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Do psychotherapy, therapy, and counseling all mean the same thing? 

Yes, all the above actually refer to the same thing.  This is to be differentiated from a “Med check” where a client who is on medication checks in with his or her psychiatrist to review how things are going. Typically it is shorter in time and focused on symptom management rather than delving into deeper issues.

The art and science of a good psychotherapy bring greater awareness to the client in the most efficient and effective way possible.

He or she knows where to probe and when to back off.

The art of effective therapy-

The art of effective therapy is in bringing both the feelings to the surface, thus making them available for processing, combined with the intellectual understanding of the problem that yields effective solutions/approaches/strategies.

Once we get to considering possible strategies, the real work begins.

I often tell my clients that I have lots of strategies to offer them but that the feelings that come up when they try and implement those strategies are what we need to talk about.

The science of effective therapy-

The science is many times unseen. An experienced therapist is targeting his or her interventions to the particular client and what they present.

They are not simply putting the client through a manualized one-size-fits-all approach.

Each therapy will look completely different and that is as it should be. Although there are similarities and patterns in particular categories of problems, the savvy practitioner will spot what is a pattern and the individual adaptation to that problem.

It takes years, sometimes decades to hon this ability to integrate this- to know the science and be open to the individual nuances.