Therapy aims at inculcating a massive (overwhelming) sense of dependency in the patient.
The primary dependency is, of course, the dependency on the therapist. The motive is money and power. The same motives that power any cult. But in fostering this primary dependency therapy will foster any other dependency it can. Dependency on family and authority of any kind feature strongly. Because it encourages dependency on the family and on social structures therapy avoids the appearance of a cult and even wins the approval of power.
Therapy, despite the propaganda about ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-development’, is simply based on the view of 19th century psychiatry that at the root of mental troubles is too much independence.
Therapists will deny that they control or manipulate their ‘clients’. But this is what they do. The project is based on emotional blackmail. Someone “in therapy” has to submit fully to the dominance of the therapist. The “patient” lays bare their inner life to someone who gives away nothing of their own, an abnormal procedure which creates vulnerability. Rather than solve their own problems people “in therapy” are taught to wait for the answer to emerge from the magic of the “therapeutic relationship”. This seriously harms the capacity in the patient for self-reflection and solving their own problems. The therapist claims expertise and authority but will not discuss “methodology” with the client. (Contrast this with a medical doctor who would always share their science with a patient to the extent that the patient could understand it). The therapist thus establishes themselves as superior to the patient, not by virtue of professional expertise and greater command of the shared science, but on the basis of their possession of a secret and mysterious truth and on the basis of their knowing all the patient’s secrets (a knowledge which they have won without giving up any of their own). A patient it is true, can reject the advice or interpretations of the therapist at any point. But there would be no logic in doing that and then in staying with the therapist, any more than it would make sense to continue to consult a doctor in whose diagnoses you did not believe and whose treatment recommendations you did not follow. The “therapeutic relationship” is all or nothing. The patient can only accept the interpretations of the therapist – of which the most fundamental is always “You have a problem / some deficiency and I don’t”. (This “interpretation” is implicit in all forms of therapy even those that make a point of not giving interpretations). The patient is subjugated and loses all ability to think independently. They have to agree with their therapist in everything or end the relationship entirely. The only way to end such a denuded and inhuman ‘relationship’ is indeed to run away.
Therapists are weak people who try to solve their own personal problems and get through life by focussing on the problems of others. When they claim to be “helping” other people with their problems they are in fact trying to solve their own problems of personal weakness and inadequacy. They are creating a role for themselves in which they are “superior”. Ultimately this won’t fix the personal inadequacy of therapists and it certainly won’t do their patients any good. All it will do for the patients is drag them down to the same weak level as their therapist.