See, I interpret it completely differently! I'm not at all surprised that many clients rate the alliance higher than the therapist. Why? Because I think that many therapists are NOT honest with clients about the therapeutic alliance. They aren't open and straightforward about what's happening in the room between two people. In fact, I think that they are so focused on fostering the alliance/attachment, that they snow the client into believing that things are peachy keen. Clients enter the relationship told to be honest and open, but they have no idea that their therapist is not playing by the same rules. The therapist is attempting to foster an alliance that is based on a false premise of everyone being honest and straight forward in the relationship--this is why we see so many clients on PC forums talking about their confusion and distress about their therapist suddenly pulling the rug out from beneath them in regard to boundary issues. Unskilled, dishonest (and I'm not talking about dishonesty in the sense of purposeful hurtful behavior) therapists stretch and give beyond what they want or are truly willing to give. And then, when he/she is overwhelmed by the demands, he/she pulls back and tells the client that he/she overstepped the bounds. The therapist was dishonest in his/her attempts to foster a positive alliance. And you can be SURE that the therapist was feeling that the alliance was going down the tubes waaaaay before it happened, but he/she didn't express it honestly and openly when it first began to deteriorate.

I am a person who has benefited from therapy. I believe in therapy, but I also believe that training and mentoring in working therapist in the U.S. is HORRID! If a person can take a college course and score a B or better, he/she can obtain some kind of therapeutic license. The exam for licensure is ridiculously laden with facts that have NO bearing on how the person will function as a therapist. It takes much more than that to be a good, well trained therapist with a handle on your own issues and an ability to function productive and intelligently as a therapist.

Do I think there are good therapists out there? Absolutely. I've worked with three. But finding them was hard hard work and I'd hate to be a person who didn't have my ability to evaluate what kind of things were wrong with the person I was interviewing. I'm an "old" person, if I was a 20 year old or 32, I wouldn't have the understanding that I have now. I was just lucky when I was 45, that I stumbled on a skilled, well trained and competent therapist. I took what I learned from her, to find the two others.