Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, 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. Certain psychotherapies are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders. Others have been criticized as pseudoscience.
Friedrich (Frederick) Salomon Perls, better known as Fritz Perls, was a noted German-born psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Perls coined the term 'Gestalt therapy' to identify the form of psychotherapy that he developed with his wife, Laura Perls, in the 1940s and 1950s. Perls became associated with the Esalen Institute in 1964, and he lived there until 1969. His approach to psychotherapy is related to, but not identical to, Gestalt psychology, and it is different from Gestalt theoretical psychotherapy.
Claudio Benjamín Naranjo Cohen is a Chilean-born psychiatrist of Arabic/Moorish, Spanish and Jewish descent who is considered a pioneer in integrating psychotherapy and the spiritual traditions. He is one of the three successors named by Fritz Perls, a principal developer of Enneagram of Personality theories and a founder of the Seekers After Truth Institute. He is also an elder statesman of the US and global human potential movement and the spiritual renaissance of the late 20th century. He is the author of various books.
Clinical psychology is an integration of science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development. Central to its practice are psychological assessment, clinical formulation, and psychotherapy, although clinical psychologists also engage in research, teaching, consultation, forensic testimony, and program development and administration. In many countries, clinical psychology is a regulated mental health profession.
David Healy, a professor of psychiatry at Bangor University in the United Kingdom, is a psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist and author. His main areas of research are the contribution of antidepressants to suicide, conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and academic medicine, and the history of pharmacology. Healy has written more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, 200 other articles, and 20 books, including The Antidepressant Era, The Creation of Psychopharmacology, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1–3, Let Them Eat Prozac and Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder.
Peter Roger Breggin is an American psychiatrist and critic of shock treatment and psychiatric medication. In his books, he advocates replacing psychiatry's use of drugs and electroconvulsive therapy with psychotherapy, education, empathy, love, and broader human services.
This article is a compiled timeline of psychotherapy. A more general description of the development of the subject of psychology can be found in the History of psychology article. For related overviews see the Timeline of psychology and Timeline of psychiatry articles.
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.
Stephen Jan Ticktin is a Canadian psychiatrist, therapist and lecturer, and a notable figure in the anti-psychiatry movement.
Peter A. Olsson is an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author. He is author of the book, Malignant Pied Pipers of Our Time: A Psychological Study of Destructive Cult Leaders from Rev. Jim Jones to Osama bin Laden.
Frank Lake was one of the pioneers of pastoral counselling in the United Kingdom. In 1962, he founded the Clinical Theology Association with the primary aim to make clergy more effective in understanding and accepting the psychological origins of their parishioners’ personal difficulties. However, the training seminars in pastoral counselling, which he began in 1958, eventually enlisted professional and lay people in various fields from various denominations. Many thousands of people attended the seminars.
Randy Misael Sebastian Dellosa, known as Doc Randy is a Filipino psychologist and psychiatrist.
Holger Bertrand Flöttmann is a German neurologist, psychiatrist and a doctor for psychosomatic medicine. Flöttmann is known for his scientific research in dream symbols, in borderline personality disorder, in the psychotherapeutic process and anxiety. He is also renowned for his expansion of the concept of symbiosis and his psychoanalytical works about fascism, terrorism and other actual themes about civilisation. Dr. Flöttmann worked in the centre of dream research and anxiety disorders.
Slavko Ziherl was a Slovenian specialist in psychiatry. He graduated from the Ljubljana Faculty of Medicine in 1970, and specialised in neuropsychiatry at the University Psychiatric Clinic Ljubljana in 1976 and in psychiatry in the Netherlands in 1993. He had a Ph.D in the field of psychiatry. He was specialising in psychiatry in Great Britain for one year, and attended advanced studies in the USA, Great Britain and Canada.
The mainstay of management of borderline personality disorder is various forms of psychotherapy with medications being found to be of little use.
Milan Popović, Ph.D. (1924–2012) was a renowned Serbian psychiatrist-psychoanalyst, a full professor of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to psychiatry:
Giovanni Andrea Fava is an Italian psychiatrist and professor of clinical psychology at the University of Bologna. He is also a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Wolfgang Maier is a German psychiatrist and psychotherapist.
