The load on the psyche of modern man is colossal. A large flow of information, a fast pace of life, demands to meet expectations - all this leads to a decrease in self-esteem, nervous breakdowns, and deterioration in mental health. Coping with depression and nervous disorders on your own is very difficult, and sometimes impossible. In difficult situations, you need to contact a specialist who will help restore mental balance and health. But how to determine who exactly can help? Psychologist and psychotherapist - what is the difference, and what problems should you address to one or the other? To make the right choice, it is worth understanding this issue in detail.
Are a psychologist and a psychotherapist the same thing?
Literally translated from Greek, the same root in the names “psychologist” and psychotherapist means “soul.” This indicates that these specialists work with a person’s state of mind, but their competencies are different. Not many patients (or even doctors) can understand the nuances of these two specialties. There is a stereotype that both a psychologist and a psychotherapist can equally help in difficult life situations, and it does not matter who to turn to for help with a particular problem. However, this is fundamentally wrong. The wrong choice of a specialist can lead to aggravation of the situation, health complications and prolonged depression. But how to understand who is needed - a psychologist or a psychotherapist? To do this, you need to know what the difference is between these specialties.
Critical Assessment
Kuhn (1962) argues that a field of study can only be recognized as a science if the majority of its followers share a common point of view or paradigm. Kuhn believed that psychology was still pre-scientific, while others believe that it had already experienced scientific revolutions (Wundt's structuralism being replaced by Watson's behaviorism). The key point here is the following question: can psychology be considered a science if not all psychologists agree on what and how to study?
What is the difference between a psychologist and a psychotherapist?
A psychologist and a psychotherapist are completely different professions, based on different specific knowledge, theory and practical methods. The main difference is the scientific directions that psychologists and psychotherapists use in their practice:
- Psychology is the science of studying the psyche, the pattern of manifestation and the influence of its features on human social behavior. Psychology studies a mentally healthy person, his consciousness, unconscious, personality, behavior, motivations, feelings.
- Psychotherapy is the science of systematic and complex influence on the human psyche in order to correct his personality, consciousness and behavior.
There is also a difference in the training of a psychologist and a psychotherapist, practical approaches to working with patients and the achieved treatment results.
Professional training
The main difference between a psychologist and a psychotherapist is the lack of specialized medical education. A psychologist is not a doctor and cannot determine, establish clinical diagnoses, or prescribe medication. To become a psychologist, you must obtain a higher education in the humanities in the field of clinical medical psychology.
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A psychologist may have various areas of training, in accordance with his field of activity:
- clinical;
- legal;
- pedagogical;
- social;
- criminal and judicial;
- gender, family and children's;
- oncopsychological.
In addition, a psychologist can specialize in military, engineering, or economic psychology. The most common specializations are educational psychologist, family and clinical psychologist.
A psychotherapist is a doctor who has received higher medical education in the field of psychiatry and psychotherapy. Such a specialist can diagnose mental disorders, and, unlike a psychologist, can prescribe medications and recommend treatment to patients. As a rule, a psychotherapist is a specialist who works with mental disorders of moderate severity and without pathological etiology. More often these are neuroses, depressive states, changes in behavior. The competence of a psychotherapist is the treatment of inadequate patient conditions caused by aggression, obsessions, and a tendency to addictions. A doctor in this specialty can help treat health problems caused by psychosomatics, that is, diseases of the body that arise due to the influence of psychological factors.
Working methods
Another difference between a psychologist and a psychotherapist is the methods and techniques that are used in the course of work. The psychologist often acts as a consultant. Healthy people who find themselves in a difficult psychological situation turn to him - dissatisfaction with life, crisis in relationships, problems at work, etc. The specialist uses various methods to analyze and assess the situation - testing, questioning, personal conversations. To solve a specific problem, a psychologist uses one or a set of techniques:
- Individual consultations - during personal meetings, personality characteristics are clarified, behavior is analyzed, causes are identified and advice is given on correcting the mental state.
- Trainings are group sessions where a psychologist-coach explains the reasons for certain behavioral factors, changes in consciousness, and determines motivations for further development.
- Sessions are a type of individual or group classes where methods and techniques of psychocorrection are applied in practice.
Each specialist can use many techniques to achieve their goal. Among them are working with triggers, visualization, controlling emotions, etc.
