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Counselling Topics

Therapy

Although we might think of therapy as an invention of the 20th century, it is a concept that has an ancient history. In fact, all the ancient cultures developed ‘therapeutic’ beliefs and practices, from Greece, Asia, Egypt, India, South America and indigenous cultures across the world. Song, dance, art and spiritual beliefs and practices were pre-cursors to the therapies we have today. What we would now call ‘psychology’ was initially understood in spiritual terms. Healing the mind was healing the soul. Moreover, body and soul were united (in this life), and so how you treated one affected the other.

It was only as we became more ‘civilised’ that they ‘split off’, and psychology and biology became separate disciplines. Although this makes sense from the point of view of analysing humans beings ‘under the microscope’, the problem with it is that we forgot to put body, mind and soul back together again. Treating mental illness has in large part meant treating the mind. Interestingly, psychotherapy has begun to redress this, with the introduction of ‘somatic’ (body-based) psychotherapy into the therapist’s tool box. In addition, we are beginning to recognise the therapeutic value of dance, movement and spirituality. Click on the PDFs below to know more.