What Is Psychotherapy?

ebook Essay Books

By Alain de Botton

cover image of What Is Psychotherapy?

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A fresh perspective on how psychotherapy can be universally effective.


Psychotherapy is one of the most valuable inventions of the last hundred years, with an exceptional power to raise our levels of emotional well-being, enhance our relationships, heal the wounds of the past, and help us mine our professional potential. But it is also profoundly misunderstood science.

Working with a therapist can make us less angry, improve our confidence, and, perhaps most importantly, make us more loving towards ourselves and others.

Through engaging historical analysis and relevant case studies, this book explains psychotherapy in depth: why we need it, how treatment works, and what the outcome of a therapeutic intervention looks like. The book argues that psychotherapy is the single greatest step any of us can take towards self-understanding and fulfillment.

This book attempts to explain psychotherapy: why it is needed by us all, how those needs are addressed by treatment and what the outcome of a therapeutic intervention could be. The book reflects a fundamental belief of The School of Life that psychotherapy is the single greatest step any of us can take towards self-understanding and fulfillment. A course of therapy stands to render us ever so slightly less angry, self-defeating, unconfident, lost and sad.


  • PSYCHOTHERAPY EXPLAINED a demystifying guide to the purpose and meaning of psychotherapy.
  • UNLOCK THE POWER OF THERAPY to improve self love, communication, trust, and honesty.
  • EXPLORES POTENTIAL THERAPEUTIC OUTCOMES using case studies as examples.
  • DEBUNKS COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS about the science of psychotherapy.
  • What Is Psychotherapy?