‘Dr’ Mr Fergus Heffernan
A celebrity ‘therapist /psychologist’ has cancelled his public lectures after his PhD (Latin – Philosophiae Doctor) qualification was exposed as being bogus, by the ‘Irish Mail on Sunday’ newspaper.
Mr Fergus Heffernan, who was due to deliver a lecture entitled ‘Healthy Minds and Emotional Well-being’ to Upperchurch / Drombane GAA club, Thurles, Co. Tipperary yesterday, has admitted that his doctoral qualification in psychology is indeed fake and as a result he has taken his official website off-line.
Mr Heffernan, who lectured in family therapy in the past, had been invited as a guest on some of Ireland’s most popular radio programmes, hosted by well-known presenters such as Dave Fanning, Marian Finucane, and Ray D’Arcy. He had also toured the country, lecturing on mental health to Corporate and Community Groups; these included parents’ councils, sports clubs and schools.
This newspapers investigation also revealed that Mr Heffernan had falsely claimed to be a ‘visiting professor’ to a number of top International universities, including our own Trinity College Dublin, Boston University, and New York’s Columbia University, and that his claim to have served with the Irish Defence Forces in Lebanon in 1976 was indeed untrue, (Note all three university institutions claim that they have no record of any employment or affiliation with Mr Heffernan, and regarding conflict in Lebanon; the date claimed was for two years prior to any Lebanese conflict having begun).
We understand Mr Heffernan was scheduled to give a talk at St Angela’s College in Cork next Monday, relating to ‘Understanding the Emotional Wellbeing of Teenagers’, with tickets for this event selling for €5 per attendee. Recent statistics, alluded to, by him during other recent presentations, in relation to child suicides; have also been disputed.
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