I agree. But then it would (at least partially) invalidate what many of them use as a basic tenet of psychotherapy: that it is a model for "ordinary" relationships and can be used to analyze, practice and change real life relationship patterns.

I personally never bought into the relationship thing in therapy much, probably in part because I got into therapy for the first time when I was 40 years old, with enough information and theoretical knowledge to question it and be skeptical. Sure, it is a form of relationship. I was open and curious to see from first hand experience.

I did find it annoying right at start when one of my Ts emphasized even before ever meeting me, in our first phone consultation, that therapy is a relationship that we will develop together and he will be very interested in everything I have to say as they will reveal important information on how I build relationships. It really irritated me as I just had a bad therapy relationship experience behind me, but did not comment. I discussed it with him later how I felt that therapy was extremely limited and artificial compared with any natural relationship, and that I refused using it as a model for highly personal things, e.g. "working on" attachment patterns. He never forced that luckily, but my first T (psychoanalyst) tried many times. I never really wanted to use therapy to work on relationship stuff, more the intrapersonal problems I had, like anxiety and addictions.

I know that my thinking about it in this way is, in part, related to my own avoidant tendencies, but they actually protected me from delusion and harm in therapy, I think. Well, they protected me from therapy in general, we could say