Marvin D Todd & Assoc

Doesn't Recommend

concerned citizen 100

Joined 2 years ago

I strongly recommend you not hire him.. I experienced Dr. Marvin Todd, of Sacramento, CA, as a

narrow-minded ideologue, a disrespectful know-it-all.

He refused to listen. He regularly interrupted me

about every 3rd sentence. He dismissed me, saying

"No! It isn't true!", and "Whatever you just said!"

He regularly wasted my time and money with trivial

disclosures covering everything: his family, his

friends, neighbors, and something about a dog.

He was highly confrontational, plowing right

through client boundaries, client protests,

leaving one feeling injured and betrayed.

He would agree to your description of what

he did, but never apologizes nor admits that

he'd done anything wrong. Thus you're left with

the impression that he considers it his right

to act this way, notwithstanding your protests

or boundaries. He showed no empathetic concern.

He repeatedly insisted that there is nothing wrong

with a family member who beat other family members

nearly to unconsciousness for years. I get that

a client's negative thinking can cause problems.

It does NOT follow that EVERY problem is CAUSED

by the client's negative thinking. I get that

positive thinking can make a difference. It

does not follow that this is the only difference

that can be made. If it were so, than therapists

could be replaced with cheer leaders and pep rallies.

Dr. Todd of Sacramento (there are others by this

name elsewhere

in the country) wielded an ideological hammer,

pounding on me as if to drive me into his dogma.

This is not therapy. It is indoctrination into

his narrow ideology. If cognitive behaviorism

is modeled after Socratic dialogue, than Dr. Todd

fails this completely. Socrates didn't interrupt

and fail miserably to listen. The opposite is true:

you can't discuss or dialogue without truly

listening. Therefore he can not hide in some

interpretation of cognitive theory or technique.

Failure is failure, and his approach is the

opposite of the Socratic dialogue it ought to be.

"... When men seem more than ever to confuse wisdom

with knowledge, and knowledge with information,

and try to solve the problems of life in terms

of engineering, there is coming into existence

a new kind of provincialism..." T. S. Eliot

Irving Howe explains that, "ideology can...

blind men to simple facts, make them monsters

by tempting them into that fatal habit which

anthropologists call... reifying ideas."