But over the years I've learned that the therapist's venture is not to engage the patient in a joint archeological dig. If any patients have ever been helped in that fashion, it wasn't because of the search and the finding of that false trail (a life never goes wrong because of a false trail; it goes wrong because the main trail is false.)

No, a therapist helps a patient not by sifting through the past but by being lovingly present with that person; by being trustworthy, interested; and by believing that their joint activity will ultimately be redemptive and healing. The drama of age regression and incest recapitulation (or, for that matter, any therapeutic, cathartic, or intellectual project) is healing only because it provides therapist and patient with some interesting shared activity while the real therapeutic force — the relationship — is ripening on the tree.

An excerpt from Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom (Thanks Aidan 😘)