There are 4 main structures of psychotherapy. They are:
1) The deficit model. People approach therapists because they think there is something wrong with them. Therapy relentlessly aims to reinforce this sense. The whole setup is predicated on the client having a deficit. For example; when Leon Redler told this author that “it takes 5 years” and “your problem is you are not in touch with yourself” he is pinning a deficit on his client. “you are not in touch with yourself”, (whatever exactly that means; it certainly has nothing to do with medical science). If it takes 5 years, (a marker really for “a very long time”), it must be a really serious deficit.
The therapist will never admit to mistakes or faults. The wall of observational silence which is used to disrupt the client, (based on psychoanalyiical theories of disrupting fixed neurotic patterns), is used tactically to reinforce the (false) sense of deficit the client has. An example; I reecounted to Redler an incident when I felt I had missed out on social opportunities due to making a selfish choice. The reponse; silence. Perhaps he made a mark on the clipboard he used to humiliate me with. I infer that, yes, I must have a problem. This is ‘part of my condition’, which is a problem. I also infer, from his silence, that Redler knows about these ‘faults’ and he himself has surpassed them, or doesn’t have them. (He could, for example, say “I know what you mean, that often happens to me, when I wish I could have been less selfish”. He won’t – because, though true, it would break the illusion). My sense of having a deficit is deepened. In reality much of life is a kind of inner battle between selfish choices and opening to other people. That I had this struggle did not represent in any way a deficit in me. (On the contrary; it showed that I had some good insight into life and a conscience). It is a normal part of life. Redler, therapists, manage to give the client a sense that their ordinary glitches in life – normal experiences, which, in reality are part of human experience – are evidence of some fundamental perssonal deficit in them.
2) Isolation of the client from normal social relations. This is a second key tactic of therapy The author Professor Frank Furedi is particularily strong on this point. He shows conclusively in his book, Therapy Culture, [4] how therapy targets informal relations. Therapy claims that friends and family cannot provide emotional support. Only ‘professionals’ can. An example; I had a student who had difficulties in life. He came across as somewhat autistic though I don’t think he was specifically. He’d had a difficult upbringing and found socialising difficult. He applied for NHS psychotherapy. In an initial interview he mentioned that he was talking to me. (I had kept in touch with him and exchanged a few messages once every couple of years; apart from his mother I was possibly one of the few people he spoke to about his problems). He told me the therapist had told him that friends are no good, you need ‘professional’ help. A nice example of direct targetting of informal relations. Human relations are in part built on just this sharing of problems. By saying that this should only happen with a ‘professional’ therapists are directly trying to peel peeople away from their friends and restrict informal relations. (I would add here; if we were talking about something which really is a specialist skill, like careers guidance, there could be a valid claim that specialist advice can offer something that informal relations can’t. A careers guidance counsellor, for example, has access to databases of opportunities, and standardized tests). The therapist directs the client to see therapy as the one locus where they talk about their emotional problems, thus undermining the one thing the client probably needs – to build their own network of friends and other informal relations. And, again, and this connects to the deficit model, they turn ordinary problems into something special and – a deficit the client has. Trapped in therapy, and probably dazzled by the inevitable fake ‘profeessional’ credentials, the client loses perspective and comes to believe that instead of normal problems they can discuss with a friend, or other informal contact, they have uniquely serious problems which require specialist intervention.
People who have been abused or let down, espcially by care-givers, are especially susceptible to the suggestion that in therapy they will find the trusting and authentic relations they were denied previously. But, this too is a lie.
3) The false claim of professionalism. One of the UK’s leading gangs of therapists claims on their website that “psychotherapy is an art and a science”. They have to say “art and” because if they simply claimed it was a science, no one would believe them. Everyone knows that psychotherapy is not a science. This is a nice example of therapeutic befuddlement. They are trying to hoodwink you. Of course, therapy is not a ‘science’. Clearly, it is not a science in the positivist sense of science which is supported by empirical data. But it isn’t even a science in the sense of a “systematic body of knowledge” which is how the maverick and disgraced psychiatrist R. D. Laing tried to save the situation. Even casual aquaintance with the literature of psychotherapy shows a bewildering array of competing theories. Just like the world of Karate is split into endless schools as pupils break with their forming school and start their own, so with therapy. The competing theories reflect the reality of market competition, not scholarly disagreement. There are various attempts to produce claims for the supposed benefits of therapy. But these are typically based on dubious ‘user satisfaction’ tick-box surveys, conducted on patients, who are likely to simply want to tick “yes, I feel better as a result of therapy”, ironically, because they are acting on the normal human impulse to be friendly. Thee NHS psychologist, Paul Maloney systematically critiques these claims in his book, The Therapy Industry. [5] Furthermore, a standard tactic of therapists is to try to establish credibility by importing qualifications from other fields; social work, medical undergraduate degrees, and so on. They create groups with serious sounding names, invent training courses, (in essence pyramid marketing schemes), offer ‘ethics boards’, comandeer language from academia, such as ‘supervision – but none of this is regulated. There is no democratic accountability. In reality none of this is any more serious than the rules of the local tiddlywink club. They know this, of course, but pretend otherwise. Therapists will typically line their consulting rooms with shelves full of impressive looking tomes – all designed to create the illusion that they are the possessors of some specialist knowledge. (Redler was a very strong user of this tactic). They may also create more magical illuions with references to Buddhism etc. All of this works, once again, because of the wall of silence. Were the therapist to open their mouth and express opinions the illusion would be quickly shattered. The client would realise that the therapist does not have any special knowledge on the human condition. They establish the claim – by the tactics mentioned above, and then avoid opening their mouths, knowing full well that that would destroy the illusion. Redler was, one has to credit him, a past mastser on this particular point – very carefully policing his own utterances to avoid ever destroying the illusion of superiority. (As I detail in my account of therapy with Redler on the one occassion he did slip up, he quickly mounted a recovery operation, manipulating my emotions). [6]
4) The trap. Therapists encourage their patients to tell them all their secrets – indeed they encourage their patients to dredge up every last detail from their childhoods, (and then sometimes mock them for doing so). The client trusts the expert, even “doctor”, in some cases, and does this. The therapist reciprocates with nothing. The end result is that the therapist holds all the client’s most intimate secrets and has given no reaction. The client cannot leave without knowing either how the therapist assesses this private information, or what they are going to do with it. In essence the therapist holds all this material as a hostage to ensure that the client keeps returning. This trick is analysed very clearly by Richard Webster in his book, Why Freud was Wrong – Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. [2]
In essence all therapists are low-grade dishonest hucksters. One would like, as a human being, to think that some, at least, are misguided souls with good intentions, but, as the critic, and former insider Jeffrey Masson [7] points out, the management of therapy simply requires so much deliberate ignoring of its contradictions and little dishonesties, that it is simply not possible to be a therapist and to be unaware that the whole process is something of a scam.
Notes
- Phoebe Caldwell Finding You Finding Me 2005
- Ricard Webster Why Freud was Wrong – Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. Basic Books 1996.
- Gunaratana, Henepola. Mindfulness in Plain English (pp. 20-21). Wisdom Publications. Kindle Edition.
- Therapy Culture. Frank Furedi. 2003. Routledge.
- https://thenewobserver.co.uk/review-the-therapy-industry-paul-maloney-2/
- https://thenewobserver.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/redler1.pdf
- Jeffrey Masson Against Therapy. Common Courage Pr 1994 and The Assault on Truth Histria Academic (September 30, 2025) (This is a republication).