In the Shrink Rap podcast there was some consideration of an article in Newsweek, "Get Shrunk at Your Own Risk", an article which I found rather odd to be honest. I have no doubt that therapy can be harmful -- I voiced considerable concern in the 90's when Multiple Personality Disorder was all the rage and before that when the answer to anyone's problems was confronting parents -- anyone remember John Bradshaw and all the healing the inner child workshops and therapists? What is puzzling to me about the article is the focus on two particular issues -- "stress debriefing" and therapy for dissociative identity disorder (which used to be called MPD).
The stress debriefing counseling, also known as critical incident debriefing, has been criticized for several years as research has shown it to be of little positive effect and often quite reinforcing of pathological behavior. It seems to me that it is not therapists who push this kind of intervention but rather groups and organizations which have bought into what sounds like a good idea -- i.e. offering counseling to people who have suffered trauma -- without having paid attention to the research which has followed in recent years. And most people seeking therapy are not doing so because they have recently experienced the trauma of a disaster. So I don't know how this is relevant to any examination of therapy as it is practiced day to day by trained practitioners.
She also focuses on recovered memory and MPD as representative of therapy somehow. There was extensive critical writing on these issues a decade ago. It did not then represent mainstream psychotherapy and doesn't now.
The article reads as if written by someone with an agenda about therapy. Not all therapists are good. The same is true of physicians, attorneys, accountants and yes, science reporters.