As defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “therapy” is formally known as the therapeutic treatment of bodily, mental, or behavioral disorders. Whether it is short term or long term, therapy is something that can be quite beneficial. There are many different types of therapy, for a wide variety of health issues, but I am going to be talking about psychotherapy specifically. Throughout history, the mental health system has been through many changes and different approaches to therapy have been adopted. With these changes, there has also been the addition of various different mental health resources. When most people think about therapy, they imagine an individual laying on a couch in their counselor’s office with the therapist sitting, usually …show more content…
In reality, though, that isn’t quite what a normal therapy session would look like today. But first I would like to talk about how therapy has progressed up until the present day.

To truly have a firm grasp on the topic of therapy you first have to have some knowledge about its history. It is widely accepted that Sigmund Freud is “the father of psychoanalysis”. Psychoanalysis is a therapeutic approach that focuses on the unconscious and conscious parts of the psyche and their interaction in the external world. In his work, Freud studied the unconscious through his theories on dreams. He believed that dreams are the mind’s way of expressing repressed longing, urges and impulses, all of which are based on a sexual connotation. While Freud played an important role in the development of modern psychology, his theories have proved to be extremely controversial and have mostly been dismissed as inaccurate. From Freud’s psychoanalysis, several different types of therapies developed. One …show more content…
Humanism is an approach to therapy that focuses on the human person. Client-centered therapy, which was the theory of one of the founders of humanistic psychology, American psychologist Carl Rogers, falls under this category. The primary focus of humanism is therapy designed around the client with the client directing the course of their treatment. While the relationship between a client and therapist is important, humanism emphasizes a person-to-person relationship rather than patient-to-therapist.

Now, since we got the history lesson out of the way, I’ll admit that there are many more aspects of psychology that are much more exciting than learning about dead psychologists. But I’m hoping that I haven’t lost your attention yet. Now I’ll get to the interesting part. The theories of psychologists in the past will always be the building blocks of how we view psychology today, but a lot has changed since the times of Freud. As we learn more about the brain and how it works, our view of psychology will also change. Therefore, our approach to therapy and other treatments for mental health will also