RevisePsych

Psychological

What is Psychotherapy?

 

• Treatment of emotional, behavioural or personality problems by psychological means.

 

• Different techniques may be used to treat the problems.

Characteristics of all Psychotherapies

• An intense, emotionally charged, confiding relationship with a helping person.

 

• A rationale, which contains an explanation of the patient’s distress and of the methods for its release.

 

• The provision of new information about the nature and origins of the patient’s problems and of ways of dealing with them.

 

• Hope in the patient that he can expect help from the therapy.

 

• An opportunity for experiences of success during the course of therapy and a consequent enhancement of the sense of mastery.

 

• The facilitation of emotional arousal in the patient. (Jerome Frank 1971)