There are literally hundreds of
different types or modalities of
psychotherapy out there in fact some
researchers have estimated that there's
anywhere between 400 and 500 different
types of psychotherapy which is
certainly an astounding number. Now most of these do fall into one of four broad
types of psychotherapy
so the first broad category is cognitive
and behavioral therapies that came out of
the work of Pavlov and Thorndike and of
course Aaron Beck and many others. These
therapies focus on learning good new or
more adequate behaviors and strategies
they focus on getting rid of
inappropriate or bad or inadequate
strategies and/or they focus on on how
we think, on our cognitive processes
which is why we call them cognitive
therapies. Now most of all this is based
on the idea that faulty thinking or
cognitive distortions can cause and they
can maintain as well either anxiety
disorders or mood disorders
the second broad
psychotherapy includes psychodynamic
therapies which also aim to change
behavior and thoughts and emotions but
this time they focus on motives and
unconscious drives that may be behind
these thoughts behaviors or emotions
when you when you see a cartoon
depicting psychotherapy that involves a
patient lying on a couch and the
therapist sitting behind him taking
notes well that image actually
represents one type of psychodynamic
therapy. That said it's not the only one
today most psychodynamic therapies are
done face-to-face, many of them are
actually very brief and very effective
and then we have humanistic therapies
that focus on people's ability to make
choices and to develop their potential. Humanistic therapies like all the others
essentially come in different shapes and
sizes but the most popular ones are
certainly what we call Gestalt therapy
and client centered therapy and also
existential therapy
The fourth and last broad type of
therapy includes so-called systemic
therapies that focus not only on the
individual as do the others I mentioned
but also focus on the individual's
interpersonal system so how they relate
to other people in their life, how they
build and maintain interpersonal
relationships and so on
I know this was brief but I will be
doing more short videos that will be
more detailed for each type of therapy
sometime soon for now I do need to say
though that while we have these four
broad types of psychotherapy many
clinicians draw on more than one and
they develop treatments that we call
integrative and they do that in order to
make sure they can meet your specific
needs so that's it for now if you have
questions that you would like me to
address don't be shy just email me at
the email address that will appear at
the end of this video. Thank you