A psychotherapist, as a practicing doctor, in his work must be guided by the official recommendations of the Ministry of Health and clinical protocols for the treatment of certain mental disorders. Basically, treatment occurs on an individual basis. Personal work with the patient is the main type of psychotherapy. An exception is family psychotherapy, when relationship problems are worked out in joint sessions. To work with patients, a specialist can use various types of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, hypnosis, and in the case of complex depressive conditions, can prescribe pharmaceuticals.
A psychologist’s main weapon in the fight against mental health problems is the word. In addition to verbal techniques, the psychotherapist’s arsenal includes medications.
Treatment results
A psychologist, being a humanitarian, helps people restore peace of mind, motivates a person to reconsider life goals, social behavior, and increase self-esteem. At the same time, the psychologist corrects the patient’s consciousness and influences his future life. The successful work of a psychologist is expressed in the creation of favorable conditions for the patient’s harmonious interaction with himself, the people around him, personal growth, and the development of motivation.
A psychotherapist helps to get rid of the physical consequences of mental disorders. For example, it relieves chronic stress, which can trigger or aggravate heart disease. A psychotherapist treats insomnia, depression, neuroses, which can cause obesity, the risk of getting into an accident, and premature death. The result of treatment with a psychotherapist is relief from physical health problems caused by mental disorders.
Literature
- State educational standard of higher professional education. Specialty 020400 “Psychology”. Qualification - Psychologist. Psychology teacher.
- Vachkov I.V., Grinshpun I.B., Pryazhnikov N.S. Introduction to the profession of psychologist. - Publishing house: MODEK, MPSI, 2007. - P. 464. - ISBN 978-5-9770-0153-3, ISBN 978-5-89395-845-4.
- Dubrovskaya A. A. Qualification of a psychologist (documents confirming the education of a psychologist). — Online resource MYPSYDOC.RU with live examples of documents conforming to the qualifications of a psychologist.
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What problems does a psychologist work with?
A specialist in the field of psychology helps the patient to free himself from emotional problems that are the result of stressful or conflict situations. The psychologist is ready to work with various predicaments in which the patient finds himself.
Difficult life situations
Any person, throughout his life, faces situations in which it is difficult to collect his thoughts, find the right solution, and answer questions. These may be circumstances when it is necessary to solve some life problem or change the usual way of life. All this leads to stress, nervous tension, and negative experiences.
Working with a psychologist helps a person gain practical tools to improve their emotional state. This allows you to adequately assess the circumstances and find the right directions for resolving issues. Consultations with a psychologist help improve the quality of life, learn to take responsibility for everything that happens in it, gain satisfaction from your own achievements and get out of conflict situations without problems.
Creative or career crisis
Professional burnout can overtake a person in any field of activity. Symptoms indicating the presence of a creative or career crisis:
- constant fatigue, dissatisfaction with work and results;
- feeling of emotional and physical exhaustion;
- doubts about one’s own competence and professional suitability;
- detachment and reluctance to communicate with superiors, colleagues, clients and other people.
The crisis is expressed in the feeling that at work or in the creative field there are “only fools” around. Associated symptoms may be indifference to the profession, passivity, followed by aggression.
A psychologist helps to find motivation for further career and creative growth, helps to identify new goals and ways to achieve them.
Family or relationship problems
At different stages of family life, psychological difficulties arise among its members. Psychologists refer to such problems as:
- misunderstanding of generations is the eternal problem of “fathers and sons”;
- conflict situations - the reason for disagreements can be the lack or lack of communication, household responsibilities, difficulties of adolescence of children, violations of personal space, etc.
- infidelity of spouses - betrayal and mental anguish associated with them;
- Divorce is a painful situation that not everyone can cope with without taking a toll on their mental health.
Working with a psychologist, a person can cope with problems in the family and see the situation in a new light. The specialist helps to build relationships in a new way, rebuild the family model, and reconsider priorities.
Loss of a loved one
Grief from the loss of a loved one is an unbearable burden. In such a situation, each person’s experiences, feelings and emotions are individual. Psychologist patients can go through several stages of psychological suffering:
- acute shock - withdrawal into oneself or, conversely, hysteria;
- protest - rejection of an event;
- melancholy - painful experiences, disorganization of life.
A psychologist helps to bring the patient out of acute shock, work through the situation, help accept the loss, endure the pain and teach him to move on.
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In what cases do you consult a psychotherapist?
