There are psychotherapies in a narrow sense that are systematized as a theoretical model and there are also psychotherapies in a wider sense that provide foundations to the former. This paper first discusses that the latter underlies the former and delineates the features of one of such psychotherapies. Recently, the nature of psychological problems has become so complex and diverse with multiple layers of contributing factors interacting with one another that it is necessary to employ an integrative framework that allows idiographic yet multiphasic observation and multi-axial judgment. The paper contrasts this type of integrative psychotherapy with other more common approaches and then argues that psychotherapy integration needs to go beyond the integration of theoretical models and the eclectic adoption of different techniques and aim for the personal integration of psychotherapists, which will contribute the most to the betterment of psychotherapy.
<Author's abstract>
Basic Principles of Psychotherapy and Integrative Psychotherapy
Graduate School, Taisho University
Psychiatria et Neurologia Japonica
118: 531-538, 2016
<Keywords:fundamentals of psychotherapy, integrative psychotherapy, multi-faceted observations, multi-axial clinical judgment, personal integration of psychotherapists>