Psychotherapy is a set of techniques intended to cure or improve psychological and behavioral or emotional problems in humans. The commonest form of psychotherapy is direct personal contact between therapist and patient, mainly in the form of talking. Because sensitive topics are often discussed during psychotherapy, therapists are expected, and usually legally bound, to respect patient privacy and client confidentiality.
Schools and approaches
Psychoanalysis was the earliest form of psychotherapy, but many other theories and techniques are also now used by psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, personal growth facilitators and social workers. Techniques for group therapy have been developed.
While behaviour is often a target of the work, many approaches value working with feelings and thoughts. This is especially true of the psychodynamic schools of psychotherapy, which today include Jungian therapy and Psychodrama as well as the psychoanalytic schools. Other approaches focus on the link between the mind and body and try to access deeper levels of the psyche through manipulation of the physical body. Examples are Rolfing, Pulsing and Postural Integration.
A distinction can also be made between those psychotherapies that employ a medical model and those that employ a humanistic model. In the medical model the client is seen as unwell and the therapist employs their skill to help them back to health. In the humanistic model the therapist facilitates learning in the individual and the clients own natural process draws them to a fuller understanding of themselves. An example would be Gestalt therapy.
Some psychodynamic practitioners distinguish between more uncovering and more supportive psychotherapy. Uncovering psychotherapy emphasizes facilitating clients' insight into the roots of their difficulties. The best-known example of an uncovering psychotherapy is classical psychoanalysis. Supportive psychotherapy, by contrast, stresses strengthening clients' defenses and often providing encouragement and advice. Depending on the client's personality, a more supportive or more uncovering approach may be optimal.
Cognitive behavioural therapy is particularly common where the mode of psychotherapy is dictated by the demands of insurance companies who wish to see a financially limited commitment.
A computer program called ELIZA has been built to perform an automated and extremely simplified version of Rogerian psychotherapy.
There is considerable controversy over which form of psychotherpy is most effective, and more specifically, which types of therapy are optimal for treating which sorts of problems. Psychotherapy outcome research -in which the effectiveness of psychotherapy is measured by questionnaires given to patients before, during, and after treatment- has had difficulty distinguishing between the different types of therapy. All types of therapy show overall effectiveness, with none showing significantly better results than any of the others. Many psychotherapists believe that the nuances of psychotherapy cannot be captured by this type of research, and prefer to rely on their own clinical experiences and conceptual arguments to support the type of treatment they practice.
Research has clearly shown, however, that the quality of the relationship between therapist and patient is a crucial predictor of psychotherapy outcome. In light of this finding, some have argued that the type of psychotherapy by which a patient is treated is much less important than the patient's rapport with the therapist. Accordingly, most contemporary schools of psychotherapy focus on the healing power of the therapeutic relationship.
Person centred psychotherapy
Person centred psychotherapy was developed by Carl Rogers. He referred to it as counselling rather than psychotherapy. He also believed that the relationship between the client and the therapist is not a patient-doctor relationship in which the patient passively submits to something that is done to him/her by the healer. On the contrary, it should be a person-to-person relationship in which the therapists talks with the client. By using the word "client" instead of "patient," Rogers wanted to indicate that the client is not sick in any organic sense.
List of psychotherapies
In the 20th century many psychotherapies appeared in western societies.
- Adlerian therapy
- Analytical psychology
- Art Therapy
- Autogenic psychotherapy
- Behavior therapy
- Biodynamic psychotherapy
- Bioenergetic analysis
- Biosynthesis
- Brief therapy
- Classical Adlerian Psychotherapy
- Co-Counselling
- Cognitive analytic psychotherapy
- Cognitive behavioural psychotherapy
- Concentrative movement therapy
- Contemplative Psychotherapy
- Core process psychotherapy
- Daseins analytic psychotherapy
- Depth Psychology
- Dialectical behavior therapy
- Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
- Encounter groups
- Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Existential analysis
- Family systems therapy
- Feminist therapy
- Focusing
- Freudian psychotherapy
- Gestalt therapy
- Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy
- Group therapy
- Holotropic Breathwork
- Humanistic psychology
- Hypnotherapy
- Integrative Psychotherapy
- Jungian psychotherapy
- Logotherapy
- Multimodal Therapy
- Narrative Therapy
- Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)
- Personal construct psychology (PCP)
- Positive psychotherapy
- Postural integration
- Primal integration
- Process Oriented Psychology
- Primal therapy
- Provocative therapy
- Psychedelic psychotherapy
- Psychoanalysis
- Psychodrama
- Psychodynamic psychotherapy
- Psycho-Organic analysis
- Psychosynthesis
- Pulsing (bodywork)
- Rational emotive behaviour psychotherapy
- Reality therapy
- Reichian psychotherapy
- Rogersian (or Rogerian) psychotherapy
- Rolfing
- Sophia analysis
- Self Relationship (or Sponsorship)
- Systemic therapy
- T Groups
- Transactional analysis (TA)
- Transpersonal psychotherapy
List of techniques used in psychotherapy
The following techniques may be employed in psychotherapy although which are used will depend on the nature of the therapy
- Art work
- Dance movement therapy
- Catharsis
- Coaching
- Dream analysis and interpretation
- Empathy
- Hot seat
- Hypnosis
- Journal work
- Massage
- Minimal Encouragers
- Paradoxical intention
- Reflective Listening
- Regression
- Role play
- Sand play
- Unconditional positive regard
- Validation
- Working through Projections
- Working through Transference
