The paper explores the question of whether and in what way psychotherapy may be a ‘dangerous’ profession. Starting with a recognition of personal hostility towards the American self-help approach, I consider why we as a profession may be unwilling to examine other approaches and explore the tension inherent in our work between our own ‘health’ and ‘woundedness’. I consider the dangers - personal and collective - of isolating and insulating ourselves against the wider social, cultural and political world and I assert that: ‘committing ourselves to finding and nurturing the source of responsibility, conscience, truth and freedom in others is not the same as committing ourselves to finding and nurturing that source in ourselves, or in the world’.