Dr. Matthew Johnson's Encounter

[Guest Dr. Boogie]

Fair enough. The linked report is inaccurate .

[bipedalist]

Fair enough. The linked report is inaccurate .

I suppose it would be nice for those responsible to do their homework then if they used the term "removal of his license". Perhaps it could have been a negotiated thing but the definition of inactive psychologist would certainly differ from one who had their license "removed". Removal implies sanctions and he has no sanctions according to the listing below screen captured a few minutes ago.

I didn't click on that opening link since it's about the fourth thread we've had on this gentleman.

Here's the latest so the mistake at least won't continue to be repeated on this forum.

[Guest]

My understanding is that he received a brain injury in 2009. Apparently the injury was severe enough to impair his speech for three months and cause some short term memory loss. It may explain his current encounters, but I don't see that it impacts the 2000 sighting. Derek indicated that he was emotional at that time as well.

Yes he was very emotional. It was strange seeing a 6'9" guy sit in my truck weeping with his head touching my head board. He was either sincere or it was a great academy award performance.

DR

[JDL]

I find it inappropriate to condemn a whole field of professionals because of your personal marital experiences, but that is just me.

Sort of like condemning the whole Penn State campus because of the personal problems of an assistant athletic coach.

I agree with Ridley on this one, and incidence rates playing like all the other professionals with a twenty percent chance of having a mental health disorder, except that probably psychologists are more likely to seek treatment than the 20% of those 20% that actually get treatment for their disorders.

I believe that the head injury was after his second sighting involving the finger pull as I remember. He is now apparently gainfully employed so it couldn't have been a career ending PTSD or mild head injury so I am thankful for that.

I wish him well.

In general, certain personality types are drawn to certain activities. Extending this, certain personality types are drawn to certain professions. For example, we recently had a Briggs Myer survey of the members of this very forum that indicated the prevalence of a particular personality type.

There are people with problems in our society. There are also people who are problems.

Having socialized with large groups of psychologists (through my ex at various conferences), my observation is that there is a larger percentage of unstable individuals in psychology than in other professions. I observed multiple individuals who exhibited age-inappropriate behavior (would drop into speech and behavior patterns more appropriate to a young adolescent - several of these in teaching positions), several overly agressive men under 5'6" in height (both of these groups were predominantly child, or developmental, psychologists), and spoke with over a dozen therapists (the aforementioned aggressives among them) whose primary gratification was that through their profession they could direct the lives of others (rather than help others come to grips with their issues).

I find the observation that people with psychological or control issues are drawn to psychology to be no different than the observation that people who enjoy abusing others may be drawn to professions in which they periodically have the opportunity to do so under "justifiable" circumstances (i.e. a subset of those who choose the profession of prison guard), or that those who are predisposed to prey upon children are drawn to professions or activities that offer them that opportunity.

Is it more reasonable to assume that everyone who enters the profession of psychology does so out of unsullied altruism, or to assume that many of them have issues of their own and have chosen a professional path that affords them the opportunity to either heal or cultivate their own disfunction?

By stating that a given profession contains a subset of those with issues, I am not, of course, implying that everyone within a given profession has issues.

Yes he was very emotional. It was strange seeing a 6'9" guy sit in my truck weeping with his head touching my head board. He was either sincere or it was a great academy award performance.

DR

I think he had an actual encounter, that he is completely sincere, and that he has issues that transcend his experience.

Edited November 8, 2011 by JDL

[Guest]

Maybe it's because I'm more matter of fact about these things. The guy said he saw a sasquatch. Plenty of reliable people "with something to lose" also claim they've seen a sasquatch. To me, it's just not some golden encounter that trumps most others.

Maybe it's also because I also have a Ph.D., so to me Johnson is just another "colleague" with a doctorate. So I guess I wouldn't expect the BF community to give any future sighting of mine some special significance just because of my job title.

Yeti, I'd believe you. You would not lie to us. Having Ph.Ds would not make his story either more credible, or less credible.

However, his obvious distress at seeing something that could instantly destroy his entire family while he watched helplessly, rings true to me.I can't even imagine how terrifying it must be to see something that you cannot control nor defend against stalking your family.

[Guest]

Balderdash.

I'm far enough out on a pop-psychology limb with my hypothesis that Dr. Johnson had some issues that contributed to his alleged encounter, rather than stemming from it. But I am not on board with comments expressed in this thread that psychologists are any more likely than people in any other profession to suffer from mental illness. Psychologists might be more apt to seek help for their problems than people in other professions, but drawn to psychology because of those problems? I'll need more than "I've met a lot of psychologists, and they're all nuts" before I'm convinced.

