It is definitely in patients’ and Scott’s interest to maintain anonymity.
There is a tradition in therapy going back to Freud that the therapist should be a blank slate to the patient(there’s a technical term for this which I can’t recall..)
There is a tradition in therapy going back to Freud that the therapist should be a blank slate to the patient(there’s a technical term for this which I can’t recall..)
Some may find the Greek term "kenosis" interesting, meaning "emptying". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosis
I agree that SSC being separate from his psychiatry is pretty important. I like SSC, and at the same time I would find it difficult to go to therapy knowing Scott is behind SSC. It would cause me to fixate on obsessional traits in myself, knowing that he is predisposed to the same thing.
That's not a very solid foundation. Pretty much everything from Freud has since been reconsidered.
My experience with therapists is that I want a certain connection, and I've been rather unsatisfied with most I've seen (though my sample size is only 4). It's not optimal to have to keep rolling the dice to try and find someone I'm comfortable opening up to, and of course both the situation where I'd need to find a new therapist and the US healthcare system (& attitude to mental health) do not make it any easier.
For most professionals, however, it is quite hard to work this out, at least without asking them in person. (For a minority, who are involved in research/etc, one can look at their publications.)
So I'd actually encourage more mental health professionals to blog (or otherwise engage with the public) with their opinions on their field of professional expertise.
(SSC mostly isn't doing that, since Scott mostly comments on general topics, and only posts something on his profession every now and again. I often find what Scott has to say on general topics interesting, but I doubt I'd find what J. Random Psychiatrist or J. Random Psychologist has to say on general topics anywhere near as interesting.)
That's... risky. There are accreditation boards and professional orgs for a reason, and if they're pushing questionable science or standards they still control what the requirements are.
Debating it behind closed doors with your peers is one thing, but it's another to air dirty laundry to the public. A professional puts out their doubts about [X] to the general public and then it gets picked up by cranks, "official doctor says [X] is bullshit, and that alternative [Y] might hold promise." And then people start buying healing crystals or Jordan Peterson or something.
If some crank misuses a professional's comments to justify their crank views, that's not the professional's fault, and I've never heard of a professional being disciplined for that.
[1] http://cepuk.org
But Scott doesn't exactly try to be a blank slate to patients, given that he mentions details like his time in Japan and his "struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder" in his public profile as a psychiatrist, which seems to be aimed at patients (there's a big button for booking an appointment).
Of course, there is a difference between making a few superficial details like this available to your patients or millions of words of your essays.
edit: This is in the EU
A personal blog where a psychiatrist divulges his patients' sexualities and relationship issues to pontificate about polyamorism with his laymen blog readers, including Steve Sailer, is not the same thing as a case study in a professional journal.