Clients want to reveal personal and painful things and they do reveal them not because they are "expected to", but because there is no other way to tell about your problems unless you..well.. tell about them, which means you'll reveal personal and painful things because they are the problem. How else are you going to explain what the problem is?

Thank God. I don't know who'd want their therapist to spend their precious sessions' time, for which they pay big $$$, talking about their personal **** - their problematic marriages, problems with their children, parents, colleagues, their own mental health issues. Would you really want your therapist to share all that personal stuff with you during the time you are paying for? If yes, then it'd be a paid friendship. I don't want to pay for friendship, thank you very much. I get friendships for free or don't get it at all.

What is absurd is your logic that doesn't grasp a simple reality that friendship and professional service are not the same thing.

And, "trust" in this situation comes much more out of necessity to get an assistance than out of the idea that someone "should" trust someone else.

There is no "doctrine" that says that clients "should" reveal their personal things to therapists.

People tell therapists personal things because they want to get help, not because some "doctrine" tells them that they should.

I wasn't talking about a mechanic or a doctor being "phony". I was saying that not revealing personal stuff, in and of itself, doesn't make a person "phony" and that there are plenty of social and professional situations where it is inappropriate to get personal with others, which doesn't make anyone "phony". You are phony when you feel one way about someone and you KNOW it, but pretend to feel differently. This has nothing to do with following different social and professional rules. If I am not sharing my marital problems with my co-worker, I am not "phony". I am a private person, who separates her personal and professional lives.

.