If you choose to enter psychoanalysis, then the duration of treatment generally will be longer, often lasting a year and more; during this time, psychoanalysts may expect you to come for two or three sessions each week.
Shorter-term therapies, such as cognitive therapy, are—in part because of the normal long duration required by psychoanalysis—increasingly advocated by psychiatrists. Biofeedback and relaxation training (see Chapter 5) are also among these shorter-term approaches. They may be effective within a period of several months.
In this chapter, we have discussed the professions that make up the mainstream of professional practice in counseling and psychotherapy. However, beyond the established and more closely regulated professions of social worker, psychologist, and psychiatrist, there are a number of other kinds of therapists who offer services that are sufficiently different in nature that they deserve to be treated in a separate chapter. The next chapter describes their contributions to therapy.
5
THE THERAPEUTIC JUNGLE,
PART II
Outside the Mainstream
Outside of any profession's frame of reference that defines what problems it will handle and how, we usually find a group of approaches that do not completely fit the established mold. They often can contribute creative and innovative ideas, and yet they often lead to abuses in the name of novelty and experimentation. And sometimes an older approach that fails to fit the newer frame of reference is left behind, to keep company with more radical approaches.
Just these things have happened in the practice of counseling and psychotherapy, as we will see.
RELIGIOUS COUNSELORS
The world's first professional counselors were religious. Guidance from priests, rabbis, and pastors has a long tradition. The tradition is such an old one, in fact, that going to talk to a religious counselor has a respectability that the public has generally not yet extended to other forms of counseling.