Counselling & Psychotherapy Types

Counselling & Psychotherapy

When people talk or think about psychological therapy, they are really referring to counselling and psychotherapy. Counselling and psychotherapy are types of therapeutic situations between a trained professional and someone seeking help. There are more than 250 different types but the most well known are psychoanalysis, humanistic, behaviour therapy, and cognitive therapy.

Psychodynamic Perspective

This psychological perspective originated from Freudian psychoanalysis, which emphasizes the unconscious components such as conflicts and instinctual energies. Many of Freud's students of psychoanalysis broke off and went their own way, but kept the main aspect of psychoanalysis - the unconscious. As a result, the term 'psychodynamic' is a more general term that incorporates all of these components, but keeps the unconscious as a primary element.

Gestalt Therapy

Developed by Fritz Perls, this type of therapy combines the psychoanalytic perspective of bringing unconscious feelings to awareness with the humanistic emphasis of "connecting with oneself" in order to help people become more aware of, and able to express, their feelings. In addition, it is not enough to just become aware of these feelings - Gestalt therapy also helps people realise the importance of taking responsibility for their feelings and actions.

Integrative Psychotherapy

Is primarily based on the therapeutic relationship of therapist and client as the majority of our conflict and distress has the quality of our relationships at it's core. The integrative psychotherapist seeks to move beyond symptoms, to engage with the person in a non judgmental framework, in order to explore and better understand emotional difficulties. The therapy also works on an integrated model combining humanistic, psychodynamic, Gestalt and bodywork ways of working.

Integrative Art Therapy

7 Art Forms: Art explores emotional landscape and view, and aspects of a person's 'seen world' in terms of inner and outer world reality. The inter-relationships of size, shape, line, space, texture, shade, tone, colour, distance in a painting can reveal the reality of the self. The art image supports people to linger in the exploration of themselves and inner world when, without it, they may run away from or avoid both.

Drama / Puppetry: Offers profound reflection on who we are and the roles we play. These art forms are also centrally concerned with how people change people, for better or worse, and the sort of connections they make with each other, e.g. superficial, conflictual, brutal, deadened or deeply enriching. Drama and puppetry can also offer vital insights into 'situation': how past situations are still colouring those in the present. Working with puppets is ideal for circumventing a reluctance to speak about feelings.

Sculpture / Clay: Sculpture offers a person the power to speak through touch. Its power lies more in the emotional resonance of substance. Sculpture invites a sensual engagement with the world. Clay expresses qualities and forms of feeling, directly, plainly, free of the clutter of any associations of the everyday.

Poetry: Literal words can misrepresent, underplay, hide rather than reveal and frequently offering only approximations to any recalled experience. In poetry as a multi-sensorial form, 'amplifies the music of what happens' (Seamus Heaney). 'A poetic basis of mind' (Hillman) can lead to a far more profound experience of life.

Sandplay: Clients choose from a whole world of miniature people, animals and buildings and arrange them in the controlled space of the 'theatre of the sandbox'. This theatre then offers a profound overview of important life issues. Once feelings are organised and externalised in sandplay, they can be contemplated from a distance, and then assimilated.

Music: The dynamic forms in music are recognisable as vital forms of felt life: the rises and falls, the surges and floodings, the tensions and intensities, the changes in tempo, the dissonances, harmonies and resolutions. We know these forms intimately in our emotional experiencing. Music can convey the full qualitative and energetic aspects of an important relationship, atmosphere crucial event, or ongoing situation.

Bodywork / Movement: Forms encapture the complex inter-relations between time, weight, space, flow. We know these forms intimately in our emotional experiencing, so much so that both movement and still pose can provoke all manner of resonance. It is also possible to work with what the body is already communicating symbolically, whether through posture, gesture and gait, or through illness and injury. Movement is integral to the very process of change.

Art Therapy

Art Therapy is a form of psychotherapy. Art Therapists work with clients in a confidential therapeutic relationship. We aim to create a safe space in the therapy for personal issues to be experienced and worked through. In Art Therapy we play by making art. We paint, draw, work with clay or anything in between. We can make a mess. We can lose ourselves and then find ourselves. We pass through the cloud of unknowing. As Art Therapists we are therefore both artists and therapists.

A piece of art made in Art Therapy can be used to explore unconscious thoughts and feelings. In fact this often happens without us trying. Such thoughts and feelings can be complicated, contradictory, paradoxical. A piece of art can contain all of this; it does not have to make sense. Once a piece of art has been made, it remains and can be returned to again and again. It becomes a window into the self for the client and therapist to explore together. Over time, a series of art works will be made which can enable the client and therapist to construct a narrative of the self. This process is the ground for transformational experience.

For another description of Art Therapy, please visit the British Association of Art Therapists website at http://www.baat.org.

Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a temporary state of heightened relaxation and suggestibility during which some (but not all) people are able to become so focused that they experience imaginary happenings as if they were real. Hypnosis is not some transcendental-like, magical state in which people will engage in behaviours that are completely against their "normal, non-hypnotised" will.