Therapeutic Approaches

What psychotherapy is, the therapeutic alliance, behaviour, cognitive and humanistic therapies, what helps healing, ethics, yoga and meditation, and rehabilitation.

Key ideas

• Psychotherapy is a voluntary, confidential relationship between a client and a trained therapist, guided by a theory and limited in time.
• The therapeutic alliance rests on trust, empathy (feeling from the client’s point of view) and unconditional positive regard.
• Therapies differ on cause: psychodynamic looks at inner conflicts, behaviour therapy at faulty learning, existential therapies at meaning in the present.
• Behaviour therapy uses techniques such as reinforcement, token economy, modelling, relaxation and systematic desensitisation.
• Cognitive therapies change unhelpful beliefs and thought patterns; cognitive behaviour therapy combines them with behavioural techniques.
• Healing comes from the techniques, the alliance, catharsis, and the client’s and therapist’s own qualities.
• Rehabilitation helps people who have recovered become self-sufficient, through occupational, social skills, cognitive and vocational training.

Remember

Watch out

• Confusing empathy with sympathy: sympathy is pity, empathy is understanding from the inside.
• Linking RET to Beck: Ellis gave RET, Beck gave cognitive therapy.
• Thinking the therapist gives advice like a friend: therapy is a professional relationship with trained help.

Worked example