Offtopic question - I've never consulted one so i'm rather curious to know what the basis for therapy is? (The belief of it.)
Well, the basis of modern psychotherapy is generally held to be Freud, who took up the cases of people who presented with neurological problems which appeared to have no biochemical origin. His theory (COUGH COUGH Mole) was that the causes of the diseases must originate
within the mind, in particular from unconscious dysfunction originating from traumatic past experience. Following that, Freud attempted to use various methods to root out whatever harmful causes were being suppressed in the unconscious, and that's essentially the foundation of talk therapy.
In terms of belief, it's a fair scientific hypothesis that the workings of the mind can have an impact on the body, but it's not really testable, since we have no real way of empirically measuring our intangible thoughts. This is the place where we have to leave scientific methods because they just aren't an applicable tool here. Like [MENTION=19605]mingularity[/MENTION] pointed out, some counseling is basically tantamount to having an open discussion with someone you trust. The upside to doing it with a professional counselor is that you don't risk harming an important interpersonal relationship with anything you share; the counselor is held to professional standards of behavior and confidentiality; and the counselor has a wide range of knowledge of many different strategies for addressing particular problems. Certain forms of counseling - for example,
DBT - have been shown via scientific testing to be significantly more successful treating certain conditions such as Borderline PD (which it was created to treat) and mood disorders.
As an example if one believes in god with all faith, one simply should understand that the hardships one faces have a reason behind it and etc. Does psychology have a basis like the above?
Well, let's consider that "therapy" is simply any modality to treat a disease (literally, "lack of ease"). Physical therapy, for instance, may have you stretch in certain ways if you get a hip transplant, to help recover from the injury and surgery and to regain range of motion. All of the stretches you do are assigned to you because it is assumed that they will address the underlying cause of impediment. That assumption may or may not be right, of course.
Similarly, anything done in psychotherapy is done with the assumption that it will address the underlying cause of disease. However, since psychotherapy mostly deals with the intangible mind, biochemistry is generally not the starting place for most therapeutic strategies. Some therapeutic perspectives rest on the assumption that in general, the human as an organism, its mind included, tends to move towards health if unimpeded, and the therapist plays the role of facilitator in getting the person "back on track" towards healthy growth, assisting them in their personal mental work to address whatever obstacles are preventing health (this may be closely related to biochemical homeostasis).
And I'll divert to skylights because I didn't major in psychology but my understanding of psychotherapy is that it doesn't operate on a belief-centric basis but that there are different types of therapy that have been evaluated on patients with different emotional problems...the use of the type of therapy, whether narrative therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, etc helps clients emotionally and intellectually resolve those problems.
