Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy clients present an enormous diversity of problems to their therapists, who in turn perform a variety of procedures in their efforts to help. The therapist must avoid the adoption of an interpersonal position complementary to and confirmatory of the critical Self-protective position to which the client will almost invariably attempt to move in the course of the therapeutic interaction. Unqualified generalizations about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of psychotherapy are therefore improper, although they have occasionally been made. In keeping with the recent, superbly articulated thesis of A. P. Goldstein, K. Heller, and L. B. Sechrest, psychotherapy is seen as a special aspect of the psychology of behavior change in which social influence processes provide the dominant change-producing vehicle. As in the more general case of personality disorder, a certain mythology has evolved concerning psychotherapy and psychotherapy research.

Interpersonal communication · Interpersonal psychotherapy · Psychotherapist · Medicine · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology