The classical analysts got one thing right: you cannot “cure” people by merely sympathising with them on their misfortune. Beware pity & Mitleid. 

But they got one thing wrong: you cannot “cure” people if you withdraw from them emotionally. The therapist has to be an incitement to them to achieve a higher state of harmony & repair. Pace Freud, the task of the analyst is not to be a “mirror” to the patient. Nor is this what Freud himself did. It is to show that a higher unification is possible. 

Physician heal thyself, said Nietzsche, because by doing so you give your patient the courage to heal himself.