Psychotherapy as a Performing Art: The Role of Therapeutic Style

Psychotherapy is a term used rather loosely, even by professionals, to describe a variety of different procedures and theories, hence its meaning remains ambiguous, since it refers to different things at different times. Sometimes the term psychotherapy refers to what a psychotherapist does and sometimes it refers to an object of scientific study. As Jasnow (1978) says, “We talk science, but we do art.” In these ambiguities in meaning lie the roots of many quarrels among psychotherapists, especially psychoanalysts, as to what psychotherapy is and how it differs from psycho-analysis. Often the issues simply reduce to a matter of definition rather than of substance. Unhappily, the confusion gets compounded by the fact that the term psychoanalysis is also used ambiguously, since it too denotes different, albeit related, bodies of theory, knowledge and practice.

It will come somewhat as a surprise to many psychoanalysts that Freud regarded psychoanalytic practice as a form of psychotherapy, since they have been prone to differentiate the professional practice of psychoanalysis from the practice of psychotherapy instead of identifying it as a form of it. Nevertheless Freud (1904) wrote of psychoanalysis that it was “The particular method of psychotherapy which Freud practises…” Indeed the idea that psychoanalysis is simply a form of treatment is still the