What is "psychotherapy"?

Abstract

There are two "psychotherapies." The first, very close to psychoanalysis, may be defined as that mental treatment whose central focus is the analysis of the patient's experience of the relationship with the therapist in the here and now, and whose goal is insight. This is psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The second is nonpsychoanalytic psychotherapy, which bypasses the patient's experience of the relationship with the therapist, and by so doing may be defined as that mental treatment based on suggestion, with the goal of subjective improvement or symptom relief. Each therapy has its appropriate role in human experience. The basis of nonanalytic therapy, suggestion, is antithetical to both the means (analysis) and ends (insight) of analytic therapy.