I posted this on reddit earlier, but I will repeat it here because I am of an age when I am on repeat ...

Not all therapists are inherently bad, whether we mean bad at their job or bad people. Some of them are abusive or harmful people, many of them aren't very skilled. However, I think that therapy itself is harmful due to its structure and application.

Paid for intimacy (often occurring when the client is at their most vulnerable) does not serve our search for meaningful connection, either with ourselves or others. Ironically, relational depth is one of the experiences which therapy claims to offer yet that kind of relationship undercuts itself due to the power imbalances, the financial/consumerist transactions, the necessary absence of elements of the therapist.

Emotional commodification cannot help us explore ourselves in a free way. Therapy has become necessary for so many of us because our lives are so fragmented, families toxic, communities dispersed. We live amongst violence and harshness, there is brutality around us. We don't have the means to connect with each other and our generational links are being lost. We are adrift and therapy offers something which is better than nothing.

I don't think individual therapists consciously take advantage of this existential fracture (they are living in it and are suffering its effects - no matter what they might claim, they are just ordinary). Nevertheless, the therapy model feeds into these fractures and the ever growing big business of therapy profits from them.