Research Paper on:
Overview of Psychotherapy

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
to look within the individual, to search deep within a patient, and find reasons for many different conditions such as unhappiness, confusion, anger, or fear. Many believe that looking deep  within can be good, but that too much of that approach can actually do more damage than good. Bearing that in mind the following paper examines whether psychotherapy works and  where and how it may be effective. Psychotherapy Several decades ago, "something profound began to shift in the way Americans viewed their lives. Sociologist Philip Rieff, in a  blistering 1966 critique, termed it the triumph of the therapeutic, the growing embrace of the notion that personal salvation was to be found not through faith and prayer but through  the avid application of self-analysis and psychological insight" (Goode, 1993; p. 55). At the very heart of this approach, or this belief, "lay the practice of psychotherapy, an endeavor that  by the mid-60s had long since defied an early commentators dismissal of it as a fad destined to run [its] course through the mob like the measles. Psychoanalysis, introduced during  Freuds visit to the United States in 1909, had burrowed deeply into American culture, helped along by writers such as Karl Menninger and Theodor Reik" (Goode, 1993; p. 55). In  more recent times there has been a gradual progression towards researching that involves amassing "a body of studies on therapys effectiveness, to explore ways to standardize technique and to develop  increasingly sophisticated tools for analyzing the therapeutic process" (Goode, 1993; p. 55). Some of the questions being addressed are as follows: "Is psychotherapy a viable treatment for specific mental disorders  or more akin to an educational pursuit? Is its goal the disappearance of psychological symptoms or the attainment of qualities like happiness or self-fulfillment? How long should therapy take? Who