For starters, the term, "talking cure" was first used by a patient, Bertha Pappenheim, who was treated by an Austrian physician, Josef Breuer for "hysteria", 1880-82. She was pleased with her treatment.

So, I reject that anything was "perpetrated on" anyone, much less all of mankind, but is merely a good-seeming-to-me shorthand way of describing one's successful psychotherapy. That which one does not feel was successful, is obviously not a "cure".