Life satisfaction – a dimension of psychotherapeutical prevention: Critical reflections and results of empirical research

Abstract

Psychotherapy has historically been developed on ill people and is applied in the system treating the sick. A healthy person who has no complaints is only in exceptional cases the subject of psychotherapeutic inquiries as to his/her experiences and behaviour. In this article, the pathologising basic attitude is abandoned and the appreciation of one's own life over one's lifetime and the accompanying complex possibilities of prevention are given. The empirical findings provided cover areas of life which show impairment and in which psychotherapy can cause positive changes. Assessments of life contentment are shown by means of various psychotherapeutic methods. The conclusion is that psychotherapy aims at a "productive therapeutic" change with immediate consequences of application.