What is Therapy, Counselling and Psychotherapy?

The above terms are often used interchangeably which can be bewildering when someone is trying to locate the most appropriate service. These approaches have a common purpose in helping people when things are wrong, particularly emotions and behaviours.
Most of these activities are commonly known as "talking therapies" and use dialogue to problem-solve, identify strategies, explore change and alternatives etc. In some cases, therapy can refer to some other kind of activity e.g. massage, eye movement de-sensitisation and re-processing (EMDR), acupuncture etc.

To date, there are around 52 so called "talking therapies" of varying popularity, availability and effectiveness! Some of these would lay claim to be psychotherapy (or other psychological approach) or counselling. To demystify this back ground, we outline working definitions as used by ourselves. More comprehensive definitions and interpretations can be found on the web as there are some excellent web-sites e.g.
 PSYCHOTHERAPY is an activity whereby clients are encouraged to discuss emotional/behavioural/psychological issues with a qualified and experienced psychotherapist. These issues are often painful or difficult and interfere with an individuals functioning or limit them in some way from living a fulfilled existence e.g. anxiety, depression, trauma.
Psychotherapy is typically focused, structured, (often) time limited and operates within one or a number of theoretical framework(s).

The term psychotherapy can be applied to a host of psychotherapeutic approaches e.g. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Gestalt therapy, Transactional Analysis, Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy.

Notably, all psychotherapy will involve the application of counselling skills at some level.

COUNSELLING "takes place when a counsellor sees a client in a private and confidential setting to explore a difficulty the client is having, distress they may be experiencing or perhaps their dissatisfaction with life, or loss of a sense of direction or purpose" (BACP 2007).

It is generally accepted that there distinct methods of counselling, determined by specific theoretical emphasis, mode of training and "style" of counsellor. However, there will invariably be consensus about the core components of the counselling process. Formal counselling as a discipline can be attributed to the work of Carl Rodgers.

It can be observed from above definitions that the processes of psychotherapy and counselling are remarkably similar. To this extent, some practitioners in the field will use the terms interchangeably whilst others will clearly hold a polarized definition and perception of their profession. More often than not, the more obvious differences lie in the setting where the work is carried out, relevant training of the practitioner and (to some extent) the typology of the clients' problem(s).