My career in therapy has been a long and varied one, spanning four decades and calling on different aspects of my presented self. One of the odder things about therapy, I’ve discovered, is that it comes with little in the way of a code of conduct as opposed to other situations you find yourself in — little, that is, beyond showing up, paying your bill in a timely fashion, leaving when the session comes to an end and not upending any of the shards or vessels that might be lying around the office in homage to Freud’s passion for collecting antiquities.
There is no one, in short, to tell you how to behave. Indeed, the assumptions you make about how you should behave can reveal as much about you as what you actually say or do in therapy itself.
The New York Times, November 8, 2014