There is much to admire about Mr. John Prosise. He worked with prisoners for five years, has skills…read moreas an architect, was President of the Northern California Psychologists for Social Responsibility, has training in EMDR, clinical hypnosis, and more. So I assume that he has helped many people. But for me, he was a mercifully brief disaster in the 2 and a half sessions I had with him. He was at times, literally quivering with rage, extremely rude, abusive, needy, hysterical, unreasonable, bullying, unprofessional, unethical, and more.
A little background. I am an older man who has had a lot of therapy in my life; I've had three long-term therapists wherein I've gone through roughly 120, 140, and 250 sessions. They varied considerably in styles and approaches but were all of considerable value to me. I was in a fairly classical analysis on a couch with one; in a relaxed, face-to-face very eclectic practical therapy with another; and a third that was a mix of psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral. They were good experiences that left me stronger, more centered, more self-aware etc. I've had several experiences of short-term therapy that varied in value. All of the prior therapists I have seen were respectful and professional.
So I was shocked by the behavior of Mr. Prosise. I came to the first session feeling a little skeptical because of two things he did before I met him. First, in our first email exchange, he got my name wrong; this is minor, but my name was clear in the email he was responding to. Then, after spending maybe 7 or 8 minutes on the phone during which he provided me with information about his office location, entry code to the building, web site info where I could enter insurance materials, etc., he said, "I can tell we're going to get along well. You have a sense of humor." One can generously hear this as Mr. Prosise trying to set a positive tone for the therapy, but I'm sorry, a competent adult should know that, after providing information to someone for a few minutes on the phone, they cannot know how the two of them will get along. People are welcome to their intuitions and impressions, but this struck me as misplaced overconfidence and something that a person trained in psychology should know better than. So yes, my attitude was not as good as it might have been when I first met him.
In the first session, after I spoke a great deal about myself for maybe 40 minutes or so, he remarked that our perspectives on things were "astonishingly similar". He told me that he was congenitally epileptic and that the medications doctors offered were of no help and that he had tried things ranging from herbs to witchcraft seeking help. I had mentioned that curcumin, an anti-inflammatory, seemed to help my depression; he said this was close to his heart.
But then when he offered a couple of observations about me, I told him that I thought the observations were not true. This seemed to trigger anger in him. At a certain point, he rudely stopped me and asked sarcastically if I was "trying to show that I'm good," by which he meant trying to be impressive. He talked over any response I could give, and engaged in self-bolstering, bragging about having studied philosophy at Stanford, spending 20 years framing houses. He struck me as insecure and threatened. He looked at my face and said he would not be surprised if I had suffered from "eye twitching" at some point in my life. I remarked that no one had ever observed that. "Forget it!" he said very defensively - which probably guaranteed that I would remember it. I thought he was acting incompetently - I had been suffering from a moderate sinus infection for a few days, which may have caused tension around my eyes. It did not seem to occur to him that the tension he perceived around my eyes might be transitory and not characterological. As in his prediction about how well we would get along, I thought he was jumping the gun, making observations based on too little knowledge. When I disagreed with his comments, he kept asking me to say, "Ah hah!" He wanted me to show enthusiasm for what he was saying; I felt no such enthusiasm. I felt like I was in a courtroom and he was the judge who let me know what he would and would not tolerate in his courtroom. At a certain point, he told me that he was testing me to see what I could tolerate.
I arrived at the second session thinking it would probably be the last. I realized that I had had trouble hearing him during the first session and asked if we could sit closer; he did and I had no trouble hearing him. I answered his question about whether I was trying to "show that I was good". And opened up a bit about my life, and got on the verge of tears at times; he seemed like a reasonable listener. Then in the flow of the interactions, near the end of the session, he said, "You said something incredibly powerful and provocative that I don't want to go into because we are nearing the end of the session. My hands are tremoring
