I find this to be a very strange question … not because some shrinks are not terribly messed up … there is certainly plenty of incompetence and dysfunction in the psych profession. So of course some of the bad ones tell their clients things that are not true, or dispute the client’s truth too directly or too soon.
But the phrasing of the question contains several really unfounded implications which are:
- this applies to most or all “clinical psychologists”
- the client’s subjective interpretation is sufficiently un-compromised to know for certain what truth/reality actually is
- that your assumptions about truth, and your stories about self and world, should not be substantially disrupted by therapy
And all of those implications demonstrate completely false assumptions.
Perhaps I’m reading too much in to the phrasing of the question, and my own biases and distortions are creating implications that are not really contained therein.
But if not, I would say you misunderstand several important concepts:
- the nature of subjectivity, identity and worldview
- the fallacies in the “lived experience” argument
- the disruptive and destabilizing nature of good therapy
- the homeostasis preserving strategy of “peering” (imagining yourself equally competent) with your therapist
Responding to each of these:
- if you are in therapy (unless you are wise far beyond the normal human), that should imply that your stories and models of the world are not working for you; this would imply that they are out of line with reality or social convention
- a “lived experience” argument is the intellectual sibling of the following insane statement: “I’ve lived through a brain tumor, so now I am a brain surgeon” … experiencing something DOES NOT IMPLY understanding or having mastery over it
- to change your relationship to self and world, your stories MUST SHIFT; that’s what good therapy intends to do and that’s the only reason it’s successful
- your imaginings that you can understand the tactics, motives and professional tricks of trained & competent therapists is a bit arrogant unless you’ve had similar training; additionally, by discrediting them in your own mind, you have just kept yourself stuck by eliminating the safety required to do therapy well; congratulations, you seem to be becoming a master of “[homeostasis preservation](https://www.quora.com/search?q=1.%20homeostasis%20preservation&author=84795924 “www.quora.com”)” — aka not changing and growing
With all of that said, mediocre therapists will OFTEN challenge your beliefs because that is one method of getting you to study and examine them more carefully … in hopes that you might discover how they are hindering your conscious agenda, with a bias toward your very many unconscious agendas
So what unconscious agenda in you is causing you to label some percentage of the psychotherapeutic community as “deceitful and manipulative” … aka gaslighters?
https://www.quora.com/search?q=1.%20homeostasis%20preservation&author=84795924Dewey Gaedcke’s answer to What are the benefits of seeking therapy?