I´m looking for a new T at the moment and found out there are some T:s that are "just" psychotherapists and who don´t have a combined education to become a psychologist + psychoterapist. Perhaps this looks different from country to country so I´ll try to explain it.

In my country a person who is both psychotherapist and a psychologist has the longest education, about 10 years including having several years of supervised client meetings.

A person who´s only a psychotherapist has a shorter education, about 7,5 years, and has not gone through an education to become a psychologist. A person who´s only a psychotherapist has often his or her major education in other areas, most often to become a social worker, a welfare officer.

My former T was both a psychotherapist and psychologist and when I now seek for a new T some of those being "just" a psychotherapist has a lower fee, about half the fee or less compared to the general therapy fee.

But of course I see the danger in choosing a T that has no experience as a psychologist, I see it may lead to such a T being unable to deal with my problems.

I also see a danger in such a T just being able to offer "supportive conversations" and not treatment. That is, you feel a bit enlightened and supported during therapy but you won´t get any tools or you won´t solve for example childhood issues when the T doesn´t have a psychologist degree.

Even if it´s much about the therapeutic relationship itself, a real treatment can´t just being based on having "nice chats" with a nice T, the T has to be competent enough to make you independent and to really solve issues (together with the client of course) that prevent you from things in life.

Has anyone experiences from this? How to decide in this matter? Is a T who´s only a psychotherapist to be considered as not trusted in really solving issues?

I would really appreciate some advice.