What is psychotherapy?

Humanistic counselling and psychotherapy is often referred to as the ‘third way’ (the first being psychodynamic and the second cognitive behavioural). Humanistic theory is eclectic and holistic and does not focus on symptomatic diagnosis. Humanism considers each person to have a core authentic ‘self’, which can be disturbed, masked or hidden by the difficulties encountered in life. Thus humanistic therapy is a journey of self discovery and getting in touch with the ‘authentic self’.

Humanistic psychotherapy, including person centred therapy, is often recommended for mental health conditions by NICE as ‘counselling’. Counselling is recommended by NICE (2009) for a depression where cognitive behavioural and other NHS preferred treatments have been declined by the patient. Rather than addressing the ‘symptom’ of depression for example, the therapist will look to address the deeper cause, thus relieving the depression.

A key concept in humanistic psychotherapy is ‘unconditional positive regard’, encouraging the client to accept themselves by demonstrating acceptance in the human relationship of the therapy environment. This environment itself is a safe and healing space.

A variation of humanistic theory is Gestalt therapy, which has certain key elements such as; the idea of issues being ‘incomplete’ and needing to be worked through to enable ‘closure’, and ‘fields’ which refers to the overlap between the actions and attitudes of people, groups and the environment. This concept of being part of something greater in an active way is a vital difference to non-humanistic therapies, which tend to ‘treat’ the ‘individual’ in isolation (although more broadly this is now shared within the ‘critical psychotherapy’ movement).

Another popular and well known version of humanistic psychotherapy is known as Person Centred Therapy, and this again works with the safe space and unconditional positive regard models. It is also very focused on avoiding evaluation by the therapist of the client, and often uses methods of feedback such as mirroring, reflection and summarising to feedback to the client what the client themselves has said for deeper consideration.

A third very common method within the many variations of humanistic therapy available is mindfulness therapy. This is a little misleading because mindfulness therapy has become synonymous with eastern psychology. In fact eastern psychology is as broad in scope (if not broader due to its existence since 4500 BCE) as western psychology. Also Mindfulness therapy when applied humanistically and holistically actually contains what are often known separately as acceptance therapy and compassion based therapy.

These are essentially eastern psychology variants of unconditional positive regard in the western psychology model. Mindfulness therapy often includes mindful practices, meditation, self acceptance exercises, and self reflection. Ethical mindfulness uses a theory similar to Gestalt field theories to look at interaction between the person and the group and the environment.

Versions or sub-groupings of Mindfulness are associated with CBT in particular, but are more humanistic in origin. These include MBCT (mindfulness based cognitive therapy), MBSR (mindfulness based stress reduction), teaching mindfulness (psycho-education), acceptance therapy and compassion based therapy. MBCT and MBSR in particular are recommended by NICE for the treatment of anxiety and depression related conditions. Mindfulness based change processes and meditations lend themselves well to hypnotherapy based work.

Mindfulness is well recommended and evidence based: Specifically NICE (2009) recommend MBCT for depression self help and relapse prevention. Also Studies at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre (part of Oxford University) have indicated measurable improvements from practising mindfulness in a range of conditions, and these are updated online.