Therapy: Definition

Ok, I confess,.......I haven't picked up a psych. book since college. I quite frankly could care less about the Jungian archetypes, Freud, and their definitions of what therapy is.

It's like some of y'all want to put the cart before the horse and make these huge jumps into realms that a lot of us really haven't a clue on. I really welcome this new forum and with Mary starting this thread on Definition of therapy is a terrific start. But please,......let's go from A to B and not A to Z and beyond.

That being said, personally I don't feel you necessarily need to know about the teachings of Freud, Jung and every important Psych. dude or dudette in the last century. What I feel is important is the desire to want to help someone to understand themselves better, and that can be accomplished with good ol common sense and life experience.

So I would think therapy is something that is derived from common sense and life experience that can be combined with Q and A to achieve a positive response. Milli said it much better than I.


Fudu ~ I really appreciate what you just said.

Baroli said:

Ok, I confess,.......I haven't picked up a psych. book since college. I quite frankly could care less about the Jungian archetypes, Freud, and their definitions of what therapy is.

It's like some of y'all want to put the cart before the horse and make these huge jumps into realms that a lot of us really haven't a clue on. I really welcome this new forum and with Mary starting this thread on Definition of therapy is a terrific start. But please,......let's go from A to B and not A to Z and beyond.

That being said, personally I don't feel you necessarily need to know about the teachings of Freud, Jung and every important Psych. dude or dudette in the last century. What I feel is important is the desire to want to help someone to understand themselves better, and that can be accomplished with good ol common sense and life experience.

Click to expand...

... and Baroli, I agree ... but,
I hope the psychology definitions didnt look like a psychobable post!
I have just been on another of the threads and got lost in the psychobable, and in putting up the definitions, at least for me, I can grasp what some other people are saying and talking about. As for Freud and Jung, these types of comparissons are already on the board. For those who had no idea, like me, I hope it helped a bit with what the dictionary determined it as ...

and I agree with Fududgazi too ... no problem there.

A WANK POST?? ROFL I love that. LOL

Nahhh, it's good that you put this stuff up and it's good people can check it out. My main bug about all of this is that one doesn't necessarily need to study or know about these folks in order to understand how to help someone by using the Tarot. It is what we, as readers do.

I have a little bit of training in counseling from way back and the premise back then in the 70s still holds true, but I am digressing and getting off topic. (Sorry Moonbow*).

Can we use the Tarot as therapy? Sure, but again you have to define the word therapy and that is what I think Mary is trying to accomplish in this thread. (Whew!!I think I brought back on topic).

My concern with what I am reading is we are seeing what the books say therapy is...with a few good exceptions. I think we should be posting what we think therapy is. I know what the dictionary says and what many text books say allready. It should not be too hard to distill your thoughts to a basic meaning, and worry about the details later.

Teheuti, no worries, you are right: Therapy: Definition: I am now focused to the task at hand

Therapy is simply a treatment of ANY SORT for a illness or disorder. Success is not necessarily a part of therapy, just a hopeful outcome of success.

To me it is that simple.

I did post what I thought therapy was. And to me, healing (what you term "success", Crowned One) is - if not a guaranteed outcome of therapy - at least its principal, if not sole, aim.

One thought I had about therapy was ... (and its not a spiritual/clinical version )

Love is therapy. Truth is therapy, Forgiveness is therapy, Understanding is therapy. Compassion is therapy.
These are things we can give to ourselves and others which don’t have to rely on an appointment, an assessment or a prescription.

Elven said:

Love is therapy. Truth is therapy, Forgiveness is therapy, Understanding is therapy. Compassion is therapy.
These are things we can give to ourselves and others which don’t have to rely on an appointment, an assessment or a prescription.

Click to expand...

True - and all that is Spirit at work, Elven . In fact I would say that any therapy that doesn't have these as its basic ingredients isn't really therapy at all.

Personally, I always like going to the dictionary first in order to make sure that I'm not coming up with a meaning that no one else is going to understand. I want to be true to the tradition/history, though willing, where appropriate, to go beyond it (which also requires that I inform others of my variations).

Returning to the etymology (the deepest roots) I like the idea:

*To attend (hold, support) somebody with healing intent.*

Synonyms of therapy include: healing, treatment, cure.

Cure implies a full recovery or resolution of a problem. For our use this word seems to go too far - implying a guarantee.

Healing, especially seen as a process, and not an absolute result, seems more appropriate. Heal is from a Germanic word root meaning "whole, uninjured, of good omen." It's related to halig/helig = "sacred, holy." [I want to explore the "good omen" aspect later.]

Treatment is the application of remedies or, better yet, care provided to improve a situation. From a root: *tragh* which implies "to draw/drag through space/time (location/duration)." [Interesting application - "to draw someone through a space/time experience to improve him or her." —Past/Present/Future.]

I also like the idea that *a treatment* can have an altogether different meaning as: "an outline showing how a story (screenplay) is to be dealt with." [We might use this relation to "story" later.]

Mary

I thought this

in my posts i was applying those definations you gave us to the purpose of reading with tarot.
I thought that was the purpose of defining therapy with tarot and not just what therapy was in the general overview. (anyone can look it up in the dictionary after all). and so in my post i used the question I posed to define what basis I was using the definations you gave us, for to relate to the tarot.

my own personal defination of it as a person who read tarot , and read a lot of tarot books, is
every time we read the tarot we offer some sort of therapy.
if we come from an empowering loving, presence and intent then that therapy is good.

however should we come from a greedy, let see how good i can read for the client can come back, approach then the therapy offered might not be as good.

and if a person reads with the intent of making the client change their life for the better, perhaps through fear or through other uses of the ego..
then that therapy is bad.

and so by that , therapy is the effort to try to affect the person we are interacting with in order to serve the purpose of aiding them in what the person would like to improve in their life.

then there is good ways to do this, bad ways,, and ineffective ways.

HOLMES said:

therapy is the effort to try to affect the person we are interacting with in order to serve the purpose of aiding them in what the person would like to improve in their life.

Click to expand...

Holmes - you bring up an interest point:

Does therapy always imply that one person is aiding another person?

(And, may this, at times, refer to one part of the self aiding another part?)

The interactive then becomes an important ingredient.

BTW, you may want to start a thread called "Therapeutic Tarot: Definitions" where you can start putting therapy to work with tarot.

Mary