Counseling & Therapy: Theories, Types & Modes

What are Therapy and Counseling?

Counseling and therapy are best defined as talk- and listening-based methods of addressing psychological and related behavioral issues, including chronic mental illness, crisis management, behavior modification, and developmental needs. Counseling tends to focus on resolving a patient's presenting symptoms, getting them through a crisis situation, and rebuilding or supplementing their personal growth, self-understanding, decision-making and critical thinking skills. Psychotherapy attends to the patient's chronic, subconscious (or unconscious) behavior and personality issues, and affects deep change by addressing their distress patterns and personal psychopathology. Because of these differences, therapy tends to be a more intensive endeavor, with visits multiple times a week for a period of months, while counseling sessions tend to happen once a week or as needed.

In many cases both therapy and counseling proceed without the involvement of medicine or physical techniques, and may be concerned with the effects of the patient's social life and circumstances, spirituality, and personal philosophy on their mental health. Professional psychotherapists and counselors undergo a training process that involves several years of education regarding psychological research methods, theory, and clinical experience, followed by supervised practice, and in many cases personal experience in therapy or counseling as a patient. Depending on the issue or circumstances involved, therapy and counseling may take place on an individual basis, with a group (in the cases of family or forms of mandated therapy), or with a partner (in the case of relationship therapy).

What follows is a list of the different types of therapy and counseling, along with the broader psychological approaches to which they belong:

Psychoanalytic Approaches

• Freudian psychoanalysis
• Jungian Analytical psychology
• Adlerian therapy
• Kleinian therapy

Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches

• Behavior therapy
• Rational Emotive Behavior therapy (REBT)
• Cognitive therapy
• Cognitive-Behavioral therapy (CBT)
• Reality therapy
• Personal Construct therapy
• Multimodal therapy
• Lifeskills counseling

Humanistic Approaches

• Person-Centered counseling
• Gestalt therapy
• Existential counseling
• Transactional Analysis
• Psychosynthesis counseling
• Primal integration

Integrative Approaches

• Cognitive Analytic therapy (CAT)
• Dialectical Behavior therapy (DBT)
• Transpersonal therapy

Other Approaches

• Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)
• Hypnosis
• Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
• Solution Focused therapy
• Problem Focused counseling