You may well be right about a vast majority, but I'm pretty sure that my therapist made a commitment like the one I briefly described back in the 60s when socially engaged and thought that there were people suffering precisely from the lack of decency and compassion in their lives so if he could show that there are human beings who can sustain that attitude that would be a positive, potentially restorative effect.

He is remarkably free of neurotic tendencies or personal issues. True he's had to undergo his own analysis, but his issues even there were pretty minimal from what he's related.

I've had other therapists/analysts who are not like him so I know that there are people out there like you describe, and I might be one of them so I'm not saying you are wrong. But I also have a Buddhist background that informs my career shift so it's not black and white. There is a mixture of different strands in my motivation to become a therapist.

In fact the most compelling thing was volunteering on a hotline. I don't think that there is room on suicide hotline for selfish reasons. If you think that way, the training pounds it out of you. And the actual work leaves no room for it. You have to give yourself over to the crisis moment and to the other person. I have experienced the power of just connecting in a humane and decent way with people who are on the edge of being. I really am not an optimist nor do I think highly of human nature, but I do believe that it is possible to be motivated by things larger than yourself.