Here is an article discussing it:
This raised my eyebrow:
In addition, Dr. Phil’s attorney, Lin Wood , sent us the following statement with regard to AMI’s deluge of negative stories:
Lin Wood was Dr. Phil’s attorney. Well, ain’t that a fucking shocker. 
I’m on the fence about this. Dual relationships are taken very seriously in the field, but it’s not as egregious (in my opinion) as if he had a sexual relationship with a client. He gave someone a job. Worthy of discipline, not revocation. So I agree with the board’s decision more or less.
Oh I was over it way back when Dr Ruben wrote everything bad my mom wanted to me know about sex but was too afraid to ask. Or when my dad read Dr Eric Berne’s The Games People Play as a management tool and managed to get himself fired.
As someone here once pointed out regarding Dr Oz, a doctor is there for the patient; a quack is there for himself. And since the esteemed Dr. Johnson observed that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, these quacks are perfect examples.
I recall that episode; it comes off quite differently when you see it in its entirety. In fact, I’ve seen a lot of Dr. Phil shows, as I often had it on in the background while working from home. Good ol’ boy schtick aside, most of what he says is common sense if you can filter out his obvious cahoots with certain treatment centers and ignore his increasing ego. The Maga part is news to me and considerably lowers my opinion of him, but I don’t share folks’ disdain of (most of) his methods. I’m open to having my mind changed, but not by Big Joel.
Personally, I don’t know how anyone can listen to him without getting the dry heaves. Smarmy is a big trigger for me.
Vary glad to have your husband’s perspective (albeit filtered through you) on the subject.
Any of ‘em (that is, the ones you respect) have their own teevee shows?
NOW he decides that there’s a Trump bandwagon to jump on? After 34 felony convictions and with obvious signs of mental decay (Trump’s, not necessarily his)? Seems like his timing, as well as his judgment and willingness to actually help people, is open to question.
No, but I think there are some decent ones on YouTube. I’d have to go through my history but I’ll see what I can find.
On the subject of psychology it’s often difficult to tell where my opinions begin and my husband’s end. Not because I blindly accept whatever he says to be true, but because I’ve seen the real effects in my life of using evidence-based interventions and because I have a personal stake in my own mental health outcomes I’ve come to care as much as he does about what’s going on in the field.
When I was in college I had severe PTSD, anxiety and depression to the point that I couldn’t function. I had a psychologist I liked but she wasn’t really using an evidence-based model so for six agonizing years despite incredible effort on my part, I didn’t get better. I had to withdraw from college.
And my husband, who was just an undergrad psychology student at the time, begged me to try something evidence-based. He said he’d even pay for it. So I did. I tried CBT. My therapist actively discouraged me from doing this. “CBT doesn’t work for people with complex trauma.”
Well you know my main problem at the time wasn’t “complex trauma” so much as an inability to regulate my emotions in the moment or take a shower or do these very basic things to take care of myself.
So I did it. I did CBT. And it helped me so much I returned to college the next year and absolutely nailed my final year. Then I graduated and went to on get my Masters, and from that point on I was a convert. Not to CBT in particular but to the entire concept that we can use research to inform questions about how to help people with mental health issues. And I’ve made an effort to follow the research ever since. My husband comes in handy because he knows how to find and interpret the research better than I do.
I’m more interested in trauma research and he’s more interested in anxiety research (his specialization is OCD and tic disorders) but we are functionally on the same page about what makes bad and good therapy.
And we both hate psychology grifters, but my reason is more personal and his is more professional.
Imagine if the America-hating fuckstick made him Surgeon General (“He’s a doctor!”). What would the warnings on cigarette packs say?
Well put. I sincerely hope that my phrasing didn’t give offense; I had no intention of doing so, but noticed after the edit window closed that I possibly had.
ETA: and thank you for sharing that very personal account.
I was trying to think of a suitable epitaph to describe Dr Phil. One which is literally true might be:
“Dr. Phil: Makes even (the late) Joyce Brothers look good.”
Or maybe:
"Dr. Phil: “Almost as smart as that crazy uncle you only see on Thanksgiving.”
I didn’t take offense, I just wonder sometimes if people think all my opinions on psychology come from my husband. It’s not really the case so much as we share a common interest, however there have been cases on this board where I consult with him, for example to find specific resources. He’s really good at knowing about other resources to direct people to. And I’ve sent workbooks to posters sometimes that he directed me to because they are research-based.
