On being therapeutic

Psychotherapy is both an art and a science. The art deserves as careful study as does the science. In this paper the author puts forward the view that the effectiveness of psychotherapy is dependent to a marked degree upon certain innate characteristics of the therapist: these include his character structure, his personal values, and his spontaneous personality style. In order to explore this thesis, the author examines what has been written about some successful and well-known psychotherapists, by their patients, their colleagues, and their friends. He concludes that these therapists strongly evidenced the following characteristics: empathy and concern, caring and protectiveness, warmth, therapeutic forcefulness, expectation of improvement, freedom from despair, reliability, friendliness and respectfulness. It is felt that such factors in the therapist must be taken into account in order to achieve a view of psychotherapy which is not reductionistic.