I don't think the protestations are about "protecting the profession"or blaming the client as much as you might think. They can and do end up doing that, I agree, but I think that's (often) a secondary effect, not a primarily motivation. I can't speak for others, but when I reflect on some of the more butt-headed things I've said here (and elsewhere), something more complicated and insidious was going on in my head.

Sometimes it's hard for me to read (even legitimate) therapy criticism here because it needles at an old insecurity. Budfox and I recently got into it over the legitimacy of life problems as "medical disorders" and therapy as "treatment" for said disorders. He really wasn't saying that you, Argo, do not have a mental illness, you're just lazy/stupid/childish (you know, insert moral failing). But I heard that as an implication anyway because it's a shockingly common attitude that I've faced from people close to me, and it made me defensive. And my defensiveness was less about protecting therapy and therapists than the legitimacy of my own concerns.

Then there's your run-of-the-mill cognitive defenses that come in, including but not limited to "Therapy must be legitimate because, if it's not, then I'm royally ****ed and that's much too painful to contemplate" and "That bad therapy outcome must have had something to do with X client factor, and since I don't have X, I'm safe."

We use this latter defense all the time, often unconsciously, to restore a sense of control and distance ourselves from painful things: "She got raped because she was drunk. I don't get drunk, therefore I won't be raped." or "He's homeless because he uses drugs. I don't use drugs, therefore I won't ever be homeless."

I'm fairly certain I was guilty of this cognitive fallacy when I latched onto the detail that Jessica from the article upended furniture, even though, as somebody pointed out, that was only mentioned in passing. I think my underlying thought process was something like this: "Jessica upended furniture. Upending furniture is bad behavior, so it must have caused the bad outcome. I don't upend furniture, therefore I won't be terminated."

A fair or correct assessment? No. But, again, my fallacious reasoning wasn't motivated by a desire to protect the profession or even blame the client. It may have done those things anyway, but my motivation was self-protective, not malicious.

Then there's just the fact that this is the wilds of internet anonymity, and it's easy and fun to be inflammatory and argumentative. I suspect if we all met in person every Saturday at 5pm, we'd behave a lot differently. I know I probably would.