Psychotherapy, a discipline intended to help people, is actually a form of marketing. Does that thought make you uncomfortable? Or even seem a little creepy? American psychiatrist Jerome Frank put it eloquently over forty years ago: psychotherapy is the art of Persuasion and Healing. A good therapist needs to do more than just teach her clients to have more positive feelings. She actually needs to sell those feelings, in order to get the results her patients want. Why would that be marketing? Because when your dog pees on your carpet or someone cuts in front of you on the freeway, you need to be sold on why staying cool is more productive than going berserk.
