What is Psychotherapy?

Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. This usually includes increasing individual sense of well-being and reducing subjective discomforting experience. Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change and that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships (such as in a family). Psychotherapy may be performed by practitioners with a number of different qualifications, including psychologists, marriage and family therapists, licensed clinical social workers, counselors, psychiatric nurses, and psychiatrists.

The word "psychotherapy" comes from the Ancient Greek words psyche, meaning breath, spirit, or soul and therapeia or therapeuein, to nurse or cure. Its use was first noted around 1890. It is defined as the relief of distress or disability in a one person by another, using an approach based on a particular theory or paradigm, and that the agent performing the therapy has had some form of training in delivering this. It is these latter two points which distinguish psychotherapy from other forms of counseling or caregiving.

Psychotherapy Systems

There are several main broad systems of psychotherapy:

• Psychoanalysis - the first practice to be called a psychotherapy. It encourages the verbalization of all the patient's thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst formulates the nature of the unconscious conflicts which are causing the patient's symptoms and character problems.
• Cognitive Behavioral - generally seeks by different methodologies to identify and transcend maladaptive cognitions, appraisal, beliefs and reactions with the aim of influencing destructive negative emotions and problematic dysfunctional behaviors.
• Psychodynamic - is a form of depth psychology, the primary focus of which is to reveal the unconscious content of a client's psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension. Although it has its roots in psychoanalysis, psychodynamic therapy tends to be briefer and less intensive than traditional psychoanalysis.
• Existential - is based on the existential belief that human beings are alone in the world. This aloneness leads to feelings of meaninglessness which can be overcome only by creating one's own values and meanings.
• Humanistic - emerged in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis and is therefore known as the Third Force in the development of psychology. It is explicitly concerned with the human context of the development of the individual with an emphasis on subjective meaning, a rejection of determinism, and a concern for positive growth rather than pathology. It posits an inherent human capacity to maximise potential, 'the self-actualing tendency'. The task of Humanistic therapy is to create a relational environment where this tendency might flourish.
• Brief therapy - is an umbrella term for a variety of approaches to psychotherapy. It differs from other schools of therapy in that it emphasizes (1) a focus on a specific problem and (2) direct intervention. It is solution-based rather than problem-oriented. It is less concerned with how a problem arose than with the current factors sustaining it and preventing change.
• Systemic Therapy - seeks to address people not at an individual level, as is often the focus of other forms of therapy, but as people in relationship, dealing with the interactions of groups, their patterns and dynamics (includes family therapy & marriage counseling).
• Transpersonal Therapy - Addresses the client in the context of a spiritual understanding of consciousness.
• Body Psychotherapy or Body-oriented Psychotherapy (also known as Somatic Psychology in USA & Australia) - addresses the whole of the person, including their body, manifestations of symptoms in the body of the client, body language, proprioception, emotional expression, proxemics, psychosomatics etc.

There are dozens of approaches, which continue to be developed around the wide variety of theoretical backgrounds. Many practitioners use several approaches in their work and alter their approach based on client need.