Definition of "psychotherapy" [psy•cho•ther•a•py]

• The treatment of mental and emotional disorders through the use of psychological techniques designed to encourage communication of conflicts and insight into problems, with the goal being relief of symptoms, changes in behavior leading to improved social and vocational functioning, and personality growth. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Women and Health is one of four voluntary organisations in Camden which has been providing free or low-cost longer-term psychotherapy and counselling, and referrals to us all have increased enormously with the introduction of IAPT."
• "Well, psychotherapy is real work and is often hard."
• "What we find in Schelling, as in much of Romantic psychology and some of its inheritors in modern psychotherapy, is that questions of psychology and questions of selfhood become intriguingly intertwined."