What is Psychotherapy?

Given the significance of the business name “The Melbourne Centre of Psychotherapy”  defining the term ‘Psychotherapy’ strikes me as particularly important.

Furthermore given that the term Psychotherapist is not a legally protected title in Australia, defining the term ‘Psychotherapist’ feels necessary to draw attention to the credibility and professional integrity with which we ause the term. Our Psychologists who are also Psychotherapists have trained in Psychotherapy and worked Psychotherapeutically for many years. They stand apart from counsellors who use the term ‘Psychotherapist’ but who have in reality only received brief training in counselling. 

The terms ‘Psychotherapy’ and ‘Psychotherapist’ are used at The Melbourne Centre of Psychotherapy with direct lineage and reference to historical definitions of the terms.

In short, the term Psychotherapist refers to practitioners working from either a Psychoanalytic or Psychodynamic perspective with their patients. Most of the practitioners at The Melbourne Centre of Psychotherapy are not only Registered Psychologists or Mental Health Social Workers, they are also Psychotherapists, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists, or Psychodynamic Psychotherapists. All of which work from a Psychoanalytic or Psychodynamic perspective.

Doing so requires many years of training in psychoanalytic and or psychodynamic theory and therapeutic techniques. It is a detailed, nuanced, and carefully considered approach that requires the practitioner pays very close attention to the inner world of the patient while allowing their own mind to be in a state of ‘free floating attention’ in order to take into account not only what a patient says in a given session but the relationship of what is said to preceding sessions.

Those practitioners who identify as Psychoanalytic Psychologists or Psychodynamic Psychologists are also working from this perspective, but have chosen to utilise an abbreviated title that does not include the word Psychotherapy.