ABSTRACT
Examples include counselling, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy. Some argue that purely psychological interventions should be excluded from discussion of CAM therapies, since psychological interventions, cannot, by definition, be holistic. I reject this argument for the same reason that energy-based medicine is included in CAM. Whilst energy-based medicine operates at a subtle energetic level, its benefits can be psychological or physiological. Similarly, psychological interventions can improve a patient’s physiological and spiritual well-being. Another reason for including this category is that whether explicitly or not, most therapists draw on psychotherapeutic techniques, whatever their therapeutic discipline. It might be said that the extent to which working holistically requires consideration and probing of the patient’s emotional state, a psychotherapeutic dynamic is being created, whether the therapist would describe it in those terms or not.
