said will you sign these PLEEEESE, and date them OVER AND OVER again. I said uh I haven't READ them, shouldn't I do that and she got really agitated and said that she was basicallly going to tell on me to my doctor, which she obviously did and things got tough for me during the eval after she told them I had been difficult.

She ruined the chance I had to be evaluated for brain function, and after she complained to them basically all they wanted to talk about was that I was a difficult bad bad patient that refused the psych consult. They all talked about me in third person right in front of me like I was a nutcase after that, and just because I said that I should call my insurance company to see if they were going to pay for it before I signed it.

I don't know, have you ever been treated like a crazy prisoner in a hospital just because you wanted notice beforehand of aything that you might have to sign so you would have time to read it? All I said was that I wanted to take time to read it and call my insurance company to discuss it with them, but she never came back later or anything, she just told my doctor I had been difficult.

Because of her I had a black eye on my chart that lasted for three or four doctors afterward. No one said why they thought I was a bad difficult patient, only stated the FACT. I of course knew that the extent of my being hostile and difficult was that I had inconvenienced Julie Frederick, which is something that apparently brings you getting treated like a subhuman in hospitals if you do.

The woman is not a very nice person. She made things very difficult for me seeking treatment for a bad health problem just because I annoyed and inconvenienced her, which again, I would say is an abuse of the professional power that psychologists have.

Think about it, a LOT of people think that the people that inconvenience them are nuts. Like if people get in a wreck they say sheesh that guy's nuts but we shouldn't have the ability to ACTUALLY DECLARE them nuts. That is too much power that if weilded inappropriately can really hurt people.

Her blog just rubbed me the wrong way after all that. She really thinks that even though she sticks out in a crowd as not doing things that most people learn intuitively so they fit into a crowd she is in a position to lecture people about their parenting.

Now, what on earth is that about republicans!?

Um, I have only experienced eliticism from liberals. They are usually the "whine and cheese" variety of intellectual-sounding "republicans are uneducated Nascar-loving heathens. Right? But that is probably a very inadequate treatment of that topic.

I find it rather conflicting that republicans get accused of being undereducated in some cases (cultural philistines) and rich and uncaring in others. I think that 99 percent of the people who have Ph.D.'s are not only democrats they are Marxist leftists, and not because they have analyzed the issues, they are usually just filled with 'better than thou' hubris and associate culturally with the swiss bank style socialism on the left. Again, not enough time to treat that issue at ALL.