Survivors of Unethical Therapy

I feel no responsibility to offer solutions for what I perceive to be a largely exploitive and deceptive practice. I see no evidence that therapists are keen to learn from clients, or that they even hear the client's voice.

It’s a largely closed system that drives people in circles, narrows focus, and blocks the exits. Even people who’ve been burned many times will hear the standard refrain “find a new therapist asap”. I think it’s important to expose the inner workings. It’s a form of advocacy.

BTW, anger can be a healthy response. Righteous anger is different from ego-driven anger. Seems to me clients are encouraged to be docile and compliant. Maybe more anger and outrage would be a good thing.

Likewise, based on responses to my blog, internet conversations and literature I read, therapists largely only become defensive, resistant, angry and patronizing when faced with criticism. They generally wrap in their authoritarian cloaks as if I were one of their patients, incapable of talking peer to peer. And yes, I'm a peer, an adult with life experiences just as they are. I'm perfectly capable of discussing my own experiences or reactions to their writings.

Those harmed can try to communicate our case studies, but I don't see it consumers' role to create new paradigms or fix systems from the outside.

I think it might be helpful though is to remove this distancing, theoretical jargon of therapy to discuss interactions on a human level. Again, I see numerous practitioners almost foreign to that.

I feel academic credentials don't confer any special knowledge of life, relationships or emotions. That don't mean someone makes better decisions in difficult, irreconcilable or ambiguous situations. They don't mean someone can read minds or divine unknowable causalities, predict cause and effect, or predict all the ramifications of attempting changes. I don't see mental health professionals as having anything to be lordly or authoritarian about.

In my opinion therapist authority is fake authority. I have tried to get to the bottom of this, and there is no bottom.

Why not have the client set the rules, or decide what is normal/healthy? It's all so arbitrary.

If the therapist's authority or expertise is nominal and contrived, then the basis for the whole thing dissolves (in my view)... unless you are simply looking for someone to talk to, and that person claims to do nothing more than listen.

This kind of deconstruction helped me get past toxic therapy. Was able to see that little of substance actually happened.

I feel like I'm in this boat too. I'm so attached to my T, but I'm sarcastic and a smart mouth. T seems to lure me into admitting some of my "mother" transference, then tells me to be my own mother. And she knows how much I feel the John Bradshaw advice to love my own inner child feels like T is trying to dismiss my problems. So, last week, just to be cruel, T says that John Bradshaw is the big guru in her practice. So, I wonder how Mr. Bradshaw, who never was even a licensed therapist, got to be the standard for psychiatric practice in my T's office? What happened to Carl Jung, or Freud, or Kohut who were the foundation fathers? My T is so resentful of me that she can't think straight, it seems. I feel so bad that I'm such a jerk, but I wish T could quit punching me where she knows it hurts. T is so bait n' switch. Yet I love T just like some little 3 yr old caught in the jaws of a major narscissist mother, and would perish if sent out the door.

And, so those educated in and experience with therapy are ‘fakes’ instead of professionals and the client should “set the rules” for therapy, yet lacking any education or experience with even a hint of expertise (much less professionalism)?

The foundation of therapy is fundamentally flawed so long as fallible human beings are therapists. Their own crap gets in the way all the time.

I am in the same boat as you. Choices my therapist made only made things much, much worse, and four years later, still affect me a great deal. I have been damaged by therapy. And unfortunately, continue to be.

But it hurts to not be believed. and I continue to be damaged by therapy. I made a “positive” (?) post yesterday. I would love to just wave a magic wand and “move on” from all the pain and trauma I’ve had in my life, including from unethical therapy. In childhood I was silenced. I will not be silenced now. I “deserve” a chance to heal, as everyone else does.

I would trust that I can say that I’m on the up-and-up when I say that the legal system uses the term ‘abuse’ more that psychotherapy. And secondly, in most as in physical cases — spousal abuse, child abuse. We used to defer to the kinder phrase, ‘child molestation,’ which discretely meant some vague form of ‘sexual-touching-with-a-child’ (which is sick and I don’t want to think about) — oh — and ‘spousal abuse’ was simplified ‘wife beating.’ “Wife beating” was in the boroughs, of course, where the bus drivers dwelt.

