Love

Valid point and same here. I thought mine was great and then termination was a disaster. I'd say another good test is what happens following a rupture of any significance.

For me, in hindsight, what I thought was good therapy was something more like dysfunctional role playing. And when I began to assume a different role and was less compliant and deferential, T did not like it at all. Another test perhaps.

Seems real love could certainly develop in therapy, but the difficulty in answering this question points to how unnatural and bizarre the whole thing is. When one person is largely hidden and playing a role, how can there be a genuine love?

Unless the T is bending boundaries and disclosing a lot and the client starts to get a sense of the real person. That's what happened to me, and while it felt great -- like falling in love -- it eventually led to pulverizing heartbreak and rejection.

How else would one be cured?

I agree with what you are feeling here to some degree. There are a lot of craptastic T's out there, no doubt. I am sorry you experienced one of them and because of this forum, I know now it could happen to me too. But I think if you look at the number of people here with bad experiences vs the number of people in therapy all over the world, the ratio with bad T's is very small. I choose to believe in this anyway.

By therapeutic methods that work. (Yes, don't tell me, that is an oxymoron to many. Not to me.) By changing neural pathways. By acquiring a new set of thought patterns. By understanding oneself more fully. None of those requires caring from the T, although for some people it might help.

For example by becoming aware of unhealthy patterns of thought and behaviors and learning better coping mechanisms and better strategies of managing ones life. Therapists can help with that. That is nothing to do with therapist loving a client. Personally nothing in my therapy requires my t to love me in any shape or form. And I am doing well

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I would argue that being cared for by other people has more healing potential than anything there is. As for therapy, some schools say it's the relationship that heals. I can't imagine therapy being effective if the 2 people involved are relating as if in a business relationship.

But it IS a business relationship. I pay the therapist for services rendered. She may care for me, or not, but her telling me that, or showing it in any way, will not help me personally at all. The therapist is not there to fill emotional holes. That's what friends and family are for. If people have reached the stage where they can't turn to friends and family, it is the therapist's job to help them heal that rift or figure out how to adapt. Not be the major source of caring in the client's life.

I almost didn't start therapy because I thought it'd be some gooey gushytalkfest. Mine isn't, and that way is best for me.

Maybe it depends on your personality and why you are in therapy. My T has said quite clearly that she IS there to fill emotional holes. My T is in a unique relationship to me.. emotionally she needs nothing from me and she has the professional ability to not lash out but be understanding and patient no matter what. In some ways this replicates the parent/child relationship. In limited ways. But as my T points out I only need limited kinds of parenting . I know how to take care of myself, make a living, interact with the world, know who I am etc
Yet I am crippled in many ways by my childhood abuse and I am not living the life I want or deserve.
I need things that I can't reasonably expect from partner or friends , like constant loving support no matter how cranky or uncooperative or angry I am. Acceptance no matter what I reveal or an dealing with. I need to learn basic toddler level emotional things like object constancy that abuse prevented me from learning.
She needs professional skill and knowledge to do this but she also needs to genuinely care about me.
I certainly WANT her to love me and in fact I made ZERO progress in therapy until I began to be confident in her love for me. Now because I know she loves me I can take her inout, advice and even criticism in a way I could not previously.

Nonsense. A surgical doctor who removes your appendix is engaged in a business relationship with you. You pay him to perform a job, and he either does it or not.

A therapy relationship revolves around emotional issues that are unique to each client. There is often no road map to the resolution of their problems. There are often no parameters for what "healing" will look like from person to person. People spend years in therapy because there is no "appendix" to be taken out and incisions patched up so that the patient can be on his or her merry way. It is a "business" founded entirely on emotions. That's the entire point. Emotions are nebulous and emotions are messy. Emotions often resist treatment, but emotions do usually respond to intimate human connections.

I personally am shelling out a lot of money to have a gooey gushytalkfest once a week. I pretty much have to do it once a week, in spite of the financial strain, because my relationships with my friends and family have ALL been hollowed out or totally destroyed to the point that I can't talk to anyone else. "Heal the rift"? Hahahahahaha. "Figure out how to adapt"? DONE, T, I "adapted" to being a ****ing emotional wasteland years before I ever walked through your door. What else you got? Because I assure you, it had better be something worth your ridiculous hourly rate. For what I'm paying you, you had damned well BETTER care.

No, a therapist who doesn't care sucks at his/her job, unless you think that an emotional ice floe who rattles off dispassionate one-size-fits-all "treatment" suggestions from some book or seminar or long-ago class is worth the money and time. And there is something seriously wrong with the picture of a profession, dedicated to emotional well-being, that beats rigid emotional distance and/or coldness into its practitioners.

I was quite specific that this is what worked for me - not making a blanket statement. And I do think, at heart, it is a business relationship. Yes, it is an odd business relationship. But the fact remains that contracts are signed, payments are made, and legal recourses exist against therapists who violate those contracts. That doesn't mean a therapist can't express care for clients, and that will work well for some clients, maybe most - I am sure I am an exception. But I don't think anyone should lose sight of the basic nature of the relationship.

The relationship can be healing, but not in isolation. It's a therapeutic relationship conducted using very specialized training. It's far more than just love that is potentially healing. Sure, a connection makes a huge difference, but it doesn't have to be a certain type of love or even what everyone would define as love.

And it is business, but business isn't bad.

We trade their expertise for money we earn through ours.

All relationships involve payment/exchange. Parent and child relationships come with unwritten contracts for loving lifelong relationships, mutual caring. Spouses, teachers, doctors, friends- every relationship involves exchange.

Exchanging money for therapy is not sacrilegious. Therapists' expertise and ability to be there for us has a cost and is worth the cost.

*It's not either/or.*

I have always had a good connection with my therapists, but my progress in therapy did not come from the relationship really. My progress came from the work I did on myself, the skills I learned and applied to my life, the changes I made. Yes, I wouldn't have worked with a therapist I didn't connect with, but the connection wasn't the most important aspect in my healing. It isn't all about the relationship, and for some people it isn't about the relationship at all. People need different things in therapy and can benefit from different things.

Actually you worded your reply as if you were laying down the law for all of us. Big difference between saying what works for you and saying what is best for others. People can get into desperate situations and if they need to pay for emotional support, why the hell not.

I didn't read it that way. She used "I" statements pretty much through her whole post. Seemed pretty clear she was speaking of her experience and needs.

I guess you missed this part:
"If people have reached the stage where they can't turn to friends and family, it is the therapist's job to help them heal that rift or figure out how to adapt. Not be the major source of caring in the client's life."

I've certainly seen folks return to the board with updates about content post-therapy life and the wonderful changes they earned through hard work. I've also seen several posters return or continue on the boards as they take their journey through training to become therapists. However, it makes a great deal of sense to me to think that once clients had finished working through their therapy concerns, they wouldn't tend to return to the board. That's my experience with most forums- meet the need and move on.

As for me, I am currently in therapy and we have survived a significant rupture, but prior to this, I saw a therapist two decades ago and had an incredibly beneficial relationship that has had an inspiring, life-altering lifelong effect and I still carry the strength and caring of that T with me, internalized, to this day.

Framed on both ends by her personal experience . . . We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.