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THIS PAPER DOES NOT PRETEND TO BE a demonstration of anything. I have written as though talking with a colleague, making no attempt to feign delicacy or detachment. I know that our field is already overburdened with this sort of sincere, rough personal declaration. My excuse is the topic: Regarding the definition of our profession, I assume that you share a concern with me, and that it will lead you along the same paths it leads me, and that if it does not, then the point where you balk is the point where we can have a more careful and learned debate.
Defining psychotherapy, like any nonformal defining, is a methodological nightmare. We can cite all the examples we like, but ultimately we simply have to hope that, as discussants, we have the same thing in view. To begin with, then, I blithely assume that the strains and stresses of practice give us all a tacit, vague, common ground, on the basis of which explicit definitions of therapy can be debated. I am not interested in the sociology of practice, which would require a preliminary sketch of healing techniques. I am interested in an explication of what psychotherapists generally have in mind, or what would best get together the various things they have in mind, when they identify themselves as therapists.
A further warning: Please bear in mind throughout that I am not discussing or comparing techniques. When I refer to eclectic or single-minded formulas, I am not referring to eclectic or single-minded procedures. Eclectic therapists may have very simple and rigid definitions of therapy, and highly-programed therapists may have shopping-lists of rationales for their efficacy. I am sure that the way a therapist defines therapy does affect his practice and vice-versa, but it is no simple relationship, and I only allude to that relationship in passing.