ABSTRACT
The art of influencing the feelings and behaviour of other human beings has prehistoric roots and the origins of psychotherapy predate the birth of scientific attempts to understand human behaviour (Ehrenwald, 1976). Psychotherapy as a professional activity and form of medical treatment emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century. Since then, psychotherapy has become a remarkably pluralistic and prolific field. In 1959, Harper identified thirty-six distinct systems of psychotherapy. Twenty-seven years later, Karasu (1986) reported a count of more than 400 presumably different schools of psychotherapy.
