What is the difference between Counseling and Psychotherapy?
What is the difference between Counseling and Psychotherapy?
Counseling and Psychotherapy are professional interventions that could be confused even if, in fact, they are 2 different things. They differ in method, purpose and study paths. Still It is good clarify a little.
1) Counseling is a relationship of care and client centred support, where the Counselor works with a client (not a patient) who seeks specific support in overcoming a problem in his present life. The client has an active position and is responsible for his healing journey. In fact, it is the client who chooses to ask for help, support, practical guidance with the awareness of having a goal to achieve.
2) Counseling is also a non-therapeutic intervention which aims to achieve the health and well-being of the individual.
3) Counseling is based on a relationship pf equals (adult-adult) and aims to improve the client's quality of life, whose strengths and self-determination abilities it supports.
4) The counselor never takes the place of the person who asks for help. The client has the responsibility to make his own decisions,
5) The counseling is a brief professional intervention, divided into a limited number of interviews with specific objectives established by the client.
6) The counselor does not deal with diagnosis, administration of personality tests and is not a doctor. Therefore, in the presence of an ascertained psychiatric pathology or if he recognizes the signs, it is the duty of the counselor to refer the client to another specific professional.
Psychotherapy is a relationship of care, it is a therapeutic intervention and its goal is to heal through a global process of growth and care. In psychotherapy the patient asks for help for his psychopathological suffering: he knows and feels sick. He confides, explores, clarifies, confronts his difficulties. He regresses to reconstruct and rework the past.
