Is psychotherapy about “cases” to be explained, or about individual persons who need and benefit from understanding? In this review of an article by psychotherapist Janet L. Etzi, we look at therapy and counselling as a complex interaction based on understanding the client as a human phenomenon, an interaction that is informed by both the client’s and the therapist’s emotions and thought processes.

Whereas neurotics need and value insight in therapy, disordered characters are already keenly aware of their attitudes and behaviors that cause problems. They already see, they just disagree.

When I politely but firmly stopped accepting “I don’t know” for an answer from my character-disturbed clients, I was astonished at how easily I began to get more straightforward answers that actually made sense.

What are the key ingredients in therapy that works in difficult situations? Fact and reason? Or a therapist willing to be with the client in the darkest places where we humans have to admit that we don’t know what the point is, and that we cannot fix it?

Our new sister site, MyTherapist.com, launches today!

Is this what therapy is about — just removing what is holding us back, what stops us growing properly, what hides our beauty and is sometimes downright painful? Well, if nothing was planted in the first place, then removing the weeds would only make room for more weeds…

When I’m asked for suggestions about how to get more clients for an online therapy practice, one of the first things the other therapist usually mentions is their membership in such-and-such online directory. It turns out that quite a few of the therapists who are struggling to find clients are already members of one or more directories, so it’s clear that not everybody who joins a directory actually winds up with many clients. Therapist directories might be a great deal, but for whom?