There are several jokes about what PhD stands for. One thing is "Piled High and Deep." But my favorite is "knowing more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing."

And I have a PhD and was a professor surrounded by others with all these peacock feathers.

I guess I'm just suspicious of the whole game of it. Do your credentials really say what kind of therapist you are or might be for me in particular? I don't think so.

Currently I see someone who has substantial credentials in several areas, and yet he is one of the most humble and humane people I've ever met. At times he has poked a little fun at people who want to be called "DR." or have some sort of notion that they are experts in this or that. His credentials hardly mattered when I first chose him; I only became aware of them afterwards. And they actually don't really influence how the therapy goes.

Perhaps because he is an MD as well as an analyst so a PsyD too as well as being a former professor at Stanford med, he just feels really comfortable in his own skin and doesn't feel he has to prove anything to anyone. He has at time joked about how uptight psychologists can be in some ways, compared with psychiatrists and analysts. He still works with psychologists and respects them, but there is a sense that something goes wrong during that type of training, that doesn't necessarily translate into good therapy.