But if you are a psychotherapist, in the Socratic fashion, then you must get to know the individual history and the particular suffering at stake - as they say 'what is your poison?'. This is what Sigmund Freud started when he asked his patient's to talk to him about it, rather than just describe their symptoms as a patient does to a Doctor when they need the right pill. This then leads to the third result. Against a return to some sort of normal, or standard, where you are only considered returned to health if you are just like everybody else (you suffer 'normally') - against all of that you have a result where each person comes to an individual and unique resolution of the difficulties of being a human being. There is no right way; there is only your way. The fourth and last point to mention here is why be bothered to do it with a psychotherapist - why can't one cure oneself? You need to look at why telling bed-time stories puts children to sleep. If you think about it, it is not obvious that telling children fairy tales should make them go to sleep. The common-sense idea is that if you use words to produce images of heads flying off and small children being eaten by goblins, then that this would awake dormant fears and you could bet upon a sleepless night. But no, they go to sleep. So, instead of the common-sense notion that talking about what one is scared of will stir things up, you have the result that the naming of difficult emotions and the putting of these into words has a quietening effect. The construction of ones story and the putting of it into words that takes place with a psychotherapist enable a perspective - literally a mental distance - from ones emotions and problems. Rather than having them in your face, by talking about it with another person emotions can be diffused and you can take up a bit more of a distance from them. Between yourself and the difficult emotion, you now have many words. Psychotherapy is just talking about things  - but that doesn't mean that things can't be changed by such a simple thing as words.

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