Side effects are the bad effects that occur incidentally with the main effect. Does psychotherapy have side effects? To answer this question we need to first ask: does psychotherapy work? From Freud’s creation of the psychoanalytic school to the present day, various schools and systems of psychotherapy have emerged and alternated, and in 1986, a report indicated that there were more than 400 schools of psychotherapy. This shows that psychotherapy must be useful to develop so rapidly. Studies in the 1970s and 1980s proved that psychotherapy is useful (Qian, 1994). The emergence of so many schools of psychotherapy also shows that there are obvious deficiencies in these methods. When there are shortcomings, there are side effects. There is no therapy in the world that has only therapeutic effects and no side effects, and psychotherapy is certainly no exception. Sources of side effects: Sources of side effects can be divided into two kinds: one is caused by the imperfection of the theory. The second is caused by the therapist’s own characteristics. Types of side effects: The side effects of psychotherapy mainly come from the immaturity of the doctor. The good news is that psychotherapy is a “self-correcting” process, and patients instinctively withdraw from such treatment. Moreover, the emergence of a system of supervision of psychologists has made it possible to avoid the side effects of psychotherapy to a certain extent. Therefore, compared with other treatments, psychotherapy is still a relatively safe treatment, and there is no need to worry too much. The side effects of psychotherapy are manifested in the following three aspects: firstly, it makes the patient stagnant, secondly, it aggravates the patient’s condition, and thirdly, it adds new problems to the patient. The most common side effect is that it causes the patient to stagnate. For example, a dependent patient who transfers a pattern of dependence to a doctor who is unaware of it and subconsciously is fulfilling and encouraging the patient’s pattern of dependence will cause the patient’s pattern of dependence to be difficult to resolve, and the treatment will, of course, stagnate. In other cases, the core of the patient’s psychological problem is passivity and habitual acceptance of others’ control. If the patient happens to meet a therapist who is accustomed to controlling others, the patient and the therapist will form a pathological alliance of “controlling-accepting control”, which may seem to be very comfortable on the surface of the relationship, but the patient’s fundamental problem has not been solved, and the patient’s personality has not been developed and matured. However, the patient’s underlying problems are not resolved and the patient’s personality is not developed and matured. The second possible side effect is the exacerbation of the patient’s condition, which is very rare. This usually occurs in psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder. Since the psychological defense mechanisms of these patients are weak, if the intensity of treatment is too heavy, it can cause the collapse of the patient’s defense mechanisms, which can worsen the condition once and for all. There are also individual patients who have a deeply hidden self-mutilation mentality and regard psychotherapy as a tool for self-mutilation. For such a person, the more successful the psychotherapy is on the surface, the more his masochistic mentality will be satisfied, and the heavier and more stubborn his condition will be. The third possible side effect is the creation of new problems. Such a situation will be very rare. It usually occurs between a very psychopathic doctor and a psychologically very naïve patient, and is based on a serious abusive masochistic mentality on the part of both the doctor and the patient. This situation seems to be appreciated only in Western psychological movies. Common Misconceptions in the Treatment of Psychosomatic Diseases The most common misconception is that the patient is so preoccupied with the search for potent therapies that he neglects to mobilize the patient’s own inner potential and motivation. The mobilization of the patient’s own inner potential and initiative is precisely the core of psychotherapy, but also the fundamental reason for the efficacy of the treatment, if the core and the fundamental is ignored, the treatment of course will not be successful. The second common misconception is that patients in the process of psychotherapy, reversing the primary and secondary relationship between the doctor and the patient. A significant difference between the diagnosis and treatment of psychological diseases and general illnesses lies in the fact that the patient is the main body of treatment and the doctor is the auxiliary body. If the treatment of mental illness is compared to a heart surgery, then the most appropriate, the most ideal surgery is not a psychiatrist, but the psychiatric patients themselves, the psychiatrist is only a surgical assistant and consultant, must not overstep his role, otherwise, will only pull out the seedling to help grow. The third common misconception is that the patient for the difficulty of treatment and the time required for underestimation. According to research, the emergence of any psychological disease, there is a pathological character as a foundation, character foundation is not shaken, the symptoms of psychological disease will be difficult to eradicate. The character is formed before the age of five casting role, after the age of five, the basic stereotypes, once stereotypes, lifelong difficult to change. In our country’s proverbs, there is also “rivers