[Guest]

I agree with you 100%.

Balderdash indeed..

Edited November 8, 2011 by SweetSusiq

[Guest Dr. Boogie]

Well I think balderdash is putting it a bit strongly but I do still have my personal doubts. I don't recall anybody having anything positive to say about the 'finger grabbing' incident yet despite the credibility attached by many to the first reported encounter.

[bipedalist]

In general, certain personality types are drawn to certain activities. Extending this, certain personality types are drawn to certain professions. For example, we recently had a Briggs Myer survey of the members of this very forum that indicated the prevalence of a particular personality type.

There are people with problems in our society. There are also people who are problems.

Having socialized with large groups of psychologists (through my ex at various conferences), my observation is that there is a larger percentage of unstable individuals in psychology than in other professions. I observed multiple individuals who exhibited age-inappropriate behavior (would drop into speech and behavior patterns more appropriate to a young adolescent - several of these in teaching positions), several overly agressive men under 5'6" in height (both of these groups were predominantly child, or developmental, psychologists), and spoke with over a dozen therapists (the aforementioned aggressives among them) whose primary gratification was that through their profession they could direct the lives of others (rather than help others come to grips with their issues).

I find the observation that people with psychological or control issues are drawn to psychology to be no different than the observation that people who enjoy abusing others may be drawn to professions in which they periodically have the opportunity to do so under "justifiable" circumstances (i.e. a subset of those who choose the profession of prison guard), or that those who are predisposed to prey upon children are drawn to professions or activities that offer them that opportunity.

Is it more reasonable to assume that everyone who enters the profession of psychology does so out of unsullied altruism, or to assume that many of them have issues of their own and have chosen a professional path that affords them the opportunity to either heal or cultivate their own disfunction?

By stating that a given profession contains a subset of those with issues, I am not, of course, implying that everyone within a given profession has issues.

Well nice armchair theory, call me when you have the data to back it up.

Psychology (applied and clinical) is a helping profession. There are dedicated well-adjusted persons manning those fields as well as other professions that are immune to the "lack of data" theorizing noted above as anecdotal observations as far as I can gather.

Dr. Johnson was/is a helping professional assisting families and children at present. He happened to have a bigfoot encounter as you yourself and even myself did. What is so hard to understand about that? That he had more than one encounter. like you yourself did?

I'll continue to give him the slack that others on this forum are given which is the way I roll. Don't expect other than that personally.

[Guest]

My wife has a master's degree in psychology and another master's in education. She has been working in the psychology field for nearly 20 years. She is about to start a doctoral program in marriage and family counseling. My sister also has a master's in psychology. Both my wife and my sister are very strong and stable mentally and emotionally, and both of them entered the field of psychology solely to help people. Through my wife, I have met a lot of people who are psychologists of various fields and degrees, and the overall majority of the ones I have met and that my wife knows proclaim that their motivation for entering the field was the same. Perhaps some of them do have mental illnesses, but I agree that they are simply more likely to recognize the symptoms of the conditions and seek treatment. However, no one knows what goes on in someone else's mind or behind closed doors.

Making the generalized statement that significant numbers of people drawn to the field of psychology have mental illnesses is as ridiculous as saying that significant numbers of people drawn to the field of chiropractic care have scoliosis.

Yes, I am biased because of my wife and sister, lol, but I do believe that my points and experience are still on target.

[JDL]

Ok, We're going to be split on this and it is not my intention to offend. Certainly the majority of psychologists are well adjusted.

I'll point out the timely publication of a survey in the Wall Street Journal today citing Clinical Psychology as the most unemployable college major, with an unemployment rate of 19.5% and a median income of $40,000.

WSJ Survey

Is this simply a function of society devaluing this profession, or are there a significant number of people entering this profession who would be unemployable regardless of their choice of profession? The latter would contribute to my point.

And I've got to say that Googling Mental Illness Among Psychologists, indicates that there appear to be a significant number of scholarly psychological articles dealing specifically with this. I'm certain they all say that all psychologists are well-adjusted, though. Most applicable, however, would be data regarding the mental health of psychology students. My personal observations were, after all, among those who were in the early stages of their careers. I'm sure that the profession itself tends to weed out those who are less suitable over time.

But, this seems a situation where it would simply behoove me to keep my trap shut. The best outcome I can expect is to protract the conflict and come across as an even bigger jerk regardless of where the data takes us.

My apologies.

[Guest]

Ok, We're going to be split on this and it is not my intention to offend. Certainly the majority of psychologists are well adjusted.

