A quack doctor can kill you without a knife. – Chinese proverb
A male reader writes:
So, I was talking with my therapist, and one of the things he asked me is if I had paid for sex. I said no, I want to have a connection with my lover. But what he said next shocked me: he claimed that ALL prostitutes are either sex slaves or owned by a pimp of some sort. Not some, not many, ALL. How can I show him he’s wrong?
I am not exaggerating when I suggest you should find another therapist. Anyone who could believe such a thing when there is overwhelming proof to the contrary (in the form of not only studies but personal accounts) is so irrational that it qualifies as a full-blown delusion; a person who could believe that can believe literally anything, including psychological fads like “sex addiction” with no basis in valid psychological theory or study. He obviously has no idea of how the female mind works, or is in deep denial; furthermore, he has an EXTREMELY low opinion of women’s agency and capacity for self-determination, which will affect everything he tells you about women. And though he’s not an economist, even the most rudimentary understanding of rational choice theory or the basics of undergraduate-level sociology would make it impossible for any sane mind to believe in such utter foolishness.
There is a MOUNTAIN of information which disproves this absurd myth, much of it linked on my Resources page and much more easily discovered by a quick Google search. If he believes all this information is wrong, he’s a megalomaniac or a religious fanatic; if he believes it to be deliberately falsified he’s paranoid, and if he doesn’t know it exists he’s woefully ignorant. In any case, he isn’t the kind of person who should be responsible for anyone else’s mental health, and in fact could benefit from a great deal of therapy himself. His belief is as irrational as the contention that an anthropomorphic god created the universe in six calendar days 6000 years ago, or that large numbers of extraterrestrials have abducted humans for experiment, or that vast Satanic cults enslave thousands of teenage runaways to breed babies for sacrifice; you should avoid him just as you would avoid a “therapist” who believed in such ideas.
Finally, There’s also one more possibility: He could know very well what he’s saying is a lie, and is just trying to scare you away from seeing sex workers. That would make him an amoral manipulator, which is just as bad as the other possibilities unless you actually want to develop False Memory Syndrome.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
There’s another possibility: the therapist could be trying to protect his job.
Given the current climate of psychology and psychiatric medicine, for a therapist to tell a patient anything acceptable about sex workers would be as risky as telling a patient in 1850 that homosexuality was not a dangerous mental disease. You can’t expect a therapist to be honest with you; their licensing boards will take away their jobs if they hear a whisper of anything politically controversial. Doctors need to be controlled, or else they might get out of hand and actually start helping people.
(That’s why, incidentally, widespread government licensing of sex workers would be used as a tool of repression.)
If he was just trying to protect his job, he could easily have remained silent on the subject. My own guess would be that he believes in the sex trafficking mythology as a whole, and thinks he’s doing his part to improve the world by warning his clients away from it. If that’s so, it may be possible to convince him otherwise, and Maggie did not really answer the question as asked.
It’s also doubtful that he really believes *all* prostitutes are coerced, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s lying either; very few people, when they say “all X are Y”, *really* think through what that means: zero exceptions, anywhere. That is never likely when talking about the human condition, but most people do not consider edge cases in everyday conversation.
I tend to consider prudery, in all its wonderful guises (which includes subscribing to “trafficking” mythology) to be a form of neurosis itself.
In which case, I would find it disturbing to see a therapist who was a prude, and thought my sane views on the subject were “deviant” and his neurotic thoughts on the subject was “the way things ought to be.”
Incidentally, I’ve known prudes who have a love/hate relationship with pornography (they keep their stash hidden and get mad if you find it), so basically it doesn’t change your urges, just makes your life miserable for no good reason.
This supports my theory that prudery is nothing more than “sour grapes” on the part of people who aren’t getting any.
I don’t think that’s the case. I agree with Maggie, bad therapist.
Normally they would ask you your feelings. And ask how your wife would perceive it. How the prostitute perceives it. Whether you are feeling guilt, isolated from spouse by secrets, or other things that can trigger depression.
But that’s after a yes. Wouldn’t you expect a simple, “how do you feel about that,”
A good therapist can be hard to find. But the government doesn’t force good ones to be bad.
Good post, and I agree with higharka, you can’t trust individual therapists. They too are human and have motivations which guide them. Keeping your job is a big one. Especially when it’s all you’re trained to do.
Just like for any other subject, unless someone has extensive personal experience, any advice they may give has to be taken with a (large) grain of salt.
“So, I was talking with my therapist, and one of the things he asked me is if I had paid for sex. ”
To me, the weirdest thing is for this to come up out of the blue. Perhaps he’s writing a book? The best ticket to celebrity would be to write a book about your male patients who see prostitutes. I can just see him on Oprah now, “Men who see prostitutes, what drives their abnormal and deviant behavior?” Oprah and everyone in the audience could enjoy looking sad and going “tsk, tsk.”
