In later chapters, we will look at these approaches to psychotherapy more closely. The goal throughout this book will be to enable you to understand enough about each of the major therapies to make an informed decision in choosing an approach (and there may be more than one) that will be most useful in relation to your own understanding of your objectives, whether they are long-range or focused on the need to eliminate immediate obstacles to growth. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COUNSELING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY Counseling and psychotherapy have developed a great deal in recent years--so much so that their boundaries have often overlapped. Clear-cut distinctions between the two fields are increasingly hard to draw. Nevertheless, some professionals prefer to call themselves by one name and some by the other. In general terms, _counseling_ tends to be a short-term process the purpose of which is to help the client, couple, or family {31} overcome specific problems and eliminate blocks to growth. Counseling gives individuals a chance to resolve personal problems and concerns. Most counselors attempt to help their clients become aware of a widened range of possibilities of choice; from this perspective, counseling tries to free clients from rigid patterns of habit. Habits can be useful, but they can also interfere with life. The technical habits of a pianist, for example, are essential in performance. Similarly, only when language skills become habitual does a speaker of a foreign language achieve command of it. On the other hand, fears can also become habitual, and they may come to interfere with everyday activities. Anxiety over public speaking may become habitual. There are many personally destructive habits--alcoholism, smoking, over- or under-eating, abusive behavior, shyness and social withdrawal--and all can become self-perpetuating patterns. Counseling can help people break out of these habits, often in part by helping clients become aware of unrecognized alternatives. _Psychotherapy_ tends to be more concerned than counseling with fundamental personality-structure changes. Frequently, psychotherapy is a longer-term process. Frequently, too, the problems treated in psychotherapy are hard to pin down and are less specific. They include chronic depression, pervasive ("free-floating") anxiety, generalized lack of self-esteem, and so on. Such difficulties are not well defined; their causes may be vague or uncertain, and often much time must be spent to get at their basis. Psychotherapy seeks to bring about an intensive self-awareness of the _inner dynamics_--the internal forces and the principles that govern them--that are involved in chronic forms of personal distress. Sometimes, as in analytical psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, attention is focused on the role of unconscious processes in inner conflicts; treatment attempts to resolve these conflicts by understanding the unconscious forces involved.