Therapeutic Modalities

148 modalities across 16 clinical traditions

An interactive reference covering 148 therapeutic modalities used in individual psychotherapy — from widely practiced approaches like CBT, EMDR, DBT, and ACT to specialized methods like Brainspotting, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, ISTDP, and Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy. Each entry covers the modality's philosophical lineage, core mechanism, ontological assumptions, evidence base organized by tier, training requirements and cost, equity and cultural adaptations, blind spots, and controversies.

Modalities are organized across 16 clinical traditions: Cognitive-Behavioral, Integrative, Somatic, Psychoanalytic, Humanistic, Trauma-Focused, Family Systems, Psychedelic, Expressive, Existential, Behavioral, Attachment, Postmodern, Contemplative, Crisis, and Social Justice. Use the filters below to narrow by tradition, evidence tier, condition, epistemological orientation, or training level.

Select a clinical vignette to see how different approaches formulate the same client — what each modality attends to, what the therapist might actually say, and where approaches genuinely disagree. Built for graduate counseling students, licensed therapists, supervisors, and educators in clinical training programs.

Lineages

Eleven traditions that shaped psychotherapy. Most modalities belong to more than one.

Psychoanalytic Freud → Object Relations, Self Psychology, Relational, Attachment Reichian & Somatic Reich → Bioenergetics, Hakomi, SE, Sensorimotor, NARM Existential-Humanistic Kierkegaard, Husserl → Rogers, Perls, Frankl, Yalom Behavioral & Cognitive Pavlov, Skinner → Beck, Ellis → DBT, ACT & 30+ applications Family Systems Bateson → Minuchin, Bowen, Milan → Narrative, SFBT, Open Dialogue Trauma Janet → Herman, van der Kolk → PE, CPT, EMDR, SE Postmodern & Social Justice Foucault, Derrida → Narrative, SFBT → Feminist, RCT, Liberation Psychedelic Hofmann, Grof → MDMA, Psilocybin, KAP & integration Expressive Arts Naumburg, Chace, Knill → Art, Music, Dance/Movement, Sound Grief & Loss Freud, Bowlby → Kübler-Ross, Worden, Dual Process, PGD Integrative & Eclectic Rosenzweig, Frank → Common Factors, Multimodal, IPNB, Pluralistic