One of the challenges I’ve found is that it’s really hard to sort out what’s evidence-based these days. Most of the articles are summaries of studies or just claims without a source. I went through this whole thing where I was trying to get to the bottom of polyvagal theory which is a HUGE influence on trauma intervention right now. My current therapist is using it. I had a feeling it was BS. I finally found a YouTube video from a neuroscientist who debunked the theory by essentially saying, “No, that’s not how the brain works.” But that’s the best I’ve been able to find! Which doesn’t mean the therapy doesn’t work, just that the theory the therapy is based on is horseshit. (See also: EMDR, which works but nobody practicing it seems to know or care why it works. I’m actually planning to start a thread on EMDR soon. It’s helped me a lot, but there is still a lot of valid controversy around it.)
Sorry to go on, this is really a major interest of mine!
Does Hannibal Lecter count? He had his own show.
Although he was a forensic psychiatrist, not clinical psychologist, so that probably shouldn’t count.
Don’t worry, I for one, am fine with it (as I would be for anything that lets me not think about that walrus for a bit).
Oh, am I body-shaming him? Astoundingly, I don’t care.
I have absolutely ZERO expertise in the field. But it occurs to me that mental illness is an illness, and we have verified ways to study and treat illnesses. I don’t see why those methods can’t be used for mental illness treatments, aside from the general stigma surrounding mental illness that I can’t believe we’re still dealing with in 2024.
I only watched this one video by this guy, but he seems to have his head screwed on straight.
Yes. I think it’s harder to do clinical trials for psychiatric disorders than other types of illnesses, in part because of the nebulous nature of mental illness. Some researchers for example, believe that depression doesn’t have just one cause, but multiple causes and multiple presentations. There are always factors that are hard to control for, like how much support someone has at home, or what else is going on in their life, or whether they live next to a busy road (which has been shown to impact mental health.) There’s the interference of certain factors like the fact that just having a therapist you get along with seems to help regardless of the treatment modality. Then there’s the fact that most people with a psychiatric disorder have at least two such disorders, and research tends to focus on the minority that only have one. That’s not even getting into difference with subsets of the population; men vs women, Black people vs. white people. People can experience things differently depending on their culture.
So I’m not claiming it’s easy, the data can be messy, and the results aren’t as conclusive as in other types of studies, but we’ve got to try. There are people trying. The gold standard is the randomized controlled trial. After so many RCTs showing efficacy, you get to say your treatment is evidence-based.
People should be trying! That’s all I ask.
If your treatment isn’t evidence-based, what is it based on?
When I think of treatments that aren’t based on evidence, it makes me think of homeopathy, faith healing, or other woo.
Whelp. A lot of treatments are based on things that haven’t been proven to work. For a long time the dominant theoretical framework in psychology was psychodynamic therapy, which is based on Freudian notions of the subconscious and human development. I don’t want to say there are no good psychodynamic therapists; some therapists are just really good no matter what modality they are using. But I will say that I don’t consider psychodynamic therapy an evidence-based treatment. The research is mostly case studies that in my opinion do a lot of begging the question.
Up until the last 10-20 years or so, that is how therapy was done. Then came these young upstarts trying to quantify everything. There was a bit of a war between these two ways of thinking. But the behavioral types are starting to win out, at least in part because insurance companies prefer fewer treatment sessions and some evidence-based therapies are incredibly short term in comparison.
But woo manages to work its way in everywhere, and it always has been especially bad in trauma intervention. I think because the whole modern idea of trauma is Freudian in its origins, certain myths and misconceptions persist. There was a hugely influential book out recently called The Body Keeps the Score which many therapists consider the Bible of trauma work and it’s like… Okay, certain ideas here are not wrong. People with trauma have hyper arousal or as one might put it an exaggerated fight-flight response. And helping those people out may involve teaching them how to calm themselves down. But then we take these basic truths and add to them all this unproven crap, like polyvagal theory which falsely purports that these three specific areas in the brain are responsible for trauma response - when we know that’s not how the brain works. And some therapists will just take it all as equally valid. They will read someone like Bessel Vanderkolk and assume he knows what he’s talking about.
And I am so tired of it.
I had to read this book at work, it was required, called My Grandmother’s Hands. It was about healing racial trauma, which I generally support. In its discussion of racial issues I assume it was spot on. But then it diverged into this whole thing that trauma can be passed on physically from person to person, and posited that police officers and white people are so violent today because of the violence that was done to us in Medieval times. I am not fucking kidding.
So the author here takes an actual bit of research - we have evidence that trauma can affect gene expression in future generations - and adds on all this ridiculous crap.
And all these therapists are just in awe of this book.
I can’t even.
Does it throw in Hollow Earth theory or Atlantis while it’s at it?
Thanks for the info though, it’s fascinating.