I think that in a way, therapy is a bit like AA: For them to work, you have to be close enough to the end of your rope so as to feel truly humble and needing someone else's help, whether a T or a group (AA). That means no longer standing on an intellectual high horse or otherwise feeling superior to a T, which are both, in their own ways, defenses thrown up by your unconscious to prevent you from going into therapy, as are all too many other negative ideas about therapy and the therapy process.

It took me three years of 24/7 s****dal thinking and planning to get me to the point of going into therapy with all defenses down, able to cooperate one hundred percent on a joint mission with T to find and correct whatever might be the sources of the problem. Is my IQ higher than my T's? I don't know and I don't care. She obviously knows exactly what she's doing and her manner of conducting a therapy session alone convinces me that she is someone to listen to carefully.

I've been in therapy before and it never worked. I wasn't ready to be humble and lower all my defenses. Now that I am it works like a charm. I do not have even a tiny percentage of the problems PC people relate in the Psychotherapy Forum, most of which (in my view) arise from their resistance to the therapy process. And that resistance comes from one's unconscious, which (to anthropomorphize a bit) is, for everyone, entirely against the whole therapy process. So really, until you're ready to put your foot on the neck of your unconscious and hold it down, you're not brave enough to enter therapy.

Successful therapy takes courage, bravery and guts. If you really need therapy, then resistance to therapy is a matter of fear, anxiety and timidity. Can you do it yourself? Well, Freud analyzed himself. Has anyone else? I don't know. It would certainly be easier with a T. Take care!