Dr Dennis H Brown, Edmonton, AB

My experience with Dr. Dennis Brown was bad enough that five years later I am making this review (as I did elsewhere in 2020) because people considering becoming his patients ought to know. Search for other of his patients' reviews too; there are many. During couples' counseling sessions over a period of six months, Dr. Brown took handwritten notes of some kind, but they must not have been very good, or he did not review them before our sessions. He seemed forgetful or unconcerned with the facts we gave him, which fed into my sense of an overall sense of his lack of interest and empathy. He expressed confusion that seemed hostile many times, and he did become hostile when he heard things he apparently didn't expect or like — even about unrelated things like an author we both had opinions about. At times he went off on tangents about his personal political opinions and seemed to assume this would be welcome or agreed with. He seemed easily frustrated and would move from frustration to blame. One or two good sessions were followed by increasingly harmful and distressing ones. Dr. Brown had us do a brief self-assessment at the start of each session. This could have been helpful, but Dr. Brown often disregarded or questioned any low scores. Once you know that's a trigger — that he's going to respond with hostility immediately to you describing your own emotional state poorly — it's obvious he's conditioning you to give better scores to continue therapy with him or pressing you to end the relationship. If this is some kind of personal defense mechanism he's concocted, it seems very unethical, irrational, and (to be honest) emotionally disordered. Dr. Brown also wants your assessment of *his* performance and your last session with him to be presented at the start of the new session along with your self-assessment. This is additionally intimidating and pointless. Assessment of a session that happened a week or more in the past is meaningful if it is actually done immediately (or within a day or two) following the last session. It seemed apparent that if you give him and/or yourself low scores, he will move toward ending the relationship. While this may be logical to a therapist who wants to ensure he spends most of his time on patients who think they're being helped and getting better, it is a bad idea. It creates pressure and a sense of blame, defect, or fault on the patient. Blaming other people including his patients was eventually apparent as a chronic habit Dr. Brown — even for things that just drifted into random conversations. This is why I concluded Dr. Brown is either suffering from his own disorders or is simply an emotionally unintelligent, unempathetic therapist who swings from withdrawn to hostile behavior in the course of a session. I found it quite damaging and unprofessional at the low points. Brown has a particular method and goal that may be fine, but he never explained what it was. I was often confused as to what he wanted and felt like I was supposed to perform when my honest responses to his questions and instructions elicited negative reactions. At his worst he warned -- in a way that felt like a threat -- that if my responses were not to his liking I would be risking a nervous breakdown. It made no sense; these were not heated interactions. While simply trying to follow his directions and answer questions, Brown would become quite negative, and I could not understand why.