some programs do require the person to have a course of therapy while they are training to be a therapist (e.g., psychoanalysis, some councelling programs) while others do not. clinical psychology programs (to the best of my knowledge) do not. psychiatry programs (to the best of my knowledge) do not.

people go into therapy for a variety of reasons. some people do indeed go into therapy because they are attracted to learning about their own issues. some people go into therapy because they want to help people the way they wish they could have been helped / the way they were helped.

some people go into therapy because they wish to act out their pathology.

some people go into therapy because someone who was important to them needed some help. e.g., perhaps their brother or uncle or cousin or father or best friend had experience of mental illness.

some people go into therapy because they felt helpless to help the person at the time and they are attracted to learning to help others in a similar position in order to gain some mastery.

those reasons don't have to be mutually exclusive.

it is controversial whether people should or should not be allowed to be therapists if they have had experience of mental illness. i post sometimes on the student doctor network (under a different name) and i was fairly horrified to read some peoples thoughts on the matter (talking student doctors / student psychologists as well as professional psychiatrists / psychologists here).

some programs purposely screen people OUT of their programs on the basis of mental illness. perhaps not explicitly, but implicitly, certainly. there are restrictions in some states around lisencing to practice and how much dx of mental illness rules out one obtaining a lisence too.

part of the respect that i have for psychoanalytic training programs is that the full program takes a number of years and one has to complete a course of analysis BEFORE one is allowed to complete the course and practice as an analyst. while there are problems in practice, no doubt, the thought is quite nice: namedly, that the person needs to demonstrate that they are psychologically healthy (in the sense that they are able to recognise and accept their limitations and weaknesses and act in the clients best interests rather than unreflectingly acting out their own pathology) and that they are becoming an analyst for the right reasons before being allowed to practice as a lisenced analyst.