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When I realized how badly I’d been treated, not long after terminating therapy, I did what a mistreated client is supposed to do. I got a lawyer. My lawyer prepared a detailed written account of what happened. I submitted it with recordings, with evidence that Sam’s notes were false in multiple documented ways, with all the corroboration I had. I filed a complaint with the New York State Education Department’s Office of the Professions, which oversees the licensing of therapists in the state.
They found “insufficient evidence.”
They had recordings. They had a written account prepared by an attorney. They had documented evidence of falsified notes—which is itself a specific basis for discipline regardless of anything else. And after seven months of review they found insufficient evidence.
The investigator told my lawyer he wasn’t going to listen to all the recordings, he just asked for a few excerpts. We asked that he interview me, but he said the written complaint was sufficient. They interviewed Sam, but I had no opportunity to speak to the impact of what had happened. They acknowledged that Sam had boundary issues. Apparently that clarity wasn’t evidence enough.
The way the system works in New York—and this is worth understanding because most people have no idea how thin the accountability layer is—a complaint against a licensed social worker goes to the State Education Department, which, as I understand it, assigns it to an investigator and the investigator works with a volunteer other member of the profession, who is the one who ultimately makes the decision.
The practical effect of this system is that a therapist can cause documented harm and face no professional consequences, because a single other professional decides to believe her. There is no appeal process, decisions are final. There are no records of deliberations made available to the complainant, just a two-sentence letter saying “insufficient evidence.” Had they said that what she did was not a breaking of professional standards, that would be one thing, a judgement call. But “insufficient evidence” in the face of recordings of her admitting to what she had done was galling.
Sam still holds her license. Nothing in her public record reflects any of this. Because of that, I am unable to use her real name—though every other detail here is true—because of my fear that she could sue me for disparagement.
In fact, it’s worse than that. I discovered, quite accidentally, that Sam is teaching a course on countertransference at the Westchester psychoanalytic institute where she took her training. She’s teaching a course in countertransference. The very thing she could not manage with me. The very dynamic that led her to tell a patient she loved him, to use the word “lovers,” to admit to playing with erotic ideas, to dissociate from her own declarations and then blame the patient for the aftermath. She is teaching other therapists how to handle it.
At its most generous, that’s ironic. But to me it’s the manifestation of the licensing board’s failure. Because there’s no finding against her, there’s nothing to prevent her from doing anything—practicing, teaching, training the next generation—to prevent her from causing the harm she caused me to come to others. The system that was supposed to protect patients instead protected her career.
I don’t know how you fix a system that’s designed to police its own members but gives those members the benefit of every doubt. But I know this: the system as it currently exists does not protect people like me. If you look at the NY licensing board’s 2025 disciplinary roundup, you will see mainly therapists who admitted to having broken laws outside of therapy or kept incomplete records. You will not see instances of therapists being disciplined for actions taken with patients in the course of therapy. The idea that there aren’t disciplinary findings because all therapists are good therapists strains credibility. Rather, the system of colleague-determined accountability encourages a lack of consequences for therapists crossing lines that their own profession drew. Therapists who live in fear of being accused make inherently non-credible judges of those who are.
For a detailed breakdown of what Sam did wrong, organized by category rather than chronology, see the Final Analysis.
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Boundary Violations in Psychotherapy - A Personal Case Study 