The word “psychotherapy” stems from two Greek words: psyche (soul) and therapein (to treat). Even though the first mentions on the treatment of mental diseases could be found as early as in prehistoric times in the form of shamanic practices, the contemporary, scientific and knowledge-based psychotherapy has a relatively short history. It is agreed that its emergence happened upon the publication of Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer’s book entitled “Studies on Hysteria” (1895), which started the first school in psychotherapy, i.e. psychoanalysis. Ever since, a huge number of schools and currents of psychotherapy have been created (there is currently ca. 500 of them!), which makes it significantly difficult to define this peculiar profession. Speaking more broadly, however, psychotherapy means each and every method of treating mental or psychosomatic disorders using intentionally specialised psychological measures (Grzesiuk, 2005). In particular, psychotherapy is an experience that may lead to a better understanding of oneself and that, in turn, may improve the psychosocial functioning and the quality of life of psychotherapy clients (Francesetti et al., 2016; Zinker, 1991). Psychotherapy is sometimes confused with many forms of professional psychological activities. Please note that psychological counselling, psychological diagnosis, crisis intervention, psychological skill training, coaching, mentoring etc. …
Category archives: Scientific research
Psychotherapy: science, craft or art?
Ever since the emergence of modern psychotherapy, there has been a dispute around its scientific status (see Cook et al., 2017; Chrząstowski, 2019; Eysenck, 1952; Lambert, 1992; Rakowska, 2005). Are the psychotherapeutic theory and practice based, or should they be based, on scientific data, just like medicine (see evidence-based medicine)? Or is psychotherapy rather a set of practical skills which can be practiced like craft? Perhaps the psychotherapist should only use their unique intuition and clinical experience while working with people and not subject themselves to the rigid criteria of scientific assessment, and psychotherapy is a form of art and each psychotherapist is an artist to an extent? Trying to answer the above questions, we need to attempt to combine two issues that are difficult to combine at first glance. On the one hand, you need to take into account the criterion of scientific viability from the perspective of philosophy of science (Brzeziński, 2019). On the other hand, the theory- and research-based object of psychotherapy needs to be taken into account, as well as its non-homogeneity, interdisciplinarity and peculiar entanglement into many different disciplines of science – from philosophy, through psychiatry, psychology, sociology, culture studies, down to neurobiology even (Kratochvil, …
Is psychotherapy effective?
More or less since the 1950s, empirical studies started to be carried out into a widely understood effectiveness of psychotherapy (Rakowska, 2005). They attempted to answer fundamentally three questions: a. Is psychotherapy an effective method of treatment and/or supporting people struggling with mental disorders, particularly in comparison to pharmacotherapy?b. What factors affect whether psychotherapy is or is not effective?c. What is the effectiveness of individual schools of psychotherapy? The discussion in this respect was started by an eminent personality psychologist, Hans Eysenck (1952), who carried out a meta-analysis of several dozen studies into psychotherapy effectiveness conducted at the time and came to the conclusion that a more or less the same number of psychiatric patients achieve improvement through psychotherapy and heal spontaneously without any psychotherapeutic intervention. However, literally hundreds of alter studies on psychotherapy effectiveness analysed in a lot of meta-analyses challenged the conclusions of Eysenck and provided reliable empirical data proving the fact that psychotherapy is not only an effective form of treatment of mental disorders, but also a method significantly supporting the development of humans and improving the quality of their lives (see e.g. Bergin, 1971; Elkin et al., 1988; Lambert, 1992; Luborsky et al., 1975; Smith and …