Psychotherapy in psychology. What is it, methods, types: group, existential, cognitive, family, behavioral, goal

Definition 1

Psychotherapy is a scientific field associated with psychological practice. Its main goal is to help a person understand his problems, the reasons for their occurrence, as well as ways to solve them. There are many psychological schools, methods and types of psychotherapy that look at each problem in their own way and put forward their own ways to solve it.

Let's look at the most well-known types of psychotherapy. These include:

• Gestalt therapy;
• systemic family psychotherapy;
• cognitive behavioral psychotherapy;
• psychoanalysis;
• neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

Psychotherapy methods

In psychotherapy, there are a huge number of different practices that allow you to deal with a large list of mental disorders, for example, depression. Even ordinary autogenic training can help the patient if their complex is compiled correctly. You can find an effective self-medication method that will allow you to learn to control your feelings. The next time you feel panicky, you'll know how to shift to a positive state of mind and relax your muscles. And special trainings in a playful form will help solve many problems between individuals. These include:

• play therapy, during which two people play certain roles;
• exposure to music, when the sound is associated with various events in the life of a young couple;
• fairytale therapy - psychological treatment using scenes from famous fairy tales.

Various types of psychotherapy, which will be described below, will help you cope with a serious illness. However, it will be quite difficult to cope with prolonged depression without medication. If you feel panicked, it is best to immediately seek help from a qualified specialist. There are some techniques that allow you to escape from depression at home:

• art therapy is an activity that involves painting pictures, making handicrafts or taking photographs;
• distraction from the situation with the help of various books that a psychologist helped you choose;
• zootherapy - eliminating unpleasant ailments with the help of pets;
• neurolinguistic programming – drawing up a set of priorities and influencing them;
• Gestalt therapy - studying oneself through memories;
• Holotropic breathing is a special technique that helps to introduce oneself into a state of altered consciousness.

Not all of these methods may work equally well for all patients. Therefore, before trying one or another method of getting rid of depression in practice, it is first recommended to consult with a specialist. Below we will describe the types of psychotherapy that can help you get rid of depression and other mental disorders. Having become familiar with what such processes are, you may have a desire to seek help from a psychiatrist.

Cognitive behavioral psychotherapy

Three directions are usually used:

1. Changing behavior using rewards for desired behavior and punishment for unwanted behavior, development of reflexes.
2. Method of social teaching, working through a problem situation with a specialist.
3. Method of confrontation. First, the client learns relaxation techniques, and then imagines himself in a stressful situation. Then again immersion in relaxation, and then imagining yourself in a stressful situation, but together with a psychotherapist. In the end, the patient independently relaxes and immerses himself in stressful conditions.

Individual psychotherapy

The basis of the psychotherapeutic process is the interaction between the patient and the doctor. In this case, it is very important that the patient is completely open to the specialist and trusts him completely. Only on the basis of mutual trust will the doctor be able to get to the root of the problem and provide appropriate assistance.

The main tasks of individual psychotherapy:

• deep study of the patient’s personality during a conversation;
• identification of etiopathogenetic mechanisms that contribute to the emergence and maintenance of painful symptoms, with a view to their further study;
• achieving a state of awareness by the patient of the cause-and-effect relationships between his disease and behavioral characteristics;
• providing reasonable assistance that does not go beyond the patient's consent;
• correction of the patient’s behavior patterns and teaching him self-control techniques that will allow him to avoid negative feelings in the future.

This all sounds more complicated than it actually is. In general, the patient expects a number of ordinary procedures that do not represent anything supernatural. To begin with, the doctor will talk with you on a distant topic and observe your behavior during communication. After this, he will begin to ask you individual questions that may cause an emotional reaction in you. Don’t hold back and tell the specialist everything that’s on your mind. After this, as a rule, a course of psychotherapy is prescribed, which consists of several sessions of similar conversations. The doctor will try to find out the root of your problem, and you will help him in every possible way. Some psychotherapy techniques are based on proper breathing, others on self-control through visualization of different images. A specialist will definitely teach you similar techniques or prescribe medication.

Psychotherapy: what is the essence of the method?

If you decide to turn to a psychologist for help and are focused on long-term work, then what does it consist of? What is the focus? What methods will the psychologist use?

I’ll say right away that we will be talking about non-drug therapy. The essence and methods of work depend on the direction you choose. This can be psychoanalysis, gestalt therapy, cognitive-behavioral and humanistic therapy, symboldrama, body-oriented, art therapy and many others.

