Seriously though ... I see your point but don't totally agree. In my own therapy in October, my therapist really did teach me how to speak effectively. She taught me total control and introduced me to controlling my fluency in the outside world. I suppose she could try to motivate me, and she does to a certain degree in follow up sessions. But really, the ball's in my court. Even if I decide to stick it in my pocket and insist that she has it.
We are mixing different frames of reference.. :-)
I completely agree that in your situation (the patient's reference frame) the best strategy is definitely "the ball's in my court", because you can only change yourself, and not wait for the outside world to change you. I recommend everyone who is "on a therapy" (sounds like "on a diet" :-) to be 100% determined for change and take control of your destiny.
However, once you shift from the first-person to a third-person view, the ball game is a different one. It makes sense to say:
1) the patient did not work hard enough.
2) the therapist was not able to motivate the patient more. (What I actually mean is to give the patient tools to motivate himself.)
3) The therapist did not find the therapy that requires least motivation.
4) The therapist community failed to develop a therapy / treatment that requires less or no motivation.
Another example is diets. Forget all diets, I can tell them "I make you slim. You only need to follow my rules."
My rules are simple:
1) Dont take a second serving.
2) Eat a fruit instead of chocolate or crisps.
3) Do physical exercise twice a week for one hour.
If you follow my rules, you WILL become slim. Virtually all diets follow this pattern. The patients' best strategy is to be 100% determined. However, the sobering fact is that only 5% keep off the lost weight and the average weight will be slightly higher a year about the diet!! Still, your best strategy is to be 100% confident about the outcome. (I am not going into the debate that some people due to their genetic makeup are less likely to relapse.)
Or as Carl Joakim Gagnon wrote:
The basic distinction is an interesting one. It's the one philosopher Thomas Nagel talks about: viewing oneself either as a scientific object, at the mercy of forces we can try to understand, or as an autonomous being with responsibility for ourselves.