Hard-hitting therapy

News from Russia of a bizarre new form of therapy involving lashing clients with a stick.
     According to the New York Daily News:

     Patients with a range of addiction problems — including sex addicts and workaholics — can now see a counsellor to receive up to 60 LASHES with a cane. 
     The hard-hitting therapy has been declared a breakthrough in psychology by experts during trials in Siberia, Russia.
     At an appointment patients are given the extreme treatment before having a more conventional session simply talking and expressing their feelings.
     The treatment has been pioneered by Dr. Sergei Speransky, director of Biological Studies at Novosibirsk Institute of Medicine, who admitted undergoing flogging treatment as an antidote to his own bouts of depression.

     Paying someone to hit you with a stick might gratify masochistic tendencies but any therapeutic benefits seem extremely dubious. At my school there was a geography teacher who liked to punish students by whacking them with his hockey stick, which he called "my willy" (I swear I'm not making this up). He was also fond of hurling his wooden blackboard duster at pupils, and occasionally had been known to grab a miscreant, drag him to the front of the classroom, and plunge his head into a bucket of cold water which he kept on his desk. Who knows how many children he traumatized over the decades with such barbarism. Some people say they had a good experience of boarding school. Many however did not and still suffer today from the devastating consequences of broken attachments and a stunted, shut-off emotional life (I was spared the former—I was a day pupil). Joy Schaverien calls this boarding school syndrome, and many of the afflicted end up in positions of power. And in therapy, too. Repression and denial work up to a point, and then they stop working. The middle-age man suddenly bursts into tears on his way to work one day, or out of the blue he hits his wife, or he finally notices that his drinking has got completely out of control. A crack appears in the facade. For the lucky ones, the crack lets in a little light. With some coaxing, such men emerge, blinking, out of their psychic foxholes, to discover that the war is over.
     While this supposed Siberian spanking therapy is extreme, there are many other, subtler, more insidious ways that therapists can abuse their clients. A skilled therapist might challenge you, provoke you, stir things up, which can be all well and good. There might be times when you leave a session feeling really terrible, as fragmented as a shattered mirror. You might even at times hate your therapist. These things are often all part of a healthy, helpful therapeutic process. Psychotherapy is not just about patting a client on the head and offering nice affirmations. The "do not disturb" sign hangs on the outside of the door, not the inside.
     But if you feel that your therapist doesn't have your best interests at heart, isn't on your side, is exerting an unhealthy power over you, undermines you, always makes you feel bad, or in some way seems to take out their own issues on you, then you have a choice. You could stick around and explore what's going on, share your experience of the therapist and vice versa and analyse the dynamics of your relationship and so on, all the while blaming yourself. Or do yourself a favour and walk. Don't let anyone beat you with a stick, whether actual or metaphorical.