Psychotherapy - Any type of approach that uses psychological rather than biological means to treat
psychological disorders.
Insight therapies - Approaches to psychotherapy based on the notion that psychological well-being
depends on self-understanding.
Psychodynamic therapies - Psychotherapies that attempt to uncover repressed childhood
experiences that are thought to explain a patient's current difficulties.
Psychoanalysis - The first psychodynamic that attempt to uncover repressed childhood experiences
that are thought to explain a patient's current difficulties.
Free association - A psychoanalytic technique used to explore the unconscious by having patients
reveal whatever thoughts, feelings, or images come to mind.
Transference - An emotional reaction that occurs during psychoanalysis, in which the patient displays
feelings and attitudes toward the analyst that were present in another significant relationship.
Interpersonal therapy (IPT) - A brief psychotherapy designed to hep people with depression
understand and cope with problems relating to their interpersonal relationships.
Humanistic therapies - Psychotherapies that assume that people have the ability and freedom to lead
rational lives and make rational choices.
Person-centered therapy - A non-directive, humanistic therapy developed by Carl Rogers, in which
the therapist creates an accepting climate and shows empathy, freeing clients to be themselves and
releasing their natural tendency toward self-actualization.
Nondirective therapy - Any type of psychotherapy in which the therapist creates an accepting climate
and shows empathy, freeing clients to be themselves and releasing their natural tendency toward
self-actualization.
Gestalt therapy - A therapy that was originated by Fritz Perls and that emphasizes the importance of
clients' fully experiencing, in the present moment, their feelings, thoughts, and actions and then
taking responsibility for them.