I'll point out the timely publication of a survey in the Wall Street Journal today citing Clinical Psychology as the most unemployable college major, with an unemployment rate of 19.5% and a median income of $40,000.

WSJ Survey

Is this simply a function of society devaluing this profession, or are there a significant number of people entering this profession who would be unemployable regardless of their choice of profession? The latter would contribute to my point.

And I've got to say that Googling Mental Illness Among Psychologists, indicates that there appear to be a significant number of scholarly psychological articles dealing specifically with this. I'm certain they all say that all psychologists are well-adjusted, though. Most applicable, however, would be data regarding the mental health of psychology students. My personal observations were, after all, among those who were in the early stages of their careers. I'm sure that the profession itself tends to weed out those who are less suitable over time.

But, this seems a situation where it would simply behoove me to keep my trap shut. The best outcome I can expect is to protract the conflict and come across as an even bigger jerk regardless of where the data takes us.

My apologies.

It is indeed difficult to secure employment with a bachelor's degree in the psychology field. From my wife's experience, I would have to say that one of the reasons is that it seems to attract a lot of folks who either can't make up their minds of what they really want to major in, or folks who can't succeed in the higher math or science dependent majors. However, while clinical psychology has a 19.5% unemployment rate, counseling psychology, which is what my wife and sister have degrees in, only has a 5.2% unemployment rate, which is a little better than average. I will say that when I met my wife, I only had an associates degree and I was making over $10,000 dollars a year more than her, and she had already received her master's in counseling psych.

[dopelyrics]

Hi there,

Thepattywagon makes an excellent point here: Johnson couldn't have been too traumatised because he soon after became a Bigfoot Researcher. If he was so scared and it affected him so much, why go in to something that could put him in the same situation again?

I am no psychologist, but some may say confronting your fears is a way of getting over them. That could be true. But what is odd is that he doesn't seem to have made any progress in coming to terms with his ordeal in the ten years or so since it happened. He still has the same reaction - tears. He uses the same language to describe what happened. I think people who have suffered verifiable trauma, or loss of some kind, go through a process that eventually leads them out of the suffering they have been through. They may never get over it, but the feelings diminish somewhat. They never forget, but it gets easier. I am sure different people take different amounts of time to get over something. And, maybe, some people never get over a trauma such as the one that Jonson allegedly went through. But I would have thought someone with his credentials would recognise that there are techniques or processes to get through the anguish he was/is suffering.

Maybe I am being unduly harsh on him. We all react in different ways.

Many researches go their entire lives never seeing anything. Johnson was forunate (unfortunate?) enough to have two close encounters. He posts on Facebook occasionally.

Best.

Lee

Edited November 9, 2011 by dopelyrics

[Guest]

Hi there,

Thepattywagon makes an excellent point here: Johnson couldn't have been too traumatised because he soon after became a Bigfoot Researcher. If he was so scared and it affected him so much, why go in to something that could put him in the same situation again?

I am no psychologist, but some may say confronting your fears is a way of getting over them. That could be true. But what is odd is that he doesn't seem to have made any progress in coming to terms with his ordeal in the ten years or so since it happened. He still has the same reaction - tears. He uses the same language to describe what happened. I think people who have suffered verifiable trauma, or loss of some kind, go through a process that eventually leads them out of the suffering they have been through. They may never get over it, but the feelings diminish somewhat. They never forget, but it gets easier. I am sure different people take different amounts of time to get over something. And, maybe, some people never get over a trauma such as the one that Jonson allegedly went through. But I would have thought someone with his credentials would recognise that there are techniques or processes to get through the anguish he was/is suffering.

Maybe I am being unduly harsh on him. We all react in different ways.

Many researches go their entire lives never seeing anything. Johnson was forunate (unfortunate?) enough to have two close encounters. He posts on Facebook occasionally.

Best.

Lee

Based on his knowledge of the world before the sighting, he saw something he shouldn't have seen. He thought/believed/knew that Bigfoot was just a myth. In an instant, that belief was shattered. His pursuit for answers since then has been an attempt to explain to himself what he saw. I would have the same reaction. I would have to know.

Do we know that Dr. Johnson didn't seek counseling or get help after the encounter?

[dopelyrics]

Let's hope he did get help. He's clearly upset about something. Still upset. Let's hope that whatever is troubling him, he gets over it someday. Or at least comes to terms with it to some degree.

If he really did have an encounter (two encounters) then I'm sure it really did change his life forever.

Best.

Lee

Edited November 9, 2011 by dopelyrics