Harmful psychotherapy, at worse, can be a rigged game because the therapist often is ascribed the power and authority. A client goes to a therapist seeking relief from distress, then follows the therapist down the hatch into a murky abstracted world of jargon and ritual that often is never explained. The client bares her soul while the therapist remains inscrutable. Sometimes the client is encouraged to surrender her judgment. And as we said, she's told she has to feel worse before she feels better.

I'm a functioning professional who provoked an extremely destructive dynamic when I questioned my therapists. I learned the hard way how frail and vain they were. If I was a fool my therapists were far larger ones, and they were the ones with the training.

The profession has a rich tradition of client blaming. Freud and early analysts had laundry lists of nasty things to say about the unfortunate patients with " "negative therapeutic reaction." The fault was everything from client narcissism to their unconscious desire to sabotage their therapists. I didn't find practitioner error even considered in that early arrogant analysis.

I learned many lessons from harmful therapy. However, I respect and don't think "fools" those faced with the task of sorting it out. My therapists were utterly oblivious, defensive and accusatory about the harm they created. They told me, in their most professional postures, that I couldn't discern reality. I half believed them because these "authorities" told me so. It wasn't until much later that I realized they merely were covering their own rears.

When I search for consumer information about harmful therapy, I find it only a sliver of their literature. I find almost nothing on the aftermath and most written by consumers.

I wish well to others who struggled or still struggle with extracting themselves from harmful therapy. Sometimes it's straightforward; sometimes its unprecedented entanglement.