I had three online sessions with Peter and I'd give him 1/5, the one point for his having me offered a discount, although I strongly feel that I paid for nothing in return for the three sessions I took with him. With that, here are my 100% factual observations that I can surely back up.
1. Lack of connection: Didn't seem to connect well at a human level, forgot part of what I mentioned earlier. I shared a document with him privately two weeks ago, after our second session, hoping that he'd at least take a look. He didn't, and took quite some time to log in (ran into technical issues) in the third session to read it aloud, but didn't really read the whole thing, as he got too busy judging me (Point #4). Also, asked me to "man up" upon the revelation that I was quite sensitive to certain issues - it was certainly not a place where I'd feel comfortable at.
2. Technological incompetence and resulting lack of seriousness: holds online sessions on a smartphone, instead of a PC, and this prevents the sessions from going smoothly, e.g. each time he switched onto a different tab (e.g. to read the document sent two weeks earlier in the session itself), his videos froze. When I asked him why he'd not rather have the sessions on a PC, he didn't answer. Also, he initially suggested that we used WhatsApp for sessions (which was changed to Zoom upon my request). This, combined with the earlier point, makes me question how serious or committed he really is.
3. Time waster: I mentioned several times that I'd like to focus on the actual therapy part where I could clear some blocks when it came to specific topics (not mentioning the details here to respect confidentiality although we didn't explicitly write an agreement), but he spent lot of time telling me about how the landscape of that subject has changed, why for an ordinary guy (his words, meaning 'like me': he didn't say that I was an ordinary guy but he clearly meant it) it's difficult because of the relevant selective process. I'm old enough with significant experience in this direction, so I was fairly aware of all these and didn't expect him to waste my time telling me the things that I already know and experienced first hand. He wasted three sessions that I took with him by not suggesting any remedies at all. He did give me a bit of extra time in his second session, but it was not useful for the same reason. When I sent him a message about this after the second session, he replied that he was indeed doing therapy as he was identifying the issues, but upon me sharing a detailed document (that he didn't read earlier, see point #1) and talking for more than two hours, the issues were already identified, and clearly communicated in writing to him.
4. Judgmental: This is the worst of it all, but Peter was judgmental and it was VERY apparent when he read allowed a few lines from the document I shared privately with him, as he reacted with "wow" (reaction a bad or shocking one), and proceeded to tell me that anyone whom I'd explicitly say the thing he wowed about would call me an a certain expletive/vulgar word (I'm not repeating the word here). Now in his defense, I swore a lot during the sessions, but that was to refer to external situations, never even remotely to him or his line of work. I was thus shocked when he used the expletive, to describe how others would think of me. It was fairly apparent at that moment that he was judging me, and judging someone after taking money from that person is not what a psychotherapist should do and frankly, it's unfair. If your psychologist judges you, you give up hope on any therapy at all.
5. Poor diagnostic skills: He stated that I've an abrasive personality and that I'd do fairly low on a test on agreeability, whereas I scored 63% on the said test, which, statistically, was an average score.
I posted this review on Google as well, and there Peter's initial rebuttal insinuated narcissism (I possess a screenshot of it) and the next one was comparing me with a controversial political figure. It's relevant that I took the narcissism test on PsychCentral and got no narcissism as a result, but scored 3 on vanity, meaning I've a strong belief in my own abilities and attractiveness. This proves Peter's diagnosis wrong, again.
Conclusion: Up to the individual reading this, I only stayed with facts and observations I'm prepared to back up with. read more