I work in the direction of Gestalt therapy, using a dialogue-phenomenological approach. I will describe here the principles and methods that guide my work.

Very briefly: how do difficulties arise in a person’s life?

Each of us has a certain level of vital energy. We spend energy on realizing our desires, needs, maintaining life, and achieving goals.

A person has a lot of needs, some of them are basic, some are social. Difficulties arise due to the fact that many needs are not recognized by a person and are almost not manifested outwardly. And their existence can be guessed only by indirect signs. Some of people’s needs are denied and devalued due to negative past experiences. Some needs are often replaced by others, more superficial. The implementation of some is associated with feelings of fear, guilt or shame. We also try to satisfy many needs in ways that don’t quite work, and we don’t understand why. There remains a very small part of our desires, which we are aware of and freely implement in life. In the best case, this is approximately 30-40% of the possible, as a rule - 15-20%, and if a person is depressed - then less than 10%.

Question: where does the energy intended for the realization of our needs and desires go?

As a rule, it is used for other purposes: it manifests itself in the form of fear, anxiety, various symptoms and diseases. It is suppressed in such a way that a person falls into procrastination, apathy and depression. It can be released involuntarily in the form of crying, outbursts of anger, irritation. Can implement imaginary needs. And then a person achieves success in a certain area, but does not feel satisfied. Also, energy can be realized only in one activity - this is how dependence on work, food, relationships, sex is formed. Alcohol and drugs help him achieve illusory pleasure.

As a result: a person does not realize himself fully , does not receive all possible benefits, does not feel satisfaction, and at the same time acquires many unpleasant symptoms in the form of depression, illness, addiction, and experiences difficulties that make him suffer. A person complains about symptoms and difficulties to a psychologist.

The essence of psychotherapy is as follows:

1. The ability to listen to yourself. "What is happening to me?" and “What do I want?” - two questions that puzzle many. During psychotherapy, a person begins to pay more attention to himself, his life, desires, to understand what is important to him, to distinguish true desires from false ones. A visit to a psychologist makes a person’s life and desires more conscious.

2. Emphasis on feelings. Feelings tell us about our desires; they contain hidden energy for their implementation. Feelings such as anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, anger show where the blockage occurred. The task is to discover these feelings, experience them and find a way to get what you want. In the process of therapy, a person begins to recognize his own desires and feelings, learns to live them in contact, and experience joy and pleasure.

3. Focus on relationships. Our needs are realized in relationships with other people. How does a person build relationships? What needs does he have in a relationship? How satisfied are they? What does he allow himself and what does he not? How does he stop himself? By telling a psychologist about his relationship and experiencing the feelings associated with it, the client becomes bolder in life.

4. Therapeutic contact. The relationship between the client and the psychologist will also reveal some of the person's important needs. The usual ways of building contact will also be visible. The client will be angry, flatter, manipulate, reject, devalue, try to win over the psychologist, feel shame, blame, and much more. The task of both is to notice what is happening in the relationship, to honestly discuss feelings and expectations, to hear each other. In this way, a person’s ability to build clearer, more honest and trusting relationships with other people and to realize their interests in them increases.

5. Experience “here and now.” The goal of each session is not only for the person to understand what is happening in his life, to gain “knowledge,” but also, if possible, to express himself in the session and gain new experience. It is important that a mini-change occurs in his perception, feelings, thoughts, behavior, and the client leaves the psychologist’s office a little different than he was before. The “knowledge” obtained in this way has a much greater chance of manifesting itself in life.

6. Variety of methods. In psychotherapy, it is important not to remake yourself, but to learn better, accept and discover new ways to realize your desires .

When we have a choice, ineffective, destructive patterns of behavior cease to be relevant and are eliminated by themselves. We begin to behave spontaneously, diversely, show ourselves from different sides, and use methods that were previously unavailable.

Why does psychotherapy take time? Coming to therapy, a person knows little about himself, his image is stereotypical, his needs are subtle or associated with painful feelings. At the beginning of therapy, the client presents to the psychologist his “bright” side and “acceptable” desires that lie on the surface. Some topics require time and a significant level of trust to approach.

Therapy is not aimed at solving specific issues, but at qualitatively changing a person’s lifestyle and relationship style as a whole. It is not enough to simply give advice, say “do this!” External changes are only possible through internal ones.

Cumulative effect. A person’s constant and close attention to his life over a long period allows new ways of perception and behavior to take hold, and quantitative changes to transform into qualitative ones. Tell me honestly, how many of you have radically changed your life after reading an article or book? How long did the effect last?

