Are therapists ever "wrong"?

One of the truest quotes I found from In Treatment at the end of this exchange:
Alex - Week One
Alex: So, are there any rules?
Paul: Rules?
Alex: Ground rules. Anything I should know before we start?
Paul: Oh... Not really. It's more or less... It's more or less up to you.
Alex: Oh, right, right. I'm a customer.
Paul: Yeah. Though in my profession we say that the customer is always wrong.That's a... It's a therapists' joke.

My therapist has apologized on some occasions like if she’s running a few minutes behind or sometimes she will if it takes her forever to respond to an email ( she’s inconsistent about that). But what I find irritating is it appears that she is more interested in how I feel about whatever she has done that has upset me ...as if that’s more important than apologizing! She has apologized for a few blunders but not that often

If a therapist cannot own up to their mistakes or attempt to fix them, I would question if they are in the right profession.

It's nothing to do with personal boundaries. It's about intellectual boundaries and keeping the discussion honest. When the focus shifts to calling perceptions, motives, character into question, it's usually the end of meaningful discussion. It's ad hominem logical breakdown.

Related to the topic of this thread.... I faced similar problems when I tried to explain to therapists that the previous therapist had s**t the bed. Many of them wanted to immediately locate the source of the problem within me. They could not face the thought of therapy itself becoming a festering pustule of dysfunction. It showed me a profession afraid of its own pathology.

It's clear to me a core assumption is that the client is not a credible witness to their own experience.

So, yea, therapists as a group seem to have trouble dealing with being wrong.

No one in my life has ever hurt me more than a therapist. I was a fool to have ever trusted one. Are they wrong? You bet they are wrong and capable of destroying a client.

I never expected a therapist would be so destructive to someone who was paying for help. I was totally blindsided.

Mine gets things wrong. Sometimes badly so. And either he notices or I tell him. Sometimes he reacts a bit defensively initially, but mostly he's really good at listening to my perspective, owning his mistakes and giving a proper apology (not an "I'm sorry IF...." or "I'm sorry YOU...").

It's one of the reasons i keep going back even when therapy is hideous and hard for me (which has little to do with him and a whole lot to do with why i'm there).

Agree with this.

In my case, my clinical psychologist T definitely has a relationship with a capital P Psychotherapy that looms larger than any particular patient, including me.

There is a mystique to it that he buys- well, he has spent his life studying it: thousands of hours and dollars making this a life's work( sometimes feels like a life's work in my tears lol). He went to a top Ivy League school and could have been in finance or whatever, but he definitely fits in the broad wounded healer category.

Given all that, when psychotherapy itself is questioned to him or the frame itself is said to cause pain or be stylized, that is when he can get defensive and not nice. He can get dismissive or even cruel.

By extension, patients who don't get better, are not thankful, challenge authority too much- like stop dog's In Treatment quotation: the customer is always wrong- must be discarded bc they challenge the paradigm of this time-honored special profession, that sort of began with Yoda and Tiresias. My T even loves Harry Potter which he is reading to his kids. I often wonder if he sees himself as some kind of guiding hand in a magic word. All of this makes him such an arresting and talented practitioner- he is so creative and disciplined.

However, does he care about me or does he care about Psychotherapy and me only insofar as I bring him my "extreme( his word" trauma, and then rise from the ashes. If I don't "stay the course", if I don't become an exception to the rule, the statistics on his watch, he is not going to care about me, bc his first love is the profession.

I could be wrong- maybe he is devoted to helping me and I am damaged and cynical. I don't think so though, and I am thankful for him most of the time- hs imagination and perception. When T's terminate clients because they are not being helped, I don't believe it is as much for the client's own good as the T's morale, the T's need to believe that what they do with their lives is transformative and a craft as ancient as soothsaying yet as new as 2018's science.

It has a charm, it has a narcissism, but where is the client/ patient in the landscape of the T's mind and emotions?

I feel really grateful that my current therapist is really up for questioning traditional psychotherapy. I suspect he himself has been in more therapy than any other therapist I’ve had, and felt some of its more negative effects. He is really actively non-hierarchical, and he never tries to impose his interpretation of events on me. I am always the authority on myself.

He does have one little blind spot where I think he doesn’t seem to realize how poorly he handles one particular thing, but now that I have figured out what was going on I can avoid the pitfalls of that.

Generally though I think the profession would be enhanced if there were more therapists like him. He plays a leadership role in several organizations and conducts many trainings, which gives me reason for hope.

The first one I saw this time was quite defensive. The second one much less so and more willing to admit that she could be wrong.

Oh Lord. This really resonated with me. This is really why I posted this thread to begin with. My therapy over the years has been really helpful but it has been harmful when it's obvious to me that I'm just playing a role in the therapist's own scenario building and grandiosity.

I suffered with that kind of parenting for many years and don't need another dose of it now.

Of course they are. They're only human!

I was terminated ostensibly because i was not being helped. Eventually became blindingly obvious the real reason was the therapist could not tolerate failure or too much reality. She had joined a secular religion and nothing must threaten her belief and her self-image as a savior. Clients are important, but only as devotees. The other therapists were much the same. A bunch of need-to-be-needed types preaching the gospel.

Does that help make the process more valuable? I feel like my current T, who is more liable to admit when she's coming up short, is a lot more credible in the long term when she admits that she has blind spots.

Yes. They can be wrong. My therapist always says "correct me if I'm wrong" or "you can kick me in the shin if I'm wrong". He always emphasizes that he doesn't know everything and that I know myself best.

Can any human being be entirely "correct"? They're humans too. Most therapists have their own therapists (it's at least required when they're still a residency student).

For sure, this secular religion is true, at least for my T as well. There are rites and rituals aplenty, there is a confessional and there is ( he hopes) absolution. It something that draws me in and it is something that sets off alarm bells, at the very same time. I really don't know how I will look back at this period of time ten years from now.

He sounds funny and nice

Thanks for this. I would love to experience a session with this T.

Make the process more valuable? I don't understand the question.

It kept me from leaving in a frustrated rage every week.

Sorry....I meant "tolerable." It's easier to tolerate when a T can admit being fallible.

Absolutely therapists can be wrong, they are only human, no human is perfect. My t always says I know myself best.