A psychotherapist works with various mental health problems - emotional swings, panic attacks, phobias, outbursts of aggression. Manias (addictions) that appear in a person are also treated by psychotherapists. Therapy often takes place in collaboration with other clinical specialists - neurologists, endocrinologists, psychiatrists, etc.
Constant apathy
Apathy is a depressed state of mind when a person has no or sharply decreased aspirations and interests. Emotions are suppressed, there is an indifferent attitude to events. Such a patient has no motivation to take any action. Even performing everyday duties, such as taking a shower or eating, becomes a “business of the day” and requires effort from the patient. The task of a psychotherapist is to identify the cause of constant apathy through conversations, observations, and psychological testing. Based on the results of the analysis of the situation, therapeutic treatment is prescribed, including regime correction, psychotherapy sessions, and pharmacological methods.
Intrusive thoughts
A condition when images or impulses invade a person’s consciousness without his will and uncontrollably. Trying to get rid of obsessive thoughts or obsessions on their own, the patient experiences fear and discomfort. The cause of this condition can be stress, prolonged depression, and even schizophrenia. Examples of obsessive thoughts:
- Fear of contracting diseases, need for a sterile environment.
- Pathological desire for order and symmetry.
- Uncontrolled account.
- Fatalism - constant thoughts about the end of the world, accidents, threats to life.
- Obsessive fantasies are thoughts that are alien to a person’s usual thinking and are of a religious, aggressive or sexual nature.
This disorder is extremely painful. A person realizes that involuntarily arising images are irrational. But attempts to get rid of them by force of will are ineffective and only lead to greater worries.
The psychotherapist carries out psychocorrection using various techniques and pharmacological drugs.
Outbursts of aggression
A person's destructive behavior can pose a danger to himself and others. Sudden anger, anger, rage, hatred - all these are manifestations of aggression. Such symptoms may accompany more serious illnesses than a simple mental disorder. Such diseases include:
- Endocrine disorders - diabetes mellitus, changes in the level of sex hormones, dysfunction of the thyroid gland and others.
- Head injuries.
- Stroke.
- Asthenia of the nervous system.
- Alzheimer's disease.
- Hyperthyroidism.
Moreover, the underlying disease can be asymptomatic. In the absence of physical problems, the causes of destructive behavior can be mental disorders, suffered moral violence, severe shock and other specific factors. The doctor’s task is to identify the cause of outbreaks of aggression, collect anamnesis, and prescribe treatment.
Sudden changes in emotions
Rapid mood changes are characteristic of a mobile psyche. Changes in the emotional background are expressed in a sharp change in reactions to external factors - tearfulness, apathy, anxiety, suspicion are replaced by feelings of joy, euphoria, impulsiveness and foolishness. The psychotherapist looks for the causes of such emotional instability and prescribes treatment.
Appearance of dependencies
Manias of a person are also the competence of a psychotherapist. Many addicted people themselves do not realize the danger of their situation; they believe that their manic hobby does not threaten anything. Addiction is chronic and difficult to overcome. Traditional types of addictions are associated with addiction to alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. But recently this list has been replenished with new types of dependencies:
- Gambling addiction - teenagers and men are more susceptible.
- Shopping mania - an unbridled desire to buy appears in women, sometimes in men.
- Foodmania is an addiction to food in general or a specific product.
Recovery from addiction is a long-term therapeutic process. During treatment, the psychotherapist examines the patient’s addictive behavior, corrects it, and tries, together with the addict, to develop new useful habits.
Working with mental disorders always has an integrated approach, located at the intersection of medical areas. The psychiatrist, if necessary, uses instrumental studies of the brain - CT, ultrasound, as well as traditional diagnostic methods.
Perspectives in psychology
Psychologists study behavior from different psychological perspectives, each based on a common set of assumptions about what is important to study and how to study it.
Some conduct detailed biological studies of the brain, others examine how we obtain information, others analyze the role of evolution, and still others examine the influence of culture and society.
The classic modern views in psychology on the adoption of scientific strategies were the behaviorists, who were famous for their dependence on controlled laboratory experiment and rejection of any invisible or subconscious forces as causes of behavior.
Later, cognitive psychology also adopted this rigorous, scientific, laboratory-based approach as applied to memory, perception, cognitive development, mental illness, and more.