As a result of psychotherapy, a person’s life becomes more fulfilling. He discovers that he has many desires and many ways to satisfy them, and realizes himself more fully in life. The amount of his vital energy increases significantly, and the symptoms and difficulties with which the client initially came to the psychologist cease to be relevant for him.

Family sessions

Family psychotherapy is practically no different from the method described above, except that several people take part in the session. As a rule, spouses in whose relationship there is discord, but they want to correct the current situation, resort to the help of a specialist. This technique involves observing several patients individually at once, as well as their relationships. Treatment can be carried out inpatient, outpatient and anonymously.

Also, recently in family psychotherapy, work between groups of different married couples has become common. Patients can speak out fully during the session, as well as look at the problem in another family from the outside. In most cases, this allows you to strengthen your relationship with your spouse as a result of the realization that in your couple, it turns out, everything is not as bad as others. The funny thing is that another pair of spouses will think the same thing about you.

Systemic family psychotherapy

The basis of systemic family therapy is to consider the family as a whole, which includes the relationship between spouses, as well as parents and children. When providing assistance, the psychotherapist must interact with the entire family, and not with individual members.

In a family, it is important to maintain stability and maintain constancy, but often this does not provide the opportunity for family members to develop. Any change in the family has its consequences. This applies to both the age of family members and the birth of a child or the death of one of the relatives.

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Systemic family psychotherapy adheres to the following principles:

• see the problem as a whole. It often happens that one of the parents is dissatisfied with the grades their child gets at school. Having studied the problem as a whole, it turns out that the parent always does homework with the child, which creates a problem for the child, since he does not learn independence. But the parent wants to surround his child with care and attention, which he himself lacks, since he has problems with his spouse. And instead of talking to the spouse and solving their problem, the parent takes attention for himself in another way;
• neutrality. During the session, the specialist should not show his personal attitude towards family members. The attitude towards each of them should be the same;
• hypothetical. You need to constantly ask the question “why” and not “why”. It is necessary to make assumptions about the usefulness of family dysfunction for some of its participants and test this hypothesis;
• sessions must be carried out with all family members at once, which can complicate their interaction.

Behavioral therapy

The more common name is behavioral psychotherapy. It is based on the principle of reciprocal inhibition. The treatment method includes two elements: the formation of a reaction that causes a feeling of fear, and the conditioned inhibition of such feelings. What does it mean?

First, the patient must be put into a state of relaxation, that is, the patient will be asked to lie on the couch in a comfortable position, close his eyes and think about something good. Once the patient is completely calm, he will be shown various hierarchies of circumstances that cause fear. After this, it is necessary to relieve the feeling of fear, returning the patient to the real world. This practice has become widespread in the West due to its effectiveness. Behavioral psychotherapy is also beginning to gain popularity in our country. However, we are still far from reaching Western levels.

Cognitive psychotherapy

The exercises of this technique allow you to learn a positive worldview and improve your well-being through optimistic thinking. Each doctor will prepare several individual tasks for the patient that will allow them to achieve small successes. For example, you will be asked to play a board game or solve a simple logic puzzle. As a result of these techniques, you will feel that you can handle not only small tasks, but also large problems. This will allow the patient to rethink his importance in this world, avoiding false conclusions.

As a result of increasing self-esteem with the help of such personal psychotherapy, one can eliminate the feeling of depression of moderate and mild severity, get rid of anxiety-depressive illness and other disorders associated with an inferiority complex. The patient will also learn to perceive the world in bright colors, and positive thinking, as is known, contributes to success in many endeavors. The main goal of psychotherapy is to eliminate negative thoughts that interfere with the development of the patient’s creative personality.

Meaning and purpose

Psychotherapy as a practical process in psychology is an important phenomenon, the significance of which is manifested in solving the following problems:

1. Changing negative attitudes of patients towards themselves and the world.
2. Influencing the patient’s feelings by replacing negative and life-interfering feelings with positive ones. At the same time, the negative is not denied as existing and fulfilling its role in the psyche; tools for working with these feelings are formed in order to reduce their impact (loss of attention, stress, self-doubt) on a person and increase the chance of a positive attitude towards any situation.
3. Formation in the patient of self-help skills in difficult situations, the ability to separate one’s fantasies from objective reality, and relate to events from different points of view. The important task of psychotherapy is not to show the patient what his problem is, but to teach him to understand it and solve it on his own.

