I just come back from a one-hour interview with a licensed female therapist in her 40s. It was booked for experimental purposes, and because I like cucking myself once in a while. 
Therapists are not necessarily unpleasant human beings, nor are they dumb. The path that led to their occupation, as for everyone, is usually an admixture of practical necessity (making sterile university studies profitable) and idealism.
But their powers of healing are clearly phantasmagoric. It is not unfrequent to run into therapists who seem unhappy themselves, with dark circles under their eyes and a fazed expression (such was the case with my therapist today). The cliché of the "crazed shrink" does seem to have a certain grounding.
For those who never went to therapy, nine times out of ten, it consists in you talking alone for 45 minutes or 60 minutes, with the therapist interjecting a few words every 5 minutes or so supposed to "guide you" and help you reach certain desirable conclusions faster. While this process can undeniably be useful, if you are of reasonable intelligence and rationality, you already know the conclusions. Therapy just brings them out in the open, which can be cathartic, but is not, at least in my experience, any more cathartic than just writing them out on a computer keyboard or a piece of paper. It is certainly more troubling emotionally, because putting yourself in the open like this, associating your deepest thoughts and secrets to your real-life self, is very disturbing.
The problem is: what do you do with the conclusions? And for this, therapy unfortunately has no answer beyond common sense and folk wisdom. This is the great failure, the great tragedy of psychotherapy as a scientific effort: it has nothing to offer to the "analyzed man" once he is analyzed. This criticism was leveled several times in the past at psychoanalysis, by great thinkers and scientists and even by psychoanalysts themselves. The therapist I've just met concluded as much at the end.
Even with problems that are less ideologically charged than inceldom, such as studying and jobs, I have never, ever met a therapist, out of close to a dozen, who proved able to guide me effectively in these regards. And how could they? There are tens of thousands of occupations, and no one can know whether you would suck or not at a given occupation, whether or not you would enjoy it, etc. They never went beyond blanket statements such as "give yourself time", "talk to people who have these jobs" or "get your GED".
Inceldom and related problems (low attractiveness in general) are no exception to the rule. You will never hear any comment that is more sophisticated than what a friend could tell you, or you, yourself, could think after a moderately short period of reflection. Most therapists won't deny that looks matter in physical and social relationships. And like most people, they have no practical solution to offer beyond the suggestion of haircuts, plastic surgery or greater socializing to make up for it.
I do agree with the incel viewpoint that therapy is evil, because I think it is false advertising, and without deliberately doing so, functionally preys financially on ugly people, especially ugly teenagers. (Most teenagers who are sent to therapists by their parents for reasons of insecurity or unhappiness are, in fact, merely dismayed at their ugliness, and would be better served by a good rhinoplasty than by talk therapy.)
Therapists are not necessarily unpleasant human beings, nor are they dumb. The path that led to their occupation, as for everyone, is usually an admixture of practical necessity (making sterile university studies profitable) and idealism.
But their powers of healing are clearly phantasmagoric. It is not unfrequent to run into therapists who seem unhappy themselves, with dark circles under their eyes and a fazed expression (such was the case with my therapist today). The cliché of the "crazed shrink" does seem to have a certain grounding.
For those who never went to therapy, nine times out of ten, it consists in you talking alone for 45 minutes or 60 minutes, with the therapist interjecting a few words every 5 minutes or so supposed to "guide you" and help you reach certain desirable conclusions faster. While this process can undeniably be useful, if you are of reasonable intelligence and rationality, you already know the conclusions. Therapy just brings them out in the open, which can be cathartic, but is not, at least in my experience, any more cathartic than just writing them out on a computer keyboard or a piece of paper. It is certainly more troubling emotionally, because putting yourself in the open like this, associating your deepest thoughts and secrets to your real-life self, is very disturbing.
The problem is: what do you do with the conclusions? And for this, therapy unfortunately has no answer beyond common sense and folk wisdom. This is the great failure, the great tragedy of psychotherapy as a scientific effort: it has nothing to offer to the "analyzed man" once he is analyzed. This criticism was leveled several times in the past at psychoanalysis, by great thinkers and scientists and even by psychoanalysts themselves. The therapist I've just met concluded as much at the end.
Even with problems that are less ideologically charged than inceldom, such as studying and jobs, I have never, ever met a therapist, out of close to a dozen, who proved able to guide me effectively in these regards. And how could they? There are tens of thousands of occupations, and no one can know whether you would suck or not at a given occupation, whether or not you would enjoy it, etc. They never went beyond blanket statements such as "give yourself time", "talk to people who have these jobs" or "get your GED".
Inceldom and related problems (low attractiveness in general) are no exception to the rule. You will never hear any comment that is more sophisticated than what a friend could tell you, or you, yourself, could think after a moderately short period of reflection. Most therapists won't deny that looks matter in physical and social relationships. And like most people, they have no practical solution to offer beyond the suggestion of haircuts, plastic surgery or greater socializing to make up for it.
I do agree with the incel viewpoint that therapy is evil, because I think it is false advertising, and without deliberately doing so, functionally preys financially on ugly people, especially ugly teenagers. (Most teenagers who are sent to therapists by their parents for reasons of insecurity or unhappiness are, in fact, merely dismayed at their ugliness, and would be better served by a good rhinoplasty than by talk therapy.)
