Psychotherapy across cultures: the form-content dichotomy.

The diversity of patients, problems, beliefs and cultures mandates the need to educate, match, negotiate and integrate psychological interventions. This is necessary in all cultures and in every setting. Many schools of psychotherapy offer specific theories and particular techniques, yet they share many common approaches. Their individual techniques allow therapists form and structure to treat different clinical problems, discuss diverse content and use them in varied settings and among people with assorted cultural backgrounds. The heterogeneity within cultures, regions and populations demands that therapists understand the local and individual reality. The apparent contradictions between standard psychological therapies and their use across cultures, when viewed through a form-content framework, allow for matching strategies for specific individuals and their distress, and for choosing the best treatment options from a diverse therapeutic armamentarium. Psychotherapies are at their weakest when they attempt to provide explanations across cultures and are at their strongest when they are used as vehicles for engagement with patients. The challenge is to find a common psychotherapeutic language, which attempts to bridge the divide between the issues facing the patient and the armamentarium of the therapist. The form-content paradigm at least partly explains the complexity of the issues within psychotherapy. It also allows the therapist to move from the therapy-centric orientation of Western approaches to the patient-centric orientations required for success in psychological therapies.