Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction with adults, to help a person change behavior and overcome problems in desired ways. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. There is also a range of psychotherapies designed for children and adolescents, which typically involve play, such as sandplay. Certain psychotherapies are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders. Others have been criticized as pseudoscience.
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965.
Sándor Ferenczi was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of Sigmund Freud.
Melanie Klein was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested that pre-verbal existential anxiety in infancy catalyzed the formation of the unconscious, resulting in the unconscious splitting of the world into good and bad idealizations. In her theory, how the child resolves that split depends on the constitution of the child and the character of nurturing the child experiences; the quality of resolution can inform the presence, absence, and/or type of distresses a person experiences later in life.
Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective that rose to prominence in the mid-20th century in answer to the limitations of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and B. F. Skinner's behaviorism. With its roots running from Socrates through the Renaissance, this approach emphasizes the individual's inherent drive toward self-actualization, the process of realizing and expressing one's own capabilities and creativity.
Gestalt therapy is a form of psychotherapy which emphasizes personal responsibility, and focuses upon the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist–client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation. It was developed by Fritz Perls, Laura Perls and Paul Goodman in the 1940s and 1950s, and was first described in the 1951 book Gestalt Therapy.
Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), previously called rational therapy and rational emotive therapy, is an active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy, the aim of which is to resolve emotional and behavioral problems and disturbances and to help people to lead happier and more fulfilling lives.
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Kingdom and abroad. The Trust is based at the Tavistock Centre in Swiss Cottage. The founding organisation was the Tavistock institute of medical psychology founded in 1920 by Dr. Hugh Crichton-Miller. It has long been regarded as a professional centre of excellence of international renown, in its application of psychoanalytic ideas to the study and treatment of mental health and interpersonal dynamics.
Murray Bowen was an American psychiatrist and a professor in psychiatry at Georgetown University. Bowen was among the pioneers of family therapy and a noted founder of systemic therapy. Beginning in the 1950s he developed a systems theory of the family.
Supervision is used in counselling, psychotherapy, and other mental health disciplines as well as many other professions engaged in working with people. Supervision may be applied as well to practitioners in somatic disciplines for their preparatory work for patients as well as collateral with patients. Supervision is a replacement instead of formal retrospective inspection, delivering evidence about the skills of the supervised practitioners.
Donald Meltzer (1922–2004) was a Kleinian psychoanalyst whose teaching made him influential in many countries. He became known for making clinical headway with difficult childhood conditions such as autism, and also for his theoretical innovations and developments. His focus on the role of emotionality and aesthetics in promoting mental health has led to his being considered a key figure in the "post-Kleinian" movement associated with the psychoanalytic theory of thinking created by Wilfred Bion.
Harlene Anderson is an American Psychologist and a cofounder for the Postmodern Collaborative Approach to therapy. In the 1980s, Anderson and her colleague Harold A. Goolishian pioneered a new technique that is used to relate to patients within therapy through language and collaboration, and without the use of diagnostic labels. This approach to therapy places the patient in control of the therapy session and asks the therapist to focus on the present therapy session and ignore any preconceived notions they may have. This approach was first developed for the use of family and mental health therapy, but has since expanded into a variety of professional practices such as organizational psychology, higher education, and research.
Rafael E. Lopez-Corvo is a psychoanalyst. He served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis and was an associate professor at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He has a private practice in Toronto. He is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association.
Bradford Keeney, Ph.D. is a creative therapist, cybernetician, anthropologist of cultural healing traditions, improvisational performer, and spiritual healer. Bradford Keeney has served as a professor, founder, and director of clinical doctoral programs in numerous universities. He is the originator of several orientations to psychotherapy including improvisational therapy, resource focused therapy, and creative therapy. He is the inventor of recursive frame analysis, a research method that discerns patterns of transformation in conversation. A Clinical Fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, he received the 2008 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the Louisiana Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
A clinical formulation, also known as case formulation and problem formulation, is a theoretically-based explanation or conceptualisation of the information obtained from a clinical assessment. It offers a hypothesis about the cause and nature of the presenting problems and is considered an adjunct or alternative approach to the more categorical approach of psychiatric diagnosis. In clinical practice, formulations are used to communicate a hypothesis and provide framework for developing the most suitable treatment approach. It is most commonly used by clinical psychologists and psychiatrists and is deemed to be a core component of these professions. Mental health nurses and social workers may also use formulations.
Family therapy, also referred to as couple and family therapy, marriage and family therapy, family systems therapy, and family counseling, is a branch of psychotherapy that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view change in terms of the systems of interaction between family members.
Lene Auestad is an author and a philosopher from the University of Oslo. She has written on the themes of prejudice, social exclusion and minority rights, and has contributed to public debates on hate speech.
Systemic design integrates systems thinking and human-centered design, with the intention of helping designers cope with complex design projects. The recent challenges to design coming from the increased complexity caused by globalization, migration, sustainability render traditional design methods insufficient. Designers need better ways to design responsibly and to avoid unintended side-effects. Systemic design intends to develop methodologies and approaches that help to integrate systems thinking with design towards sustainability at environmental, social and economic level. It is a pluralistic initiative where many different approaches are encouraged to thrive and where dialogue and organic development of new practices is central.
Clinical pluralism is a term used by some psychotherapists to denote an approach to clinical treatment that would seek to remain respectful towards divergences in meaning-making. It can signify both an undertaking to negotiate theoretical difference between clinicians, and an undertaking to negotiate differences of belief occurring within the therapeutic relationship itself. While the notion of clinical pluralism is associated with the practice of psychotherapy, similar issues have been raised within the field of medical ethics.
Christian van Nieuwerburgh (1971) is a UK-based executive coach, academic, consultant, and author. He is Professor of Coaching and Positive Psychology at the University of East London (UEL) and Executive Director of Growth Coaching International, a Sydney-based global coach training provider for the education sector. As an author, he is best known for An Introduction to Coaching Skills: A Practical Guide, now in its third edition (2021). He has written or edited a number of key texts in his field: Coaching in Education: Getting Better Results for Students, Educators and Parents (2012), Coaching in Professional Contexts (2014), Coaching Educativo, Coaching in Islamic Culture: The Principles and Practice of Ershad, The Leader’s Guide to Coaching in Schools, and Advanced Coaching Practice.
