In 1990 Gary presented a paper at the Melbourne APS annual conference that required particular introduction because of itself it appeared to be advocating highly unethical, deliberately ineffective therapeutic methods. Called ‘Maintaining a Caseload’, the paper described 13 assessment, treatment, and termination rules to follow to ensure one’s interventions are not so effective as to diminish one’s caseload and hence threaten one’s income! The intent of the paper was to examine the negative face validity of some tactics so as to suggest what we ought to avoid in our treatments. That is, if we were to attempt to be ineffective (so as to require clients to keep coming along), but in a way that  was not so obvious as to raise suspicion, then how would we go about it? What may we be doing now that we should know is not working?

Click here for the original transcript: MaintainingACaseload

When question time followed, a man asked whether the same critical approach could be taken in support of psychoanalytic techniques (noting that the 13 rules outlined seemed highly pro-CBT). Gary answered “Probably not.”

After the Coalition’s surprise (to some) narrow victory in the 2019 Federal election:
An Open Letter to the Australian Labor Party Before Its Post-Election Review” (published in The Mercury newspaper): Completely Frustrated? and Frank But Unspeakable

A (fictional!) note on the effects of the 2020 COVID-19 isolation time: Isolation

My skeptical bent was already developed in 1980 when I penned this promotional ad for “Shibbur”: Shibbur

More recently, more serious issues have been my skeptical focus. This Letter to the Editor was not published: VAD and the Churches

But disagreements exist within the SHARPs community: The article “Recent craven concessions…” in Australian Humanist elicited responses defending the idea of ‘humanist chaplains’. I therefore replied to them with this.

My skepticism and clinical psychology have, of course, overlapped many times, including in letters to InPsych – the magazine of the Australian Psychological Society. The topic of Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an example:

Mystifying EMDR

EMDR Response

Despite majoring in Philosophy at UTAS, I have since been quite disparaging – even dismissive – of the philosophical method (‘rationalism’ vs empiricism) as an alternative to the scientific method (Scientific Rationalism).

A thread to follow on this theme starts with this letter to the editor of Australian Rationalist: Rationalist Letter

Followed by: Skeptical Rationalism

My response to a fellow clinician who has turned to ‘woo’, specifically with a mystical interpretation of coincidence he has termed ‘syncronicity’: Response to Mackey

I have regarded Freudian psychoanalysis as unscientific, the school of his followers as a religion, and his writings as literature. Bakker (2012) describes my psychoanalytic hoax article submission to a journal. I presented on this to conferences (e.g. APS 2012) and seminars:

Why was my?

A Fraud on Freud

BTW: I have not included the article itself, as I may resubmit it!