Premium
Counselling and Psychotherapy: Is There a Difference? Does It Matter?
Author(s) -
Crago Hugh
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.297
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8438
pISSN - 0814-723X
DOI - 10.1002/j.1467-8438.2000.tb00418.x
Subject(s) - immediacy , unconscious mind , modalities , psychotherapist , psychology , divestment , family therapy , restructuring , psychoanalysis , epistemology , sociology , social science , philosophy , finance , economics
The terms ‘counselling’ and ‘psychotherapy’ are often employed in a loosely interchangeable way, especially in Australia. Where distinctions are made, there has been little agreement on what each term should cover. This article examines several axes on which ‘counselling’ might potentially be distinguished from ‘psychotherapy’; the most promising basis for such a distinction seems to be whether or not the mode of work attempts to access the unconscious. On this basis, several modalities currently termed ‘therapy’ would in fact be classed as types of ‘counselling’, including those modalities of family therapy which aim to engage clients at the level of conscious behaviour change and restructuring. Consideration of how new professionals are trained lends support to a continuum, with short‐term, problem‐focused conscious‐oriented approaches at one end, and longer‐term, transference‐focused, unconscious‐oriented approaches at the other, the dividing line coming at the point where trainees learn the skill of ‘immediacy’.