The main goals of psychotherapy are:

• know yourself;
• relieve emotional pain and self-doubt;
• develop a more complete understanding of your psychological problems;
• form effective mechanisms for coping with stress and negative thoughts;
• promote a more accurate understanding of past events and what the patient wants for his future.

Psychotherapy through art

Today, art therapy is one of the most attractive and mysterious activities in practical psychology and psychotherapy. There are quite a few different approaches to this technique, but they are all inextricably linked with the use of art.

In the creative process, a person feels more free and authentic than in ordinary life. With the help of various tools, he can express his negative emotions on a piece of paper. In most cases, there is a place in painting to reflect internal conflicts, unconscious emotions and even negative experiences of past years. All the patient needs to do is draw as accurately as possible what he feels. After this, the specialist may ask you a few questions related to your drawing and prescribe a comprehensive treatment.

Who needs psychotherapy with art?

This type of therapy has great potential and is suitable for a wide range of people. In most cases, it is used as clinical psychotherapy in various medical settings. Useful for people with creative inclinations, the elderly and children with severe somatic diseases, such as:

• delayed speech and mental development;
• hyperactivity;
• autism.

This technique can also be used as a separate branch of child psychotherapy. The fact is that young patients who need the help of a psychologist are not always open to a specialist due to various phobias. In this case, the drawing will allow you to understand what lies in the little patient’s soul, what fears overcome him and how to deal with them correctly.

Art therapy will also help in creative development and absolutely healthy people. This technique allows you to cope with stress, correct phobias and neuroses. If you want to strengthen your relationship with your children, then there is nothing better than drawing art together and discussing all the problems during this process.

Methods

Psychotherapy in psychology is a process that can take place in accordance with several methods. According to the description of empirically supported treatment methods, there are 3 methods of effective psychotherapeutic intervention: cognitive behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy and supportive psychotherapy.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is often considered the most effective treatment for a wide range of disorders . CBT is effective on its own or in combination with other types of treatment to relieve anxiety, depressive symptoms in patients with insomnia, and get rid of bad habits.

The way therapy works is to search for and become aware of automatic thoughts that lead to negative reactions.

Psychodynamic therapy

Therapy is necessary to increase the patient's awareness of his unconscious thoughts and motives for behavior, develop new understanding of his motivation and resolve conflicts.

Brief psychodynamic therapy using psychotherapy has been shown to be an effective treatment for depressive disorder. Therapy also allows you to work through trauma and parent-child relationships.

Supportive psychotherapy

In maintenance therapy, depending on the characteristics of the course of the disease and its general clinical picture, various psychotherapeutic methods can be used:

• rational psychotherapy;
• activating psychotherapy;
• hypnosis therapy;
• autogenic training;
• group psychotherapy;
• types of cognitive impact;
• general health activities.

Psychotherapy is a system of influence of the therapist on the mental state of the patient. In psychology, this process is necessary for targeted, structured and systematic assistance to a person in a difficult life situation.

Knowledge of the types and methods of psychotherapy can help you choose the direction of influence that is closest to your individual needs, which in the future will make psychotherapy the most effective.

Group psychotherapy

Group classes will be more effective if you want to solve problems as a team. The psychotherapist will challenge patients to be as sincere as possible and not to be shy about talking about their feelings and problems. This technique will require a lot of courage from a group of people, but it can be very effective, since during group interaction the doctor will be able to conveniently observe the relationships between patients. Also, the team will inevitably exchange knowledge and life experience.

When you have a trusted friend next to you, it will be much easier for you to start talking about problems. You will be able to listen to opinions on this matter from other colleagues and together you will find the right solution. Also, during such a session, patients will strengthen trust among themselves, which will unite the work team.

Music therapy

Quite an interesting type of psychotherapy, which is based on the use of music for therapeutic purposes. During the session, the doctor will ask the patient to take a comfortable position and relax properly. After this, the specialist will begin to turn on classical music by famous composers and ask the patient what fragments from life he associates with this or that melody. This technique is based on the feelings that will be caused by a person’s memories of a past life. It can be used in both group and individual psychotherapy. It goes well with other psychotherapeutic techniques. It is actively used in the treatment of many somatic diseases.

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is the basis of all existing types of psychotherapy.

Its essence is that during a psychotherapy session a person should tell everything that worries and worries him, about his fantasies and dreams. The psychotherapist will analyze what was said and, on the basis of this, make a diagnosis, voice the connection between the patient’s unconscious and the conscious.

Psychotherapy sessions are needed in order to realize everything that is in a person’s subconscious.

