>No, seriously, it was awful. I deleted my blog of 1,557 posts. I wanted to protect my privacy, but I ended up with articles about me in New Yorker, Reason, and The Daily Beast. I wanted to protect my anonymity, but I Streisand-Effected myself, and a bunch of trolls went around posting my real name everywhere they could find. I wanted to avoid losing my day job, but ended up quitting so they wouldn't be affected by the fallout. I lost a five-digit sum in advertising and Patreon fees.

At the start of the post but there's more further in.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/still-alive

There's s also this from The NYT initially contacted him with his reasoning for protecting his job (which didn't work out)

>I think it’s plausible that if I became a national news figure under my real name, my patients – who run the gamut from far-left to far-right – wouldn’t be able to engage with me in a normal therapeutic way. I also worry that my clinic would decide I am more of a liability than an asset and let me go, which would leave hundreds of patients in a dangerous situation as we tried to transition their care.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...

Thanks for the link.

It seems like he's pretty clear that he chose to quit. He says his job was "tentatively willing to try to make it work". It appears to me that he's shown a consistent pattern of overstating the effects of his name being revealed, so I don't put a lot of stock in "tentatively".

I am quite convinced he simply didn't want his name in the paper because he knows he's said some edgy stuff (ie, explicitly comparing himself to Charles Murray).

The sources he provides as supporting the importance of therapeutic anonymity appear to be debates, as opposed to, say, APA guidelines emphasizing its importance. And that's a one sided picture, where Scott is digging for evidence to support his claim.

Part of his argument is that he has already faced threats and harassment. Okay, and he still didn't take basic steps to anonymize himself, so apparently this didn't concern him so much in the past. His argument is that he has a lot of crazy, nutso enemies. But those people could already easily find him.

He's been pretty clear about his dislike for SJWs and distrust for the news media (I mean this in the most value-neutral way possible). That's fine, but I think it's silly to make up a bunch of reasons your name shouldn't be in the paper.

He even comes out and says that it's simply his preference for anonymity:

>Why didn't I do this? Partly because it wasn't true. I don't think I had particularly strong arguments on any of these points. The amount I dislike death threats is basically the average amount that the average person would dislike them. The amount I would dislike losing my job...and et cetera. Realistically, my anonymity let me feel safe and comfortable. But it probably wasn't literally necessary to keep me alive. I feel bad admitting this, like I conscripted you all into a crusade on false pretenses. Am I an entitled jerk for causing such a stir just so I can feel safe and comfortable? I'm sure the New York Times customer service representatives who had to deal with all your phone calls thought so.

Again, he did not lose his job. They were willing to keep him, and he quit anyways.

>In the New York Times' worldview, they start with the right to dox me, and I had to earn the right to remain anonymous by proving I'm the perfect sympathetic victim who satisfies all their criteria of victimhood. But in my worldview, I start with the right to anonymity, and they need to make an affirmative case for doxxing me. I admit I am not the perfect victim. The death threats against me are all by losers who probably don't know which side of a gun you shoot someone with. If anything happened at work, it would probably inconvenience me and my patients, but probably wouldn't literally kill either of us. Still! Don't kick me in the fucking balls!

Replace "dox" with "include my name, which was found on my blog, in a news story about my blog", and yes, that's a default-allow unless you have some really extraordinary circumstances.

He chose to quit which makes it less of an issue for him to reveal his name. The NYT article ignores that and just says he reveled it in his first post, somewhat implying it wasn't even an issue for him.

The comment I replied to says he was forced to quit his job, which simply isn't true no matter how charitable you interpret it

>And I left my job. They were very nice about it, they were tentatively willing to try to make it work. But I just don't think I can do psychotherapy very well while I'm also a public figure, plus people were already calling them trying to get me fired and I didn't want to make them deal with more of that.

"Well crap now I'm a public figure because of this, I don't really have a choice if I want to do my job well in the future."

Using "forced" may be a little clumsy, but it's certainly directionally correct.

It's not directionally correct. It's not correct in any sense.

If he doesn't think he can do psychotherapy very while while he's a "public figure" (his name being in the paper a single time), why is he opening up his own practice?

I have already posted his own quotes in this comment chain, where he admits his case is weak and that anonymity is merely his preference.

>why is he opening up his own practice?

He is opening his practice only to patients that are comfortable with him and he is comfortable with. That's a different situation than working with who the hospital assigns him. Also he does say they were 'tentatively' willing to still keep him but it sounds like there was friction nonetheless.

I would submit there's a pretty big difference between his long term preference for pseudo-anonymity and the question of what to do, right now, with his patients. He made a decision to leave his practice and transfer the patients to someone else, and start his own where everyone is coming into the relationship eyes wide open. Given the circumstances, he certainly had a choice, yes. And given how he evaluated the costs and benefits for his patients and his career, he felt his only real choice was the latter. Like I said, "forced" is probably a clumsy adjective to use for something requiring a more nuanced explanation.