ABSTRACT
I look back over all these years [of therapy] and see how much and how often I was disempowered and abused in various ways; how ethical issues sometimes became the tool for some kinds of abuse, how my trust was betrayed, how my being a victim was taken advantage of, how my therapy sometimes became therapy to heal the abuse of therapy, how concepts such as transference and projection were sometimes used to deny my reality: for example my seeing real damage happening in the present was said to be simply my transference feelings. So often, theories and concepts were used to enable the therapist to control me and as a wall to protect himself. I think, too, of how my paid-for time was often taken up by counter-transference issues that were not recognised. I think one of the most disempowering and constantly repeated abuses was the denial of my feelings, my truth, my process. Fragile and fractured though it was, it was always there trying to be heard.
