ABSTRACT
The part of psychotherapy's attraction, especially for those in mental-health professions is that it breaks the mould of instrumental ‘labelling’ and the ‘medical model’–symptom, diagnosis, treatment–and considers the person and their life history, the self, as an experiential, existential, ethical whole. From the point of view of psychotherapy, diagnosis is mainly a matter of exclusion. Thinking about a person’s predominant defence style can help the therapist attune to transference and counter-transference reactions. Someone with, say, narcissistic style is likely to find it difficult to see the therapist as a separate person with their own views and thoughts. Therapists need also to be conversant with other forms of therapy such as cognitive therapy, couple therapy and art therapy, and to consider whether one of these approaches might not be more appropriate than dynamic therapy for the particular patient with his specific difficulty.
