What is Psychotherapy: Psychotherapy is a professional endeavor that utilizes an interpersonal relationship to enable clients to gain an understanding of themselves and to make changes in their lives. In this professional relationship clients can explore difficult, and often painful, emotions and experiences. These may include feelings of anxiety, depression, trauma, or perhaps the loss of meaning of ones life. It is a process which seeks to help the client gain an increased capacity for choice, through which the individual becomes more autonomous and self determined. The therapist utilizes knowledge of attachment, development and empirical research as she conceptualizes the presenting problems, plans treatment and implements therapeutic interventions.

An overview (Egan 1998):

STAGE 1		STAGE 2		STAGE 3
Current Scenario		Preferred Scenario		Action Strategies
1a - The story (What's going on?)		2a - Possibilities (Ideally ,what do I want instead?)		3a - Possible actions (How many ways are there?)
1b - Blind spots (What's really going on?)		2b - Change Agenda (SMART goals)		3b - Best fit strategies (What will work for me?)
1c - Leverage (Focussing/prioritizing)		2c - Commitment (Check goals are right)		3c - Plan (What next and when?)
Action Leading to Valued Outcomes

In the diagram of the whole model 

• Top row: la, 2a, 3a expansive, exploratory and creative 
• Middle row: 1b, 2b, 3b.... challenging, reality testing, and selecting 
• Bottom row: 1c, 2c, 3c.... focussing, committing, moving forward

For clients where Axis II disorders and Dissociative Identity issues are being treated, the therapist offers a 'constant and reliable object' that the client can use as he or she explores and heals 'self'. The therapist assists the client in establishing a positive, nurturing introject (Horner, 1989). What this means is that often, these disorders emerge from childhood trauma where the psyche is damaged through an 'attachment to a perpetrator' (Ross, 2000, p.261-271), an attachment to someone trusted who emotionally interferes with healthy development. Humans are genetically designed to form attachments. The developing psyche of an infant, toddler or child relies on the health of the psyches of those attached to for normal, healthy development. Attachment figures become introjects in the developing psyche. These introjects (schemas) often lie at the core of these disorders. The therapist offers a new, healthy schema through the therapeutic relationship.

Object Relations & The Developing Ego by Althea Horner (1989).
The Skilled Helper by Gerard Egan (1998).
The Trauma Model by Colin A. Ross (2000).