Why I Developed The Seminars, Courses & Catalog
By Ofer Zur, Ph.D.
The incentive to develop the seminars and online mail order catalog material stemmed from my deep concerns with the state of my profession. These concerns revolved primarily around the following issues:
- The effect of managed care on medicine in general and psychotherapy in particular.
- The general ineffectiveness of most psychotherapists.
- The isolated, stifled, disconnected, and presumptuous environment that most psychotherapy is taking place within, an environment that is not conducive to healing and health.
- The lack of accountability by most therapists.
- The endless, senseless, and destructive turf wars among different approaches to psychotherapy.
- The way we educate and license therapists which promotes neither effective healing practices nor accountability.
- The high percentage of emotionally unhealthy therapists.
- The overemphasis on pathology, diagnosis, and DSM vs. focusing on health and connection.
- The obsession with inner and early life and general lack of attention to immediate and real life concerns.
- How therapists keep themselves emotionally distanced, unknown, and disconnected from their clients. This may be good for therapists’ income and ego but is not good for clients’ health and pocket book.
- The recent trend to provide instant relief to clients’ pain and discomfort by means of medication or numerous other dangerous quick fix approaches.
My indignation at managed care systems has inspired me to fight for what I feel to be the soul of our profession. It is my belief that not only should we avoid joining any panels but, in fact, we can do well without them by being true to why we became therapists, and by training and re-educating ourselves in new ways of doing therapy.
The Private Practice Seminar will teach you how to develop a managed-care-free practice so you are not enslaved to any PPO, HMO or any utilization review. The private practice handbook and managed care brochure will help you educate your clients about the hazards of managed care and the advantages of private pay therapy. By following the marketing tips and by being innovative about the way you do therapy, you can eliminate the anxiety and humiliation involved in applying for provider panels, and the compromises to the integrity of therapy.
My concern and outrage about the state of our profession inspired me to develop the mail-order catalog, as well as my private practice seminars. Not one week goes by in my practice, lectures, or seminars without my hearing horror stories from people about wasted time, money, and worst of all, hope in years of therapy by incompetent therapists.
I believe that most graduate schools have failed to prepare us to conduct effective therapy and to deal with the complexities of private practice. The majority of graduate professors preach and adhere to a single orientation which they promote, contrary to all scientific evidence, as superior to all others. The Handbook, Clinical Forms, and Treatment Planning documents will help you re-educate yourself and position yourself to be an effective therapist outside managed care.
Too many therapists are trained to keep themselves emotionally distanced from their clients. I do not believe this approach is sensible or helpful, since most of our clients have been injured by emotionally distanced parents. Exacerbating the problem, most professional workshops teach “ground breaking” techniques and ever new quick-fix tricks that are supposed to yield instant and “everlasting” results. In summary, the traditional training and practice of psychotherapy has too often resulted in poor service, terrible reputation and…managed care.
Because I believe that too many psychotherapists are incompetent at best and damaging at worst, I developed the material and my seminars. I passionately believe, and know from my own experience and the experience of the thousands of therapists I have trained, that this widespread incompetence enables well-trained therapists to thrive in private practice working with out-of-pocket paying clients and not relying on managed care. The usual waiting list I have in my practice proves that therapeutic effectiveness transcends economic realities, insurance plans, or long distance driving.
The audio and printed materials, like my seminars and private consultations, will give you the tools to become a successful and effective therapist who does not have to bow to the managed care gods and who enjoys both the art of healing and the scientific base of our profession.