Yes. Abuse. Largely a legal term (and lots-of-Latin-Phrases), it broadens in use and is a loose word used in tandem with others to describe physical-harm as well as any ‘other harm suffered.’ Surely ‘abuse’ can be used to describe the survivors of abusive psychotherapy? I’m not sure why you think ‘abuse’ to be promoted by the mental health system? Psychotherapy abuse?

Mmm. Families. I had so many. My birth family. Short-lived. Various families for a couple of years. Dad and me. Evil stepmother family. Free until I married. Wife, child, and me. Unstable, now, these 21 years. Son of none, bastards of young. I, too, grew up in the 1950’s. For a kid with only temporary families, my childhood was okay. My dad — nor anyone else — never said “we can’t afford that.” If my dad explained his reasoning well, I usually saw his point of view. When I criticised my dad about his lack of foresight for not purchasing an early CBS-COLUMBIA color television, I saw his point. Finally.

And, no, I don’t think that ‘abuse’ was most often used for ‘families.’ Even in the 1950’s ‘abuse’ was more legal than physical. We didn’t just leap from ‘wife-beating’ to ‘spousal abuse,’ it took effort. I would hate to think of all the effort gone for naught.

Maybe it’s because I’m old but I believe the word is broad enough to encompass enough shades of nefariousness-ness so that ‘evil’ should certainly not be in it, or of it.

But you can write “evil-doers” or you can write “abusers.” Doesn’t matter to me. But the evil-doing psychotherapists are unconscious of the evil that they do... and they use doing evil to others as a response to having evil done to them. It’s a snake eating it’s own tail — evil upon evil upon evil from the mid-1930’s-onward. Almost one century gone and evil becomes an unconscious trait, with unconscious evil being meted out in measure.

Yes. People usually do talk during psychotherapy. Not me! Not for over a year! I didn’t speak during that period... but I acknowledged yes and no, even started writing closing in on the end. But the evil-doers talked to me, so maybe they found redemption.

Yes. There are many points of view, so unique that one is never like another. Seldom like another. How can one (psychologist) hope to every know everything about another? I believe that they would agree that what’s impossible is impossible. I’m guessing that their abusive minds have flashes of reality.

It doesn’t matter what you call the abuser or the abused. I don’t follow your reasoning for wanting to change the words to fit a psycho-psychologist but you can have your diagnosis and I, mine.

I don’t know, but if this problem is systemic (an over-abused word) then it would blow a hole in the psychotherapy tire. As there’s no proof of a systemic hole, nor a bulge on the tire. No, it is impossible for the greatness if “some of this discussion could go beyond the limits of this forum.”

Just when I think that “I gots it,” I’m drawn under by this evil begetting evil conundrum that blows all but the abused stories. Do you fellows agree? Or are there other theories?

Hello everyone-so glad to see this thread. My heart goes out to all of us that have been harmed in therapy.

I recently came across an ex-therapist on You Tube, describing why he left the profession. He gives some interesting insights that maybe some people would be interested in hearing. I don't know if it's okay to include a YT link but his name is Daniel Mackler. The video that I'm referring to is titled, 'Why I Quit Being A Therapist'. If someone already mentioned this, I apologize.

Hello everyone-so glad to see this thread. My heart goes out to all of us that have been harmed in therapy.

I recently came across an ex-therapist on You Tube, describing why he left the profession. He gives some interesting insights that maybe some people would be interested in hearing. I don't know if it's okay to include a YT link but his name is Daniel Mackler. The video that I'm referring to is titled, 'Why I Quit Being A Therapist'. If someone already mentioned this, I apologize.

Hello everyone-so glad to see this thread. My heart goes out to all of us that have been harmed in therapy.

I recently came across an ex-therapist on You Tube, describing why he left the profession. He gives some interesting insights that maybe some people would be interested in hearing. I don't know if it's okay to include a YT link but his name is Daniel Mackler. The video that I'm referring to is titled, 'Why I Quit Being A Therapist'. If someone already mentioned this, I apologize.

I also watched some of his videos and, I think, the recent one is the best. At least someone who had extensive experience with this business acknowledges, and describes in detail, how he could not tolerate it himself. Of course it is easy to admit these things given that he is no longer in the biz. I bet he wasn't this outspoken while still doing it and getting frustrated, burnt out, and disillusioned.

Mackler makes good points, but doesn't go nearly far enough. I think you gotta read Masson for serious deprogramming.

Thank you for this post, it’s interesting. My heart goes out to all of us that have been harmed in therapy too.

I shared a bit about some unethical therapy recently.....