Psychotherapy and Personal Dignity

Does psychotherapy benefit the person who avails himself of its services? I shall argue that it does not. This is not to deny that many people emerge from a period of therapy in better condition than when they began. For my question is not whether people sometimes, as a matter of contingent fact, derive benefits from psychotherapy. People sometimes derive benefits from prayer, transcendental meditation, faith healing, psychedelic drugs, and even from catastrophes when they are resourceful enough to learn from their experiences. The question I wish to explore is whether it is the nature of psychotherapy that it benefits people, or whether whatever benefit one derives from it is accidental, that is, due to circumstances other than the nature of the service performed, in the way that an auto collision may shock a careless driver into better driving habits, being swindled may teach a person to be less gullible, or narrowly escaping death may, as it did for Fyodor Dostoyevsky, deepen one's character and one's vision of life. Because it is not in the nature of these experiences to produce benefit, it would be foolish to court