psychotherapy
noun
Simple meaning
The treatment of mental or emotional problems by psychological means.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sykohthehruhpeeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
saɪkoʊˈθɛɹəpi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The treatment of mental or emotional problems by psychological means
The treatment of people diagnosed with mental and emotional disorders using dialogue and a variety of psychological techniques.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The treatment of mental or emotional problems by psychological means
In this sense psychotherapy is used as a clinical description rather than a judgement. Outside professional contexts the same word carries much more force, so it is easy for a reader to hear criticism where none was meant.
- Emotional tone
- Context-dependent
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Very strong
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use psychotherapy
- “She decided to try psychotherapy to help manage her stress and anxiety.”noun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.