Counselling vs. psychotherapy

What is the difference between counselling and psychotherapy? The answer depends on who you ask. Many practitioners will strongly disagree, but my short answer is: there is no difference. Both terms refer to the same activity. However, I tend to use the term ‘counselling’ when talking about short-term work, i.e. up to 24 sessions of therapeutic work. To differentiate between short and long-term work, I usually use the term ‘psychotherapy’ for therapeutic work that lasts longer than 24 sessions.

To keep things simple I will from now on refer to both counselling and psychotherapy as ‘therapy’ or ‘therapeutic work’.