Psychoanalysis is used when ridding a person of neurosis, since the cause of its appearance is the internal contradiction of morality, ethics and intelligence of the individual. A specialist should help find this conflict and resolve it.

Bibliotherapy

Treatment of the patient in this case is carried out by reading various literature, which will be prescribed to you by a specialist. Reading certain books has a stimulating or sedative effect on the body, calming the patient. During such therapy, the patient must necessarily keep a special reading diary, in which it is worth recording not only the names of the works read, but also the emotions that they aroused. This practice is usually applied in an individual form, since it is not suitable for everyone. In the modern world there are not many people left who understand the true value of books, and not everyone can analyze a work. Most often, such sessions are prescribed to creative individuals and young children suffering from mental illness.

Psychological help for depression

A person is designed in such a way that he is not always able to cope with negative events and unpleasant circumstances that come into his life. The emergence of conflicts with management, the loss of a loved one, dismissal from work - all this can easily provoke the development of depression. If the state of anxiety is not dealt with in time, it can only intensify. It will be quite difficult to get out of prolonged depression on your own. However, a psychotherapist will help you solve a problem of almost any complexity related to your state of mind. Through a conversation, the doctor will determine what is changing your emotional background and how to properly deal with the disease in your particular case. Psychotherapy for depression will help relieve the following symptoms:

• chronic fatigue;
• insomnia;
• sad mood;
• lack of will;
• anxiety;
• apathy.

A depressive state can be familiar to a person of absolutely any age. This disease can occur in both an adult and a 10-year-old child. A personal approach to each patient will allow us to identify the cause of the disease and adjust individual treatment, the main goal of which is to increase the patient’s self-esteem and improve the patient’s quality of life. To do this, the doctor can use a variety of methods: from a group session with your participation to hypnosis. All treatment methods are quite effective and have no side effects. In the most advanced cases, drug treatment may be prescribed.

Psychological theories and schools

Psychotherapy in psychology is a direction that can be based on the concepts of many schools and areas of psychotherapy.

The main ones include:

• psychodynamic psychotherapy;
• behavioral psychotherapy;
• cognitive approach;
• humanistic direction of treatment.

The representative of psychoanalysis, a type of psychodynamic approach, is S. Freud, who developed a dynamic model of the psyche based on the opposition of conflicting personality forces.

The elements of the conscious and unconscious were defined by Freud on the basis of the components of the psyche:

1. Eid – the unconscious instinctive part, which includes the innate aspirations of a person, instinctive and irrational impulses of the psyche. Most often they include sexual desires.

   
   

2. The ego is the part of the personality responsible for making decisions, which appears only as a result of the conflict between the Id and the Superego and ensures their interaction.
3. The superego is the unconscious part that includes the highest value system of a person. It is acquired in the process of assimilation of rules of behavior and social norms. This also includes family prohibitions that cause feelings of guilt and fear in a person.

The id operates as a result of 2 types of drive: Eros and Thanatos. The first attraction is determined by the energy of the libido; the second is the desire for destruction. The cause of mental deviations, according to Freud's approach, is the child-parent relationship, which manifests itself in the demands of the Superego in the patient's unconscious.

Another direction of the psychodynamic approach is the analytical psychology of C. Jung. He, unlike Freud, did not consider the energy of the unconscious to be solely sexual; it is a mobile mental principle that determines the degree of intensity of processes in the psyche.

He also separated the collective and individual unconscious, giving special importance to the first. The collective unconscious in a culture manifests itself in the form of archetypes, which are common symbols that are significant for any people, regardless of the cultural factor.

The goal of his therapy is the integration of repressed aspects of the unconscious into a person's life and its integration into the collective unconscious . The therapist takes a directive position as a mentor who interprets to the client everything that happens to him.

Karen Horney belongs to another direction of psychodynamic therapy - “culturalist”. According to him, a neurotic person faces internal conflicts that arise due to basic anxiety, which develops due to unfavorable parent-child relationships.

As a result of an anxious state, a person becomes neurotic, begins to make irrational decisions, use psychological defenses and feel dissatisfied under any circumstances. Awareness and overcoming of these unconstructive strategies is the goal of psychodynamic therapy by K. Horney.

In behavioral psychotherapy, one can highlight the social learning theory of A. Bandura, who identified the implementation of therapeutic modeling procedures in order to form new cognitive and behavioral competence. In general, all representatives of this school achieved desirable human behavior, overcoming aspirations disapproved by society.

