I LOVE the show. It's a shame it hasn't been popular here. That's why, I think, they made only three seasons.

It doesn't exactly reflect the full reality of how therapists here normally practice, but many of the dynamics in the show reflect some fundamental challenges of therapy, mainly, the transference-countertransference dance and how difficult, nearly impossible for a therapist to handle it the "right" way.

The therapist, Paul Weston, is a fascinating character because he is a depiction of how someone who is pretty messed up and who hadn't been able to work through his own issues can still be very helpful to some clients and quite harmful to others. He is depicted as a REAL human being with his best qualities and his human weaknesses and vulnerabilities, who, as a professional, can do some brillant as well as some horroble things. I love the show mainly because it doesn't portray a contrieved image of a therapist as he is "supposed" to be, but a real person as he is.

As far as the accuracy of therapy, it's an idealistic version of what a therapy should be like :-), but this idealism doesn't make it any worse. I think, the way how they presented therapy with the number of diverse clients, is pretty much a symbolic fantasy of many real therapy clients of how they wish their own therapy was :-)