I am always so intrigued by the client vs patient debate. I would never tolerate a therapist calling me his patient. In my childhood I found the medical industry to be extremely abusive - Pediatric medicine didn't have much understanding of the effects of physical and emotional pain on children in the 70s and 80s. I suffered intensely at the hands of people who called me their patient, and it's not the kind of relationship I am keen to replicate. To me it denotes an attitude in which the doctor/therapist feels free to inflict potentially damaging treatments on people, with little regard for ill effects, under the guise of "doing it for your own good". No thank you.

Luckily I have found a therapist who gets this, and is non-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian. I noted before we even began working together that he calls the people he works with clients in his books and articles.