Pat Frankish Psychology and Psychotherapy

Having had a difficult childhood, I have seen a number of therapists as an adult. Pat Frankish was the worst. She would announce a diagnosis in a session which, without subtlety or careful choice of words, was upsetting.
Frankish insisted that I could remember a traumatic event and insisted that sessions continued until I spoke about it. I did not recall anything consciously and found her behaviour heavy-handed and confusing. She was very intent of promotion and cultivation of a certain kind of image of herself simply for self-gain. I regret seeing her and believe she did more harm than good. More...

What I’ve noticed with Pat Frankish is her level of Internet self promotion. The first 15 (yes 15) pages of a ‘google’ search for Pat Frankish results in 15 pages of constantly consistent self promotion for just about every result for 15 pages. It even carries on up until page 20 (I didn’t go much further than this) but more sporadically. There’s even her own Wikipedia page. I’ve seen excessive Internet self promotion and hype before and very rarely does the individual / company / organisation live up to it in real life. Again another individual doing this looked very good on the Internet even when exercising some caution regarding this type of behaviour. However when meeting this person in real life, they were no where near as good as their Internet persona and promotion / hype portrayed them to be. You need to be as good as your hype basically and not many doing that find that balance. This Pat Frankish is something else regarding all of this though due to the extremely excessive amount of self promotion and ‘alarm bells’ should be ringing when viewing this amount of self promotion. This fits in with other stories I’ve heard about her behaviour within her field (some of which are from reasonably reliable sources) and which I’ll discuss below as well as from my own personal and direct experience. It’s ironic that this level of self promotion also ties into the fact that Pat Frankish is one of the worst and most disturbed human beings I have met so far in life. The more someone self promotes themselves, the worse they are in real life it seems here and in many other cases no doubt. Someone who is good at what they do in life with an acceptable personality doesn’t need a high level of self promotion. Word of mouth will be enough most of the time.

My experience with Pat Frankish was regarding a report she had written. Although the tests that were conducted with the associated results may have been ok within their own context, the report included basically completely unacceptable and highly unprofessional insulting comments. When I addressed this disgusting behaviour to Pat Frankish her justification response was along the lines of ‘well I’ve been doing this xx amount of years’. I responded by saying ‘well if you’ve been doing this for xx number of years then why are you writing reports like that?’ I’ll admit I’ve had ‘issues’ in the past and on going ones that I’m doing my best to cope with and accept. A lot of people have ‘issues’ in one form or another or know someone that has. People generally aren’t perfect and have personality flaws. I’ve learnt that if you can cope with them you’re probably better off keeping your mouth shut and saving a lot of money in the process. A lot of psychologists and people who provide counselling are ironically actually probably worse and even a lot worse than half if not more than their patients except they’re getting very well paid for it and especially within the extensive private sector due to the NHS not being able to address this area very well and in a very limited capacity. This isn’t the fault of the NHS though necessarily for several reasons. This experience has been my own as again I’ll admit I’ve met a good few psychologists and people who provide counselling and in the end not many if any can actually help you. I’ve found like in other things in life, if you can sort it / try to manage things yourself then do so as it’ll most likely be the best you’ll get. This Pat Frankish though is in a league of her own regarding some of what I’ve discussed above. This person has SERIOUS issues and if anyone should be seeing a psychologist it’s Pat Frankish who should be and definitely not the other way around. This is from my own personal and direct experience discussed above as well as other disturbing reports to say the least I’ve heard some of which are from reasonably reliable sources including several from close friends. I will discuss this below.

I know that Pat Frankish was hired by an organisation and this also included a contract. I think this was in relation to basically addressing ‘workplace stress’ to a group of employees. After the first session that Pat Frankish conducted regrading this the report I heard from a close friend was that the group of employees came out of the session with very ‘shocked’ looks on their faces. A report regarding this was made to more senior members of staff of this organisation from some of the employees present during the session and after hearing what had gone on and been said from Pat Frankish and her behaviour, the organisation immediately cancelled Pat Frankish’s contract.

