Reddit reviews Against Therapy

You are asking all the right questions:

"When will enough be enough? Will he tell me I'm "healed" when time time comes? Is he taking advantage of me? Is our relationship even real, or do my attempts at being "real" with him, and my expressions of appreciation for his help, get looked at through some psychodynamic lens?"

The answers depend entirely on the therapist. And also reflect the way you related to your caregiver as a child.

In theory, it would be possible for a therapist to benignly support a person in their healing. But, as Alice Miller observed — and I share her perspective, the set-up itself invites re-enactment. The most probable outcome is repetition. Despite the best intentions of both 'therapist' and 'patient'.

There is, for example, no escaping the core dynamic (unless the therapy is free). The patient is paying for 'love'. It is easy to see how this recreates many people's childhoods': Where love was conditional.

The 'wounded healer' is a common role-play. It is one I have fallen into myself in the past as a 'therapist'. I have also, as a 'patient' been in experiences where my 'therapist' was in-fact satisfying their own need to 'save' people, casting me in re-enactments of their own childhood.

The whole therapeutic scene is a mess, in my opinion. JM Masson went even further, calling psychotherapy The Dark Science. He wrote a very interesting book exploring the problems with therapy.

My personal view is that a therapist may have an occasional role to play in listening to a person after MDMA sessions, and hearing their experiences. However, I don't feel the 'therapist' plays any useful role within an MDMA session itself other than to reassure an anxious person to keep going. This role could be equally well-played by a kind, respectful friend.

Obviously this perspective is hugely challenging to the enormous industry that has built up around 'healing' people. It puts 'therapists' out of a 'job'.

My experience has been that MDMA — used properly — makes therapists mostly redundant.

The MAPS protocol attempts to shoehorn therapists back in. It's as if a horse-and-cart salesman, realising his time is up in the age of the automobile, has a plan to keep himself in business: What if he tells you all automobiles require a horse-and-cart to run alongside them or the passengers won't be safe?

Now he can keep selling you the horse-and-cart.

For me, this describes the MAPS model regarding MDMA.