See, daytime talk loves to do this because sex sells, but has to be dressed up as a moral lesson for the Puritan set.
On the other hand, it’s possible it was triggered by something the patient said. Good therapists aren’t morally judgmental, but they are also unfortunately not common. When you see a therapist, you need to know “what is his/her degree in?” and “where did they go to school?”
“Therapist” … you can’t spell “The Rapist” without it.
Honestly, were I a smarter man I would have figured out long ago how to part absolutists like this idiot therapist from their money.
I have never had any use for a therapist. I’ve had a government clearance now for over 30 years and every few years or so they wire me up to a polygraph. The polygraph guy becomes my “therapist” for a few days because it always takes me three days to get through the damn things. One time I got a hot girl polygrapher and I was excited to spend a few days with her but she could only take one day of my “life confessions” before pronouncing me “passed”!! 😛
And she probably took a shower after I left her office! 🙂
Or to give them their full title: psycho-the-rapist. I don’t have a problem with psychiatrists or doctors referring patients to a clinical psychologists, counselling psychologists or psychiatric nurses for counselling or psychotherapy where they believe there is a clinical need, but what I object to are any psychologists, nurses, social workers or any other charlatan offering counselling or psychotherapy without doctor’s referral. It amazes me that so many Americans think nothing of seeing a therapist without even discussing it with their doctor.
To answer the last question of the writer: you can’t. True Believers cannot accept that their belief is wrong. It would not matter how much evidence you could present; if the evidence contradicts the belief, the evidence is clearly wrong.
That’s exactly why I didn’t actually answer his question; it’s impossible to reason anyone out of a position he didn’t reason his way into. Any therapist who had studied any psychology AT ALL would know the “sex slave” dogma is total bullshit; that makes me wonder how he got his degree, or indeed if he actually has one at all. And I’ve already pointed out he clearly has a deep, DEEP misunderstanding of the female psyche.
Strictly speaking, you can get around this…it is possible to reason someone out of such a position if 1. they really believe they base their opinions on reasoning and have a strong self-image to that effect, and 2. you can point out that one of their stated beliefs contradicts another of their stated beliefs. Pointing to third-party facts usually does not work; you need to demonstrate contradiction or hypocrisy on their part, and they need to be the sort of person that cares about that.
I know this works in at least some cases; I’ve done it to others and have had others do it to me.
Also, as a wise Jedi Master in a horrible third-part to an ill-conceived prequel trilogy once said, “Only Sith deal in absolutes.”
Hurray, someone else who caught the only worthwhile part of the “Revenge of the Sith!” Unfortunately, the number of quacks in the psychiatric/clinical psychology field outweigh the competent providers by a large margin. They try and inflict the cure du jour on your ass, because they are too often times–at least in the public sector–judged by the number of individuals they cycle through the program, even if they do not actually achieve a cure.
When I first heard that line, I almost choked on my popcorn from the sudden overdose of irony.
You’d better be careful: too much irony in the blood is called haemochromotosis–or is that iron, I get those confused.
“he asked me is if I had paid for sex.”
There is no clinical basis to that question, so why did he ask it?
When a therapist ask sexually inappropriate questions under the guise of offering therapeutic services that’s an abusive relationship.
I feel the same way when a doctor asks if I have any guns. Either question would suggest that the doc feels it’s his job to nanny his patients — which means I don’t want to be one of them.
On the plus side, if they do it early enough you can go see another doctor, and drop that one like a bad habit. (In my state, I think they just figure everyone owns a gun so they wouldn’t bother to ask. God Bless Florida!)
“This is Texas, everyone has a gun. My florist has a gun.”
A good therapist – and what is good for you may not be good for me wand vice versa – can be an enormous help. A bad one ….. well, there’s a REASON that the most iconic monster of the 1990’s was a cannibal-therapist.
I agree with the above comments, even asking if he had “paid for sex” seems out of the blue and a bit invasive. There’s also a slight “when did you stop beating your wife” hint to it as well.
[…] was reading Maggie McNeill’s The Honest Courtesan the other day, and she, in a throwaway line in this post, dismissed the concept of “sex addiction” as so much bunk. In one sentence. With a backhand […]
I have an innate distrust of these barely-almost-sciences. I realize that the good ones know the limitations and are really trying, but some of them seem to think that what they do is science the way physics is science, and that just isn’t the case.
Completely agree. Sex addiction is bunk. If you can’t keep it in your pants, you’re simply irresponsible, not sick.