Evaluation of the Understandings of Psychotherapists in the Family Counseling Centers about Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy has been defined by Freud as treatment by psychological means. The purpose of the present paper is to invest-tigate how psychotherapists in family cou-nseling centers understand the processes and the formation of psychotherapy.Using purposive sampling in 2019-2020, sixteen in-depth interviews were cond-ucted with psychotherapists and couns-elors with at least 7 years of professional experience in family counseling centers. Semi-structured interviews were analyzed using a deductive-inductive thematic ana-lysis approach. Accordingly, 120 initial open codes, 3 main categories, and 8 subcategories were recognized regarding the psychotherapy processes. The results showed that psychotherapists and coun-selors in family counseling centers understand psychotherapy based on their personal perceptions, their activities, and the resources they used. The use of div-erse perspectives and eclectic approaches in psychotherapy demonstrated that psychotherapists pay attention to the con-sistency and inconsistency of therapeutic approaches with Iranian culture.