The importance of balance in the practice of psychotherapy

Specialization is inviting because it can lead most directly to original work, recognition, and success. However, it can also result in narrow experience and outlook, which represent disabilities in any work, but all the more so in the practice of psychotherapy, where our major task is to understand and help people with their feelings and their lives. Constricted, bored psychotherapists are hampered in the extent to which they can be useful to people in difficulty, especially since a major portion of psychotherapeutic help must come through a vital, authentic relationship between two real people. Psychotherapists who are educators should encourage their students and residents to early adopt attitudes that will lead to broader rather than narrower approaches to their psychotherapeutic work. In so doing, they will enable future therapists to enjoy for many years the creative and stimulating rewards of the balanced practice of psychotherapy.