Psychologist and psychotherapist - what unites these professions
Despite the obvious differences between a psychologist and a psychotherapist, there is something that unites these two professions. Both specialists solve problems of a person’s mental state and use similar psychoanalytic techniques in their work. Using different approaches to treatment, psychologists and psychotherapists strive to achieve a complete change in the patient’s destructive consciousness. Each of them provides assistance within the framework of their competence, aimed at improving a person’s quality of life, making informed decisions, socialization and normalization of behavior.
The beginning of psychology as a discipline
In the early days of psychology there were two dominant theoretical schools. An American psychologist named William James (1842-1910) developed an approach that became known as functionalism. He argued that the mind is constantly changing and there is no point in looking for fundamental blocks. Instead, you should focus on how and why the body does things. It has been suggested that psychologists look for the root cause of behavior and the mental processes that occur. This emphasis on the causes and consequences of behavior has influenced modern psychology.
Structuralism was the name given to the approach first proposed by Wilhelm Wundt. The term comes from Edward Titchener, an American psychologist who was trained by Wundt. Structuralism relied on introspection, a method of inquiry through which subjects made connections between what was going on in their minds while performing a specific task. However, this proved to be an unreliable method because there were too many individual differences in the experiences and reports of the study subjects.
Despite the failure of self-analysis, Wundt is an important figure in the history of psychology, as he opened the first laboratory dedicated to psychology in 1879, and its discovery is generally considered the beginning of modern psychology. Wundt was important because he separated psychology from philosophy by analyzing the workings of the mind using more objective and standardized procedures.
Because psychology is a science, it attempts to investigate the causes of behavior using systematic and objective procedures of observation, measurement, and analysis, supported by theoretical interpretations, generalizations, explanations, and predictions.
How to understand which specialist to contact in your case.
You should contact a psychologist if you are faced with problems in the family, cannot establish relationships in a team, or have suffered the loss of a loved one. You should contact a psychologist in cases where psychological trauma, such as a road accident, natural disaster or catastrophe, interferes with the usual flow of life. At the same time, you feel like a healthy person physically, there are no health complaints.
You need to go to a psychotherapist for help when mental problems begin to affect the state of the body - vision and attention are impaired, headaches and fears appear.
When to seek professional help
Professional help may be needed at any stage of life. Age, social status and position do not matter when it comes to mental health.
For children
A child is faced with many factors that can affect his psycho-emotional state - computer games, gadgets, problematic relationships with other children. Adults can also negatively influence a child’s psyche: scare them, impose strict prohibitions, or, on the contrary, permissiveness. Professional help is especially necessary if you experienced violence as a child.
For teenagers
Difficult puberty is associated with hormonal changes in the body. It is very important for a teenager at this age to get answers to the “adult” questions that arise. A professional will be able to correct behavioral factors and help avoid destructiveness.
For adults
In case of personal problems or severe emotional states of loved ones, you need to enlist the help of a specialist. Independent attempts to get out of difficult circumstances often lead to a worsening situation.
Psychologists of our online service will help you cope with difficulties. Start a happy life today - sign up for a consultation with a psychotherapist now.
What is the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist and a psychologist?
The table shows the main differences between three similar mental health professions.
| Psychologist-theorist | Psychotherapist | Psychiatrist | |
| Has a psychological education | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Can advise clients | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Has a medical education | ❌ | ◐ | ✅ |
| May prescribe pills | ❌ | ◐ | ✅ |
| Conducts depth psychotherapy | ❌ | ◐ | ❌ |
Who is a psychiatrist and when to contact him
A psychiatrist is a doctor with higher medical education who treats severe mental disorders. Mental disorders that can be treated by a psychiatrist are accompanied by symptoms of behavioral changes, mental suffering, and disruptions in the natural functioning of the body. Patients with mental disorders can pose a danger to themselves (suicidal thoughts, disorientation in space, etc.) or to others (aggression, cruel behavior, tendency to destruction, etc.) A psychologist or psychotherapist can identify a serious condition during conversations with patient. However, such pathologies must be treated by a psychiatrist.
Where to look for work
A certified specialist is in demand in many fields. Medical clinics, psychological assistance services, private and municipal educational institutions - this is the main field of activity of a psychologist. In addition, many large companies today have psychologists on staff. They organize and conduct business trainings to raise corporate spirit, unite the team, and motivate employees. Such specialists work in HR departments and act as personal coaches for entrepreneurs. Due to their ability to predict people’s behavior, they are also in demand in marketing, as they can direct the company’s activities to generate greater profits.
