I don't get the "artificial"...its purposeful in my mind, not artificial. I mean, let's take my dog agility coach for example. She knows some stuff about me-- we talk during and before class. She's seen me cry when my dog struggles ( I have a brilliant agility dog with SEVERE performance anxiety that I don't really understand as he has never been punished. ). She sees a competitive side of me a lot of my friends don't. Our relationship is structured around competing and training my dog and doesn't expand to all areas of either of our lives. But its real. It just has a specific purpose and that purpose places constraints on our relationship (,I pay for her time, she has a freedom to criticize me that my friends usually don't ie I dont take it personally)
To me there is nothing fake or artificial about my relationship with my T. The relationship just has a purpose and constraints designed to allow that purpose to be fulfilled. For example I can't be trying to meet my Ts needs. It removes the freedom the relationship gives to explore my own needs. She can't allow herself to bring her own feelings about stuff too powerfully into it for fear of disrupting my process. Its not fake. Its just designed yo meet a need and the constraints make that possible. I gave a number of dysfunctional relationships ..obviously I need something different to learn to NOT be dysfunctional.
My T would be offended if I called our relationship artificial. It definitely isn't. It just is what it is.