TRANSCRIPT
I have a problem with psychotherapists who give a first session away for free. On the surface, it can seem like a really generous thing on a part of a therapist. Oh, and the client could say, or the potential client could say, “Well, that gives me a chance to really know what the therapist is like.” And it’s sort of no strings attached, and I don’t really have any commitment or obligation to this person. I can interview them in a way without feeling like I’ve really lost anything. In some ways, that might be true. And I think for some people, it actually kind of is true because I’ve known people, clients or potential clients, who go shopping for therapists. They’ll do ten psychotherapy sessions with ten different therapists for free, all just shopping around to see who do they like. And maybe for those people, and I think there are a fairly small minority, I think that first free session could potentially work to their advantage. But I think those type of people are not the type of people that most therapists are giving away that first free session for. That is not their intended client or patient. Mostly, what I think therapists are doing is they’re trying to attract clients. They’re not doing it so much to be nice. They’re not doing it to say, “Oh, I’m gonna give people a no-obligation chance to really figure out what I’m like and get to know me and see if they like me.” They’re not doing it out of the kindness and warmness of their heart. They’re not doing it out of financial benevolence. The reason that I say this is because what I learned as a therapist—they even taught us in school this—and in school, they didn’t even do a good job of teaching us almost anything from what I found. But they did say this: the relationship in psychotherapy begins the minute that client walks in to the door of your office. I could even say it goes further than that. I say the beginning of the relationship between therapist and client, and it’s a relationship with a big power difference because the therapist has a lot of psychological power, emotional power in this relationship. The relationship begins when the client calls or emails, and the exchange happens. So it begins even before the person walks into that office. So that being said, if the relationship starts immediately upon first contact, well, it’s a strange thing to think that the therapist is giving something away for free that has no strings attached. Because where there is a relationship, there are strings attached, especially where there’s a relationship with a big power imbalance. So what I see that psychologically therapists are doing when they give away that first session for free is they’re throwing out a baited hook. There’s a hook inside of that free session, and the hook is that that client is going to get attached. They’re going to get attached to the therapist, and then they’re going to come back, and they’re gonna start paying. A certain percentage of clients are gonna pay for a lot of sessions—maybe ten sessions, maybe fifty sessions, maybe a hundred sessions. Maybe they’re gonna come once or twice a week for years. It’s not uncommon. I’ve heard of therapists who have worked with the same client for 40 years. I’m not kidding—once or twice a week for 40 years. Now, if that client is not hooked, addicted even to therapy, then I don’t know what being hooked or addicted in a relationship is. A lot of therapists are looking for that type of client. They’re looking for clients to form a dependency with them. What gets people hooked on a therapist is they’ve shared a lot of their personal information. They’ve shared some really emotional things of vulnerability, of deep value, of privacy, of secrecy with this stranger. And what happens when people share really personal private things—perhaps things they’ve never told anyone, perhaps things they’ve never told their partners, they’ve never told their best friends, they’ve never told their family members—well, when they share it with that stranger, a really strong bond begins to form. A lot of projection begins to happen. People can see, “Oh my god, this person loves me. This person cares about me. This therapy is my ally. This is the person I’ve been looking for. This is the person who can finally understand me and save me.” From the perspective of a therapist, often it’s not that hard to manipulate people into feeling that way. A basic way to do it is just tell people, “Wow, I hear you,” and really listen carefully. Just listen. “Mmm-hmm, I understand. Mmm, yes. What horrible things you went through. How difficult your life just must be. How difficult your life was.” And really just be that caring, empathic person. So many people are so desperately hungry for the person who’s really just gonna care about them and listen to them because so many people have been so neglected and abandoned their whole life that they’re looking for someone who’s going to love them, looking for someone who’s gonna finally see them for who they are. Now, does that mean that the therapist really loves them? I think no. I think in a first session, the therapist can certainly show a lot of the feelings of love or show a lot of the feelings that look like love, look like caring. But a lot of times, it’s like the therapist doesn’t even know the client. They don’t know who this person is. They don’t know them in context. What they’ve learned from being a therapist is how to sit there when someone’s talking about painful, vulnerable things and just let them go and be respectful and be polite. It’s actually not that hard to do once therapists have figured out how to do it—how to just shut up and mirror positive things back to the person. Now, what happens is when the person does feel like, “Oh my god, this person loves me,” that transference gets going. That feeling like, “Oh my god, this person’s gonna love me.” And there’s gonna be a certain percentage of people, and if someone is really good at it, it’s gonna be a pretty high percentage of people—a lot of times—who are gonna want to come back and get more of that because it feels so good. It’s what we’re all looking for at some level. The problem is therapy, and I’m not against therapy. I think therapy can be wonderful, and I think therapy can be incredibly healing for a lot of people. I’ve known a lot of people who have gotten a lot of benefit out of that. I happen to not be one of them, but I actually saw it as a therapist that I actually could help a lot of people. I could really be there for them, but it has to really be respectful. So while yes, I think people can benefit in incredibly huge ways from therapy, I think it’s really important that therapists be clean and clear from the very beginning and not do things to pump that transference. By giving away that free session at the beginning, they’re really feeding that transference, and they’re sending that client a false idea that there can be a free lunch in this relationship—that you can get all sorts of free things from me. Whereas the reality is there is no free lunch. You have to pay the therapist a lot to do this very difficult job. And I think it’s better if that relationship, the real basic fundamentals of that relationship, are clear from the very beginning.