The business of "renting out love"

I can relate to that. Therapeutic detachment is a pain in the unprintable.

If it wasn't urgent, I would never have stepped foot in a therapists office or in my case counseling office exactly because of people like this guy. And I'm not talking 'oh I feel so self conscious' urgent, I'm talking fantasizing about blowing my brains out everyday urgent. I'm still not happy i have to do this S*** but sometimes health has to come before pride.

I'm not going to lie either, if it doesn't work out with my new, first, and only therapist I will never do it again. Every session I invest a little more in her and am not fond of when I invest in people, only to have them leave me.

An excellent observation. I think that worth pursuing. I hope you will.

I think a personal trainer might be a better analogy than an emotional hooker. I go to therapy and it's a lot of work. I'm certainly not paying someone to sit there and listen, and I don't go there to sit and talk about how unhappy I am.

I problem solve, seek insight, look at some hard truths about myself, make connections, come up with plans to make my life better.

Emotional hooker? No way. An emotional hooker would be a lot easier.

I must have the best luck with therapists because both of mine have seen me for free, encouraged me not to embrace the label of my diagnosis and worked very hard to convince me that nothing about me is pathological or really that wrong.

Psychotherapy like every other line of work has its issues. Yet and still I do believe it is the goal of most therapists to see to it that those in need are helped with the diagnosis being only a formality. As an individual with a graduate degree and knowledge of one of my former therapists' salary, I can attest to the fact that they lose quite a bit of money while in grad school and even with fees around $140/hr, most therapists are not living lavishly by any means.

The author makes some good points but his arguments are too narrowly focused. That said, his assertions about the unreliability of the DSM are on point and faux diagnoses have been an issue for some time now but I don't see there being any real chance of the methodology being changed.

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The thing is that therapists are not paid or trained or prepared to love you because you choose to take on their services.

They are there to help you get your act together. Going in thinking otherwise, or the expectation that you will find someone with the training and resources who will dedicate that amount of time and effort to you and your efforts to get your life on track- with no compensation- is a really tall order.

It's unreasonable. If you were to assign that duty to someone you have a close relationship with, it is a very high risk that you would destroy the relationship in the process.

Therapists need to have boundaries and shame on any of them who don't make them clear.

This is exactly why I go. I like your way of putting it - perfect!

Though, my crisis has subsided and the work is helping me live my best life. I hope this happens for you!

Somewhat off topic but that reminds me of a (supposed) story about Pablo Picasso sitting in a restaurant when a fan came up to him and started gushing about how much she loved his work and yadayada. At the end of her talking she asked him if he would draw a little something on her napkin.
He took the napkin and knock something out in about 10 seconds and started to hand it to her but then said: "[Madam], that will be $10,000, please."
She was aghast and said that it only took him a few seconds to to do... to which he responded, "Yes, but it took me a lifetime to learn."