{"id":636,"date":"2012-11-26T09:40:58","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T17:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/?p=636"},"modified":"2012-11-26T09:41:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-26T17:41:35","slug":"psychotherapy-branding-and-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/?p=636","title":{"rendered":"Psychotherapy branding and marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I just read a mildly disturbing article in the New York Times<\/em> called “What Brand Is Your Therapist?<\/a>” \u00a0 The author\u00a0Lori Gottlieb was a full-time journalist who took six years to retrain as a psychotherapist \u2014 her website<\/a>, but not the article, says she has a master’s degree in clinical psychology. \u00a0Yet she found herself virtually unemployed after several months and in search of marketing consultants to attract clients. \u00a0The thrust of the article is that such marketing involves branding, i.e., defining a niche that promises quick, painless, easily grasped results, and then promoting oneself online and elsewhere using that brand.<\/p>\n

Gottlieb is clearly uncomfortable about the trade-offs inherent in branding and marketing psychotherapy services. \u00a0Traditional psychotherapy is often painstaking, uncomfortable, and lengthy, and thus hard to sell. \u00a0In contrast, one-time phone consultations and executive coaching are brief, feel-good interventions that lend themselves to snappy, positive catchphrases that sell better. \u00a0Such services may be “fast-food therapy \u2014 something that feels good but isn\u2019t as good for you; something palatable without a lot of substance.” \u00a0Moreover, she notes that many sales techniques clash with the tenets of traditional psychodynamic therapy. \u00a0Sharing personal details makes one more approachable and “human,” at the cost of complicating and possibly precluding transference work. \u00a0Active use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter can attract potential clients and publicize one’s “brand,” but may also blur relationship boundaries essential for effective psychotherapy. \u00a0Gottlieb lays out the dilemmas well in her article, but her practice website illustrates the practical conclusion: Lots of “selling” of various services, few of which are recognizable as psychotherapy.<\/p>\n

Of course, I am writing this on my psychiatry blog, which is linked to my own practice website. \u00a0I too have grappled with similar trade-offs. \u00a0I launched my website over five years ago, and started the blog about a year later. \u00a0Several months ago I heeded marketing advice I found online: \u00a0I re-wrote my website in the first-person and added photographs. \u00a0I expanded the sections on my hospital committee work and past research. \u00a0I included more practical information about my practice.<\/p>\n

Like Gottlieb, I had mixed feelings about doing this. \u00a0On the one hand, helping potential patients make more informed choices sounds innocuous enough. \u00a0I want suffering people to be able to find me and to know what I can help with. \u00a0I want the process of engaging in psychotherapy to be as transparent as possible. \u00a0I explain what I do, and even list my fees on my website (most of my peers don’t).<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I’m concerned that branding and marketing\u00a0commodifies<\/a> a personal healing relationship. \u00a0It offers to treat psychological issues in little bite-sized pieces, misleadingly suggesting that therapy to resolve one’s indecision about marrying, say, can be completely separate and distinct from therapy to deal with career indecision. \u00a0It conflates psychotherapy with counseling and coaching, all of which are useful but different things. \u00a0Mainly it risks dumbing down psychotherapy. \u00a0Psychotherapy is often complex if done carefully, and in my opinion it can’t be conducted as well over the phone, by email, while sitting by the pool with Skype running on one’s laptop, or in a guaranteed four-session package.<\/p>\n

I haven’t availed myself of the whole branding arsenal, since I strive to maintain a psychotherapy practice worthy of the name. \u00a0If I ever write a book, offer coaching services, or engage in public speaking, those activities will be clearly distinct from my role as a psychotherapy-oriented psychiatrist. \u00a0Moreover, patients and would-be patients seem to agree<\/a> that informational websites are useful, but that too much branding and self-promotion by a psychotherapist is a turn-off. \u00a0That makes good sense, and encourages me to take another look at my own website \u2014 I may turn it down a little. \u00a0What do you think?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just read a mildly disturbing article in the New York Times called “What Brand Is Your Therapist?” The author Lori Gottlieb was a full-time journalist who took six years to retrain as a psychotherapist \u2014 her website, but not the article, says she has a master’s degree in clinical psychology. Yet she found herself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[48,53,20,24],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychotherapy","tag-commodity","tag-psychodynamics","tag-therapist-disclosure","tag-transference","odd"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}