what is psychotherapy

What is Psychotherapy?

Millions of People have found help changing some aspect of their life through psychotherapy, also known as talk therapy or counselling. Psychotherapy involves talking with a trained mental health professional, such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker or counsellor.

The professional helps people gain insight into their feelings, change behaviours, resolve problems or learn how to deal with feelings like stress, grief, loss, fear and sadness. Talk therapy is sometimes combined with homework assignments between sessions. Therapy can be held one-on-one, with couples, families or even in groups. How can psychotherapy help you?  From time to time, we all experience situations where we can benefit from a trained professional. Psychotherapy is helpful with significant life changes, decisions that need to be made and difficulties at home or work.

Talk therapy is also helpful for serious problems that interfere with day-to-day life, such as physical or mental illness. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one-third of adults in the United States have an emotional or substance abuse problem for which they need help. Also, nearly 25 percent of the adult population suffers at some point from depression or anxiety. Therapy can help depression, anxiety disorders and other emotional difficulties, either alone or in combination with medication.


History of Psychotherapy


Treatment of emotional or psychological problems can be traced to antiquity. The ancient Greeks were the first to identify mental illness as a medical condition, rather than a sign of malevolent deities. While their understanding of the nature of the mental illness was not always correct (e.g., they believed that hysteria affected only women, due to a wandering uterus), and their treatments rather unusual (e.g., bathing for depression, blood-letting for psychosis), they did recognize the treatment value of encouraging and consoling words.

With the fall of the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages saw the return of a belief in the supernatural as a cause for mental illness and the use of torture to gain confessions of demonic possession. However, some physicians began to support the use of psychotherapy. Paracelsus (1493-1541) advocated psychotherapy for treatment of the insane.

While there were scattered references to the value of “talking” in the treatment of emotional problems, the English psychiatrist Walter Cooper Dendy first introduced the term “psycho-therapeia” in 1853. Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis around the turn of the century, and made profound contributions to the field with his descriptions of the unconscious, infantile sexuality, the use of dreams, and his model of the human mind.

Freud’s work with neurotic patients led him to believe that mental illness was the result of keeping thoughts or memories in the unconscious. Treatment, primarily listening to the patient and providing interpretations, would bring these memories to the forefront and thus decrease symptoms.

For the next fifty years, Freud’s methods of psychoanalysis and various versions of it were the main psychotherapy used in clinical practice. Around the 1950s, the growth of American psychology led to new, more active therapies that involved the psychotherapeutic process.

The practice of behavioral psychology borrowed principles from animal psychology to treat emotional and behavioral problems. Over the years, behavior therapy has been enhanced to include emphasis on the thoughts and feelings of the person. This combined cognitive-behavioral therapy has become a major type of treatment for many psychiatric conditions.
The interpersonal therapy developed by Carl Rogers during the 1940s focused on the transmission of warmth, genuineness and acceptance from the therapist to the individual. By the late 1960s there were over 60 different types of psychotherapies, ranging from psychodrama (using drama techniques) to guided imagery (using mental pictures and stories).

The next major style of psychotherapy was developed not as the result of new ideas, but due to economic issues. Traditionally, psychotherapy was a long progress, often involving years of treatment. As psychotherapy became more widely available, emphasis was placed on a more brief form of treatment. This trend was further driven by the arrival of managed care insurance plans and limitations to coverage for mental health issues. Today, virtually all therapeutic modalities offer some sort of brief therapy designed to help the person deal with specific problems.