How does Psychotherapy Work?

This is the time to de-mystify the mysterious: the mechanics of therapy. It’s impossible to do justice to a process as artful, complex, and multi-dimensional as psychotherapy, but dissecting it into the following may make it clearer.

The main components of therapy are:

• Therapeutic alliance
• Neuroscience of psychotherapy
• Goals of therapy
• Stages of therapy
• Overarching principles of therapy
• General tools of therapy, and
• Types of therapy.

I will address each of these on the following pages, beginning with the Therapeutic Alliance.