Abstract
The present status of psychotherapy has been reviewed and it has been pointed out that this treatment is unavailable to most psychiatric patients because the number of psychotherapists is inadequate. Also the social backgrounds of psychotherapists are largely inappropriate for the understanding of a large proportion of their patients. The number of patients receiving psychotherapy could be increased by several measures such as brief psychotherapy, de-emphasizing of psychotherapy as a treatment procedure, more stringent indications for psychotherapy, and the use of less highly trained psychotherapists, since there is no evidence that much of the present training (especially the prespecialization training) of psychotherapists is relevant. The concept of psychotherapy as a medical treatment is challenged on the grounds that medical training is largely irrelevant both in the formulation of theoretical concepts useful in psychotherapy and in enhancing therapeutic effectiveness.