What Is Psychotherapy? School of Life

This book explains why we need therapy, how it operates, debunks some myths that prejudice us against therapy, and offers up case studies of how it can work.

Psychotherapy is one of the most valuable inventions of the last one hundred years, with an exceptional power to raise our levels of emotional well-being, improve our relationships, redeem the atmosphere in our families and assist us in mining our professional potential. However, psychotherapy is also profoundly misunderstood and the subject of a host of unhelpful fantasies, hopes and suspicions. Its logic is rarely explained and its voice seldom heard with sufficient directness.

This book attempts to explain psychotherapy: what the needs are in all of us to which it caters; the methods by which it addresses these needs; and what the outcome of a therapeutic intervention could ideally be. The book reflects a fundamental belief of The School of Life that psychotherapy is the single greatest step any of us can take towards self-understanding and fulfilment. A course of therapy stands to render us slightly less angry, self-defeating, unconfident, lost and sad.

This is a guide to the purpose and meaning of psychotherapy.

Extracts from the book:

• Therapy prompts us to internalise a better voice than most that we have ever yet encountered, ready for us to hear in times of need.

• What happened to us in childhood is the single greatest cause of how we function emotionally as adults.

• Psychotherapy is an invention to help improve the way our emotions operate. It has been devised to correct the otherwise substantial difficulties we face in understanding ourselves, trusting others, communicating successfully, honouring our potential and feeling adequately serene, confident, authentic, direct and unashamed.

119 pages

12 x 11 cm