Memoirs of A Healer/Clinical Social Worker: Autobiography of Bruce Whealton

Chapter 47: Bad, Fraudulent Therapist Making People Sicker

[Disclaimer: I have used aliases to protect the confidentiality and identity of clients or patients. No other names have been changed.]

I found out from Jessica that John Freifeld was moving to Wilmington. She said that he was going to move in with her and her family. She had a husband named Mike, that I met a few times, and a son.

I asked Jessica, "why is he moving in with you and your family?"

She said, "he told me he will help me deal with the flashbacks I am having... when I remember the bad things that happened. It's happening all the time. I have panic attacks and John helps me online. He will be able to help more if he is here with me.

"He is not a therapist, though?" I asked, seeking to confirm that she understood this.

"I know but he can help me get grounded or centered," she said.

Those were words we had not used in therapy; I didn't think. So, I asked, "Is that what he said he could do?"

"Yes," she answered.

This story was troubling me. A concern that I had may not be easy to understand for a layperson. Some professionals had stated in the literature that sometimes dissociative symptoms including those found in Dissociative Identity Disorder, can be iatrogenic, which means caused by the interventions of a therapist. I thought that it wasn't possible for someone to create such a complex disorder or condition just because they didn't do things correctly.

I would begin to get a sense of just how possible this was when I describe the sessions I had with Tracy.

Years later, I would speak to John's sister who shared my extreme concern about what John was doing. Yet, someone else might think that all he is doing is offering advice. It's hard for me to reconstruct memories of every single little thing that troubled me as I write this years later.

It seems like a little more information is needed before every reader feels the same hair on fire call for help reaction that I was feeling.

John indeed did move in with Jessica, her husband Mike, and their son.

In essence, John had diagnosed Jessica with her condition. He had said to me that he just suspected that she might have DID but she later told me that he told her that's what her diagnosis was.

Just as I cannot diagnose medical conditions nor can I advise people about their psychiatric conditions, a layperson shouldn't diagnose a person as having a psychiatric disorder, especially one as complex and confusing as DID.

While it is true that Sadie and Patricia already knew or believed they had different personalities – they believed they had DID – what worried me about Jessica is that she had discovered this only recently in her work with John.

Jessica said he was going to bring two other women to live with them so he could help them.

I should clarify something. Jessica had never spoken of John as one of her friends that she knew, and he was helping her specifically. He was someone who had been helping people online.

I knew from my own experience that a person should only have one therapist. That's why, for example, when I was working with people with schizophrenia during this time period as described above, I made sure they didn't already have a therapist. I told her and later others that they shouldn't have more than one therapist.

They would answer that he is "just a support person."

I tried to explain that even if one is just doing active listening or demonstrating empathy, it's best for only one person to be doing this because of the nature of their condition and how confusing it is to them. They all stated directly or indirectly that they were confused and looking for answers... What had caused their problems? Why did they have these problems now?