Another report I heard was regarding a private session that a close friend of mine attended with Pat Frankish. This was due to my close friend being effected by quite an extreme incident so it was very understandable that they were seeking assistance. I won’t report what was said for confidentiality purposes but what Pat Frankish was saying and her behaviour was extremely inappropriate and again basically very disturbing.

Another report was made on the Internet and one that I have no direct connection to but from my experience is very believable. It is a review made by someone who had a job interview with Pat Frankish and her organisation. It can be found by doing a ‘google’ search for ‘Pat Frankish’ and is about halfway down the first page of results. Here it is anyway, a one star review;

I recently applied for a post with this organization as a part-time therapist. My experience was entirely negative. At the time I was considering applying I repeatedly asked for a job description and was not sent one. I applied anyway, on an application form that, ironically, asked me to address the specifics of the job description - which I didn't have! I was then offered an interview and at that time I asked what the salary for the post was. I was told only that it was "flexible". When I attended the interview it emerged that the salary band was known in advance after all, but, it seems, that they'd simply chosen not to answer my question. During the interview the lead interviewer - Pat Frankish - turned to gaze out of the window several times whilst I was answering the questions of one of her two fellow-interviewers; I felt she had no warmth and showed no interest in me whatsoever. She had what I guess I normally refer to as 'attitude'. During the interview, aspects of the job emerged that I feel really required, and yet didn't get, explicit mention in the job description I'd belatedly received. A week after the interview I was informed by e-mail by the "office junior", as she was designated (herself, a very friendly and helpful young woman), that I'd been unsuccessful in my application. Fair enough - in fact I'd completely gone off the idea of working there, anyway - but no offer of feedback on how they felt I'd performed or on my application in general was made to me. After the dust had settled I felt I wanted to complain about these negative aspects of my experience and I e-mailed the company to ask if they were members of BACP or any other organization to whom I might hold them accountable. They didn't reply. I mailed again and they, again, didn't reply. I looked again at their Counselling Directory page, which very clearly implied they were organizational BACP, BPS and HCPC members. BACP made clear to me that they were not organizational members and they contacted them and Counselling Directory to correct this misleading impression. Neither BPS nor HCPC have organizational members. I'm big and ugly enough to cope with the knockback of the way this private company treated me personally but I'm concerned that their shoddy practices in recruiting staff and advertising their credentials in the way I've described may adversely affect others. I also worry that the disdainful attitudes shown towards me, particularly by Pat Frankish, might characterize their general approach to clients. I'm not given to posting comments on feedback spaces but there's apparently nowhere else I can go to with my complaint: they're accountable to no-one and won't respond to complaints.

I’ve also read another Internet report regarding Pat Frankish describing her as a ‘ham-fisted’ psychologist. I haven’t found this report recently but it was there at one time. Again seems very believable and not surprising in the least. I had no connection to this.

In summary Pat Frankish has absolutely no idea of how to behave and treat people in general in any capacity it seems let alone within her field where she will be speaking and engaging with vulnerable people. It’s also very obvious that Pat Frankish has more serious issues and needs to see a good psychologist herself. I’ve discussed some of this above. Like I was saying about some of this stuff with many psychologists and people who provide counselling many of them are in fact worse than many of their patients but this Pat Frankish really is something else here and in a league of her own even if it is in quite a disturbed one. Again as I was saying above if you can partly sort and manage your own issues yourself in the end, you’re probably better off keeping your mouth shut than seeing many psychologists and people who provide counselling for reasons that I have discussed. However people can experience desperate times and that’s when the above people start gaining business. People can experience and suffer more extreme life events that may have been no fault of their own and totally unprovoked from other people. These people may seek assistance from a psychologist or someone who provides counselling. If so one of the worst things they could do is see Pat Frankish. She’s basically a ‘really nasty piece of work’ and should not be doing what she is doing. There should be enforceable legislation that prevents people like this from operating. I’m not sure what a person like this should be doing. Perhaps something more ‘behind the scenes’ with minimal contact with other human beings maybe suitable at best. Her very excessive Internet self promotion is I think making up for and compensating for serious inadequacies both personal and professional. It’s by far the worst case of this that I have seen and experienced.

A one star review in this case is simply far too good here. It would be on the minus scale.
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