Yeah, I I understand what you mean now: It's like them painting the situation in a very particular way and refusing to countenance any objection. That can be fairly manipulative given the power structure of the situation which implicitly allows them to 'define reality'. The T I got on best with did give a feeling of being very authoritative but somehow it never felt like that was being used in a controlling fashion. He would encourage some behaviour and discourage others for obvious reasons. He would also question some of my beliefs and sometimes proffer alternative ways of looking at things. However he never gave these kinds of 'interpretations'. One of the only times he was ever very absolute and insistent was when I suggested my depression might be a character flaw rather than an illness. So, he did it in cases in which I was all too ready to damn myself.

(Actually I think he was quite skeptical of psychoanalysis. Once he described it as 'a bit mythic'. And at another time he said that my idea about something sounded a bit psychoanalytic and he just could not see how such a process would really work!)