Individual Therapy
Individual Therapy involves one on one work between the client and the therapist and is focused on issues where most of the relevant input is easily brought to consciousness. When an important decision needs to be made in one’s personal or professional life, sessions of counseling can clarify the deeper values that are at stake, and can provide a framework in which what seems overwhelming can be managed by providing containment and structure to the process.
Psychotherapy: involves one on one work between a client and therapist. It differs from counseling in depth of work and intent. Counseling is focused on more immediate change while psychotherapy is focused on longer-term work that occurs at deeper levels of personality where much of the material is beyond easy conscious access.
The two are certainly not mutually exclusive. At times what begins as a straightforward counseling issue reveals deeper, resistant patterns of character that you may or may not decide you are ready to engage. Other times, more immediate counseling work addressed to current symptoms (e.g indecisiveness, procrastination) can go on at the same time as more depth psychotherapy is being done.
