According to Osho, psychotherapists are called 'shrinks' because they literally shrink people: they reduce living, dignified persons into patients and diagnostic labels, making themselves bigger while instilling guilt and worthlessness—just as old priests did. True therapy should expand you through love, restore respect and confidence, and reveal your essential value and interconnectedness with existence.
Because many therapists make people feel small with labels, but real healing should make you feel bigger, loved, and valuable.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why are the psychotherapists called shrinks?
BECAUSE THEY ARE. The word exactly describes what the V psychotherapists are doing -- they shrink people. They shrink people from persons into patients. That's their work. They reduce. When you go to a psychotherapist, you go as a person, with dignity. They reduce you immediately to labels: you are a schizophrenic, paranoid, neurotic. Immediately you are reduced! You are no more the same person with the dignity. A label has been put on you. You are a disease! You have to be treated. By reducing you to a patient, the psychotherapist has become much bigger. The more he reduces you to smallness, the bigger he feels. This is an old trip, only the names have changed. In the past it was the priest, now it is the psychotherapist. In the past, the priest was shrinking you -- trying to create the guilt feeling, trying to create the feeling that…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, AM I REALLY A GOOD THERAPIST? The good therapist will create a friendliness, a deep intimacy with the patient. He should not remain on a high pedestal, far above, as if he has no problems. The fact is therapists have more problems than anybody else. They have their own problems and they have other people's problems too; hence four times more therapists go insane than any other profession, and four times more therapists commit suicide than any other profession. It is not just accidental. But if you can be friendly, if you can hold the hand of the patient, if you can tell him that these are your problems too and it is good to have a companion, to have a friend, "We can work it out together. It is not only that you will be helped, I will be helped also...
Often it seems that a successful therapeutic relationship results in spiritual growth for both client and therapist. Please explain: to what extent is the relationship between client and therapist similar to that of disciple and master?
They are the modern version of the priest. In the ancient days the priest used to serve the same function. He used to keep people under rule, under control. He was serving the king. There was a conspiracy between the priest and the politician. The politician would touch the feet of the priest and the priest was enforcing a certain kind of society on people -- in the name of God. Then by and by God died. Naturally the priest became unemployed. The kings disappeared. Now there are only five kings -- four of playing cards and one of England. Others have disappeared. The king disappeared, the priest disappeared, the God disappeared, the society became democratic. But the society needs the priest. Without the priest the politician cannot function. The priest has come back with a new name -- the psychotherapist is the new priest and psychotherapy is the new…
Beloved Osho, is that true that you have declared your therapists to be the best in the world? And what makes the difference between them and the famous therapists of the esalen institute?
On the one hand he was interested in the mummies, and on the other hand he was afraid. It happens always: things you are very much fascinated with, you are also afraid of -- because too much fascination means you are getting caught in something which may prove beyond your capacities, and you may end up in something you never wanted. Ten times Jung booked a ticket to go to Egypt, and every time he would find some excuse not to go. He would fall sick, he would have a fever, and the ticket had to be canceled. And he knew perfectly well -- he was a very keen observer -- he knew perfectly well, "Why does it happen only when I book a ticket? Otherwise I am perfectly healthy -- no fever, nothing. As the time comes closer, when I have to leave the next day, I cannot sleep…
In intensive psychotherapy the patient may either be talking or listening, that is, trying to hear from within. Only the latter is of value. A good therapist, especially if love exists, will hit on many ways of heightening this process of listening for the unexpected. Is this a form of meditation? In fact, might it be said that ideally, both therapist and patient are meditating together?
Everybody is born to remain healthy and happy. Everybody is seeking health and happiness, but somewhere something is missing and everybody becomes miserable. Misery should be an exception; it has become the rule. Happiness should be the rule; it has become an exception. I would like a world where buddhas are born, but nobody remembers them because they are the rule. Now Buddha is remembered, Christ is remembered, Lao Tzu is remembered, because they are exceptions. Otherwise, who would bother about them? If there were a buddha in every house, and if there were buddhas all over the marketplace and you could meet Lao Tzu anywhere, who would bother? Then that would be the simple rule. It should be so. Lao Tzu says,'When the world was really moral there was no possibility of becoming a saint.' When the world was really religious there was no need for religions. People were…