Thanks for this poll, stopdog - I've seen people on here say their therapists understand them better than they do themselves and I've always felt uneasy about that idea. I voted Never and Other because my view is more nuanced, besides I don't think this is a horrible thought. I think a therapist knows more than the average client about psychology, mental health, emotions (not the client's emotions, but generally what emotions are and how they can get expressed) etc. I think a skilled therapist can help clients put into words and understand about themselves things the clients didn't understand before. I also think that an intuitive therapist can get an overall idea of what a client may be feeling or may need or may have experienced, sometimes before the client realizes it. But this is a kind of wondering-about and the therapist can be wrong just as well as s/he can be right, and a good therapist knows this and checks with the client. Now comes the reason why I said never - while I believe many therapy clients have some issue putting their feelings and experience into words or seeing personal patterns, I still believe that at an implicit level, the client knows before the therapist does. The therapist may actually never know. The client is the one with the first-hand experience. Sure, a therapist can understand correctly and that can be a very validating or insightful experience for many. But I don't think that is at all the same as understanding the client better than the client does. I think this concept takes away from the client's power - as if the therapist knew the client's life so much better, thus the therapist can fix it while the client can't. I think this line of thought is dangerous. For me, therapy needs to empower the client to understand and improve his/her own life.

I also believe that no one, therapist or not, no one can truly understand someone else's experience in its entirety and in its uniqueness. Only the one who has lived through it and who experiences it can know what it's like 100%. Others can only approximate and enquire.