What Does Psychotherapy Look Like? (Part I)

The past few decades had witnessed exponential increase in societal acceptance of psychology /psychotherapy due to the fact that its profound healing effect on human well-being has been repeatedly reported and documented by clinicians, medical professionals, patients and even scientific researchers. 

Psychology, as a term in modern English, can be traced back to late 17th century in modern Latin ("Psychologia"). The more ancient form of psychological intervention, such as Sleep Temple, was recorded over 4000 years in Ancient Egypt. It is safe to say that human beings had had a long history to utilize psychological intervention for treatment of various mental and emotional conditions. Unfortunately, under-utilization of such a powerful tool for restoration of mental health had been a fact in many parts of the world, including well-developed countries because of mistaken beliefs and social stigmas. 

Demystification usually starts with accurate and updated knowledge about the subject. This also holds true for psychotherapy. Today we are going to dissect different major schools of psychology in hopes that this comparison will serve as a clear illustration for our readers. For the ease of writing and reading, I will start from the two on both extremes in the field. 

           Now, let's first look at the behaviorism. The following picture can be a fun way to get the
get behaviorist ​​beliefs across. Behaviorism believes that like animals, human beings' behaviors can be shaped and predicted through stimulus-response conditioning process since introspection / independent thinking does not significantly impact this process.

If you're convinced that human beings are more subject to external stimuli and force of habit than the effect of internal conflicts /unresolved business, or even consider it minimal, you probably see eye to eye with this school of thoughts. In therapy, you can expect to experience relaxation training, modeling, social skills training, behavioral rehearsal, systematic desensitization, exposure & response prevention, and the like.

         Next, please allow me to introduce the opposite of behaviorism--psychoanalysis. Yes, you  

are right------ Sigmund Freud, childhood development analysis, classical couch, therapist sitting behind, controversial topics (psycho-sexuality), seemingly detached "blank slate " / "sounding board" role assumed by the therapists. 

psychoanalytic clinicians believe that insight into unconscious conflicts or long forgotten events in early childhood can help patient "dis-empower" the factors that perpetuate their symptoms and problems. If you suspect that some of your feelings, thoughts, attitudes and behaviors seem to be driven by something vague other than lack of knowledge, skills and awareness, then you can lean more toward this approach (compared to behaviorism). In the sessions, you will likely go through dream analysis, free association (naming things coming up in your mind freely), fantasies, etc. 

       All right, we have outlined the two extreme approaches in the field of psychotherapy. Do some of the practicing therapists use one of them? Maybe.  But the majority of clinicians fall somewhere on the continuum.  In the next post, I will bring up two other major schools that fall in between: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Psychodynamics. (I “see” you later in Part II)  

     ©Minjun Wang 2016 Liberty Psychotherapy, Inc.