ABSTRACT
Persons receiving counselling or undergoing short-term therapy are able to engage with threatening thoughts and ideas within the protective framework of a therapeutic relationship. The patient who came for psychotherapeutic counselling describes his life-situation first of all in terms of a development that appears to be heading for a crisis. The differences between the three procedures described—psychotherapeutic counselling, crisis intervention, short-term psychotherapy—consist in the scope of the perception and memory work involved. The shaping of experiences via representations in the form of imagination and verbalization are of fundamental significance for the course of counselling and therapy. Creative shaping within the psychotherapeutic language game enables the patients to find a support in the diffuse and ill-defined process threatening them. One hermeneutic principle informing creative psychotherapy is “interactional experience.” The crucial element in hermeneutically inspired psychotherapy is that the therapist should engage emotionally with the things apprehended in a scenic form.
