Choosing psychotherapy as a career: beyond "I want to help people"

This article briefly considers the career determinants of mental health professionals and then introduces the contents of the Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session issue devoted to "why I became a psychotherapist." Psychotherapists are assuredly a special sort because the average person prefers to minimize the psychic sufferings of fellow humans and to avoid extensive contact with troubled individuals. Although the most frequent and conscious reason for becoming a psychotherapist is a desire to "help others," the decision is more complex and multidetermined than that. The multiple, intertwined motives are partly unconscious, impacted by chance encounters, and probably not well understood into late in one's career.