They tried to change patients by teaching them productive ways of behaving in certain situations. Thus, behavior therapy comes down to modifying the client’s actions through “punishments” and “rewards.”

In cognitive psychotherapy, behavioral and emotional problems are associated with impaired cognitive processes. The human problem, according to this theory, is erroneous automatic thoughts that need to be changed to objective ones during the treatment process. An example of this school is rational-emotive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis.

The researcher believed that emotional disorders and abnormal behavior are the result of maladaptive irrational beliefs. He saw the treatment as correcting the patient's irrational thoughts and developing self-help skills.

The most prominent representative of the trend is also A. Beck, who believed that the problem of patients is a violation of thinking and perception when analyzing any events. False beliefs, according to the approach of this therapy, are cognitions, and the goal of treatment is their correction.

The humanistic direction includes the following theories:

• Rogers person-centered psychotherapy . Carl Rogers was convinced that the essence of man is positive, but this potential is manifested only in an atmosphere of positive acceptance, empathic understanding and openness to one's feelings. A person, when asking for help, is able to find a way to solve his problems himself. The psychotherapist's task is to create the conditions for positive change;
• existential psychotherapy . Its representative was Rollo May, who was the first, based on the European existential and phenomenological tradition, to formulate the premises and main characteristics of the therapist’s existential attitude in psychotherapy. The therapist did not believe that human nature consists of a set of drives and drives. The goal of treatment in this approach is to help people gain the freedom to realize and realize their potential;
• life-changing psychotherapy. The founder of the theory is James Bugental. The field of application of life-changing therapy is the subjectivity of the patient, that is, his subjective experiences. In the process of development, a person loses his internal guidance, due to the presence of self-objectification and the loss of his aspirations in attempts to satisfy others. As a result of therapy, experiencing his subjectivity, the patient begins to feel more free and have choice where before he experienced coercion;
• Gestalt therapy. The initiator of this theory is Frederick (Fritz) Perls. Gestalt therapy is based on the psychological concept of “unfinished actions.” It often happens that a person tries to avoid living his feelings in response to some situation; he tries to forget about what happened, believing that suppressing thoughts helps get rid of memories.

  
  In fact, suppressed feelings begin to be expressed in an unconscious form, which is why a person may subsequently suffer from repeating scenarios and dissatisfaction with life. Gestalt therapy will allow you to live your feelings, express unsaid things and let go of a once suppressed situation.

Treatment of depression with hypnosis

The use of hypnosis in psychotherapy for depression allows one to discover a lot of data about various mental traumas. You may not even remember them, since the unpleasant situation occurred in distant childhood, but the negative aftertaste on your soul still remains. Often it is events like these that cause depression in adults.

During this procedure, the specialist puts the patient into a trance state, which allows him to find in his subconscious a way to get out of a depressive state. This method of psychological influence is authoritarian. There is also a method of hypnotic treatment, when a specialist is a conductor between the patient and his subconscious, and the patient takes an active part in discussing a particular issue - Ericksonian hypnosis.

First, the patient immerses himself in the past and focuses on himself. Fragments from memories allow you to step back from the perception of the situation and plunge into a deep trance. After this, the patient will begin to see not only the past, but also a projection of a successful future. Along the way, the doctor will ask him questions, as a result of the answers to which it will be possible to adjust the treatment.

Kinds

Psychotherapy in psychology is a system of therapeutic influence on a person, which was formed by many psychological schools and directions. They differ in their basic views on the structure of a person’s personality and therapeutic methods of treatment. Despite the variety of types of psychotherapy, three main directions can be distinguished: behavioral, humanistic, psychodynamic.

You can also distinguish types of psychotherapy depending on the treatment sessions:

• individual and group psychotherapy (depending on the number of participants in therapy);

• directive and non-directive psychotherapy (the directive approach is characterized by the direct participation of the patient in the therapy process, but the solution to his problem is the responsibility of only the doctor; the non-directive type focuses on encouraging the patient to comprehend his actions and take an active part in the treatment);
• volitional and passive (varies depending on the patient’s activity during treatment);
• search and corrective (varies depending on the tasks facing the therapist);
• short-term and long-term (depending on the number of sessions required for treatment);
• casual and symptomatic (with symptomatic psychocorrection, the goal of influence is a certain symptom (anxiety, stuttering, etc.) or a group of symptoms; casual therapy is characterized by the exchange of information between the psychotherapist and the patient, which leads to the patient’s understanding of their traumas and experiences).