A Rose By Any Other Name ...?

• Giving up license by kmdman, 4/3/99
  
  

This kind of thing -- doing therapy but calling it something else -- usually comes up in people who don't QUALIFY for a license, not those who do. I occasionally run across people who are seeing unlicensed (almost always unqualified) practitioners who have convinced them that they're "just as good as a real doctor," or that "the reason they won't give me a license is 'politics'; they don't want really good people like me to show up the licensed doctors (with my cancer cure, homeopathic nostrums, or special therapy techniques)." Though your reasons seem superficially logical, I wonder how much you have really considered whether or not you want to join the ranks of the unlicensed-and-assumed-to-be-unqualified? Is something else at work here? ...... It sounds as if you would be doing psychotherapy, and holding yourself out as a psychologist, but just changing the name. Professional Boards and state prosecutors don't like that very much, in my (non-lawyer, non-judge) experience. I can't cut out peoples' appendices without a license and call it creative stitchery, and acupuncturists can't do "pincushion consulting" without a license. Both scenarios (your "consultancy" and my "stitchery" sound a whole lot like practicing without a license. ..... Seems to me that there's also a pretty heavy ethical issue as well. Your patients (or whatever you'd call them) probably think they're coming to a psychologist and receiving therapy. Are you misleading them (which could be a crime as well as unethical)? Do you plan to tell each of them that you have given up your license so they can't sue you as easily, and you have to be careful because what you are doing might be against the law? That doesn't exactly engender confidence, or encourage your patients to be honest, stand-up folks. ..... Finally, I think doing what you describe would make patients and referral sources doubt your credentials, background, or intentions. ..... I suggest you check with the Psychologist's Board before you do anything permanent; I'm sure you're not the first person to think of this, and it will be very hard to get the license back if you change your mind.

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