Complaint Review: Dr. Katalin Eckstein - South Florida Psychological Associates

The actions and reports of Dr. Katalin Eckstein, child psychologist, indicate a severe lack of insight.

Dr. Eckstein shows either a complete naivite, or lack of knowledge or education about domestic violence and its subsequent parental alienation syndrome toward the protective parent, fed by the abuser onto the child in order to continue the cycle of abuse once divorced.

While any licensed psychologist is knowledgeable about this area of family dynamics, Dr. Eckstein chose in a variety of cases to ignore the obvious, and cut off all natural contact and family therapy efforts with the protective parent.

Worse, she did what any licensed psychologist would find unthinkable. She testified against the protective parent in a court of law, insisting the parent should not have unsupervised visitation with the children until they reach legal age of 18. She does not testify about her first-hand knowledge of the children. She testifies against the parent, whom she never treated.

Simultaneously, she testified that the abusive parent, who has a criminal record of domestic violence including arrests and medical reports, should have sole custody. She lacks insight into how the abuser destroys the protective parent in order to retain control. Or, into how the abuser uses innocent children in the process, leading to their own dysfunction.

She bases all of her information on "reports" she is given by the clearly less-than-forthright abuser and his attorney, or second-hand reports the abuser feeds the guardian ad litem. She refuses any and all first-hand information in divorce cases. She refuses any first-hand contact with the children's prior therapist. She refuses any and all contact with the loving, protective parent.

Dr. Eckstein keeps families apart for years, rather than reuniting them in a setting of healing. This in spite of the fact that she is only licensed in the role of reuniting and healing, not in splitting apart families.

Dr. Eckstein refuses to treat the family as a holistic unit. This in spite of the fact that her own highly naive dissertation talked about holistic parenting. It did not address, however, confounding variables such as domestic violence, parental alienation syndrome, developmental disorders, involvement of manipulative lawyers, all of which nullify her entire dissertation and have done so for decades. Her research remained at the undergraduate level at best.

Dr. Eckstein displayed inappropriate, uncontrollable rages in her early years of her career, toward both parents and professionals. Nobody was able to give her insight into the lack of child abuse on the part of the protective, alienated parents in these cases. Nobody was able to hint at reunification, family therapy, or parenting coordinator efforts without her going into a rage.

In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, Dr. Eckstein was "convinced" that some of these children were abused so profoundly by the protective parent that the parent would eventually kill them. This, with no first-hand knowledge. This, in spite of no diagnosis on the part of the protective parent, except for that reported by the abusive parent and fueled by his attorney's own team.

Through the efforts of true professionals who saw through Dr. Eckstein's actions and behaviors, and through the efforts of the wise and strong protective mothers who never abused their children in the first place, and even through the efforts of the abusive fatherss who have made tremendous progress in their own treatments, the former child patients of Dr. Eckstein have been resettled into their rightful state of familial love from both parents in a healthy 50/50 custody situation.

In all fairness, it is hoped that this young doctor has grown up since the early years of her career. Having said that, however, she has never once made any effort to make amends to the families she destroyed and kept apart for years, or the professionals she ravaged, in the early years of her career.

We cannot recommend Dr. Katalin Eckstein at all. We do, however, pray for her and hope she has begun to gain insight.