This doesn't surprise me.<p>Let me start out by saying that although I am not a psychotherapist, I do have a masters in psychology, and two years graduate clinical training, plus experience in the field. I also have some experience helping conduct psychotherapy research studies.<p>Back in the 60, a well-known psychological researcher named Hans Eysenk published a claim that, based on an analysis of many psychotherapy outcome studies, psychotherapy does not work. This sparked a great debate.<p>I was puzzled by this claim, since it seemed clear to me that psychotherapy could be helpful. But then years later I read an article in the Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change, I think it was the 1979 edition.<p>It was written by Truax and Carkhuff, and it summarize a number of studies that looked at outcome by psychotherapist. What they found was that about 1/3 of psychotherapists were helpful with most of their clients, 1/3 had little impact, and 1/3 were on the whole harmful.<p>Based on a good deal of experience in the field, including a whole summer observing psychotherapists practicing group psychotherapy in a mental health clinic, this seemed to me about right.<p>I think the problem started with Freud. He was a brilliant man in many ways, but I think it is clear he was not very good at actually curing people of their personal problems. In the decades that followed, I think there was a pattern that developed where some training institutes, Freudian and non-Freudian, were run by therapists who are poor at the craft and so don't know how to teach it to others, and furthermore don't know how to select students who would be good therapists, while at other institutes the overall pattern was neutral or positive.<p>I have been out of the field for many decades, and had hoped things had improved. Alas, it seems that is not the case.