and mountains are easy to change, the nature can not be changed”, it can be seen that the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness is originally difficult and long. Lack of understanding and insufficient preparation for this, and falling into the misunderstanding of rushing to success, the treatment is prone to failure. The imperfections of psychotherapy theories and ways to deal with them 1. The imperfections of the theories Theories of psychotherapy come from psychotherapists’ interpretation of personality and their understanding of personality development and formation. Each psychotherapeutic approach is based on its own unique theory of personality. The personality theories in psychology can actually be regarded as the source and foundation of the guiding ideas of psychotherapy. As psychology has developed to this day, there is no single theory that can convincingly and relatively comprehensively explain human psychological phenomena. And the study of personality is a difficult one in psychology, with over 120 definitions of personality alone. Personality theory is the largest and most structurally complex theory in psychology (Zhonggeng Chen, 1994). Existing theories of personality are diverse and have their own focus, but there has never been a grand unified theory. Each theory starts from a different starting point and explores at different levels. The therapeutic theories built on this basis also have their own focuses and strengths, and they are equally unable to achieve perfect results. For example, psychoanalytic therapy recalls repressed motivational desires from the unconscious to the conscious mind through free association and the interpretation of lapses and dreams. Through repeated revelations and interpretations, the therapist enables the patient to get rid of present-day psychological disturbances, give up those immature emotional reactions, and gain good adaptations, thus achieving therapeutic effects. However, the method of psychoanalytic treatment overemphasizes the influence of past experiences on the present, and ignores the realistic stimuli that cause and maintain present behavior. It also overemphasizes biological drives and ignores the role of personal expectations and efforts (Wang Lei, 1994). Long-term psychoanalytic treatment may bring a kind of misguidance to the patient, when encountering problems, the tendency to look for external causes, or early experience, while shirking their own responsibility and abandoning the present efforts. This is contrary to the fundamental goal of psychotherapy, which is to help people help themselves. Behavioral treatments may likewise have side effects. There are many types and techniques of behavioral therapy, but they all share common features: emphasis on present symptoms, emphasis on recent rather than past determinants, and external behavioral changes are seen as the standard for evaluating efficacy. However, behavioral therapy overemphasizes the environment and loses focus on the human psyche itself. In the treatment of some neurological disorders, behavioral therapy can quickly diminish or even eliminate some of the patient’s symptoms, such as compulsive hand washing, but the patient may soon develop new problems or symptoms. By focusing on the symptoms themselves with the patient, the therapist reinforces the patient’s poor interpersonal communication patterns, i.e., eliciting concern from others through the symptoms. Ostensibly, the problem is treated; in fact, the therapist identifies with the patient’s interpersonal communication patterns, which reinforces the symptoms. Cognitive therapy believes that cognitive distortions and limitations lead to emotional disturbances and maladaptive behavior. The key to its treatment is to correct the person’s cognition. However, cognitive theory ignores the role of motivation and emotion in personality. So when cognitive therapy alone is administered, the feedback from some patients is that the reasoning can be figured out, but the actual change in their lives is small. The side effect of cognitive therapy alone is often to make some patients more entangled in the concepts, unable to break through the limitations of the self, without substantial changes in behavior. 2, how to overcome the side effects of the imperfect theory of psychotherapy Psychological counseling and therapy field from the initial beginning of each adhere to a single theoretical school of the tendency of “points”, to the current variety of methods and theories compatible with the “joint” tendency, reflecting people’s dissatisfaction with the shortcomings of a single theoretical school, and other theoretical schools of the strengths of the square. Garfield once pointed out that one of the results of the development of contemporary counseling and therapy research is that the field is moving in the direction of scientific eclecticism. Side effects brought about by the shortcomings of different therapeutic approaches can be avoided through a wide range of theories and techniques from different schools of thought, and by incorporating them into a comprehensive synthesis of their use in practice. Smith’s 1982 survey of more than 400 members of the American Psychological Association’s Division of Clinical Psychology and the Division of Counseling Psychology showed that eclecticism was the most prevalent theoretical tendency, accounting for 41% (Qian Mingyi, 1994). If the flexible and comprehensive application of different theories can be emphasized in the professional qualification of psychotherapy in China, it is possible to reduce the side effects of imperfect theories in psychotherapy practice.