Therapists have incentive to say what you want to hear?

It seems that my frustration with therapy is not uncommon, I seem to run into more people who had trouble with it than those who said it helped them.

I have tried 4 so far. The first attacked my wife on the first session. The second recommended a book written by a 'self help guru' who has no training at all, and is accused of using cult like tactics at her 'seminars'. The third ignored my wife's emotional abuse, and said "those are games, do you want to find real love now?" Ahh no, those are not games, thats emotional abuse.

The fourth is a full psychologist, and so far has been great... except for his knowledge level. He is not familiar iwth the myers briggs personality types at all. And when I said "Well i have read that the myers briggs is being phased out anyway, as it was not really very accurate or detailed" his reply was "Oh really, I thought it was widely used." If it is widely used, why do you have zero knowledge in it?

Then I brought up attachment theory, and he said "I am not very familiar with attachment theory". Isn't attachment theory one of the really big theories now about how people approach relationships?

One thing that someone mentioned to me online was: "Therapists will tell you what you want to hear, their main incentive is to get you to come back the next week to get more money. If they solve your issues, they lose money".

I doubt they do it on purpose much, but is this dynamic relaly very healthy for people in this industry? If they tell someone the harsh truth, they might likely not ever come back. So if they tell them what they want to hear, they make more money.

This also backs up what happened with my mother. I have a ton of problems with her, and she was controlling with my dad (who has his own issues). She was overprotective, hyper critical, etc. She said that therapy helped her because "I realized it was your dads fault". HA!

If anything, they both were at fault. They both grew up in abusive households, but the therapist never even TOUCHED on that iwth my mother apparently. Sheesh.

Overall, I have lost a lot of faith in therapists. But without therapy, I dont know if I can be as healthy as I want to be.

Actually it's not in a therapist's interest to tell you what you want to hear. Telling you what you want to hear will lead to you not ever changing your thoughts or approach to anything. If you don't change any of that stuff you won't improve on any problems you were seeking help with in the first place. Lack of change in the problems you sought help for usually makes you believe you are wasting your money and need to leave unhelpful therapy. So it doesn't actually make any sense that therapists would tell you what you want to hear.

In comparison, changing your problems on a deep and ongoing level usually takes many years of therapy. They will usually tell you stuff you don't actually want to hear and don't agree with. They just try to do it in a way that is thoughtful and compassionate and as you are ready to hear it (as opposed to telling you everything you don't want to notice about yourself at once and overwhelming you).

In relation to what you said about your mother's therapist not touching on her growing up in an abusive household... Usually therapy is directed by the patient and what the patient wants to talk about and resolve. If she chose to not to focus on her upbringing in therapy, then the therapist is hardly going to force her to, that would be really untherapeutic. The patient usually has to express some desire to think about an issue in order for it to be brought up and beneficial to try and deal with. Therapy is only as good as the motivation of the person seeking treatment, if the patient doesn't have a strong desire to talk about and resolve various issues then no-one can force them to, the therapist can only make an observation to the patient that the patient is avoiding something.

In relation to your psychologist.. You could ask him what he has put work into learning about if you are concerned. Attachment theory is important as a concept but he might have been putting more work into learning how to work with people who demonstrate attachment problems (even if he couldn't necessarily label their attachment style). I wouldn't personally be concerned that he doesn't know much about Myer Briggs, that's not really something that seems to get much mention or thought in current academic books, at least not in anything I've read (not that I'm any kind of expert or anything).

If you feel like you need someone with more training and knowledge you could always look into finding a psychotherapist or a psychoanalyst as both of these professionals require more training than psychologists usually (you could double check their credentials and training, I'm not sure about what country you are in but usually those both have more training that psychologists. You'd want to check the specifics on any individual you were thinking about seeing).

Don't lose hope. I've had two amazing therapists (one a psychotherapist and one a psychoanalyst). I've also had one lousy psychologist. The good ones are out there, it can just take a bit of work to find a treatment style that is helpful to you and a person that you can work well with.