therapist
Pluraltherapists
- 1A person who provides therapy, usually as a professional, to treat illness, injury, or distress.
Her therapist designed a recovery plan after the knee operation.
Occupational therapists teach patients to manage daily tasks after a stroke.
Similarclinician, practitioner
Note
The umbrella use, built plainly from therapy + -ist: anyone whose work is a course of treatment. In this broad sense the word usually travels with a qualifier that names the discipline, such as physical, occupational or speech. Without one, many listeners will hear the talk-therapy meaning. In medical or rehabilitation contexts, it is safest to say which kind of therapist you mean.
- 2A mental-health professional who provides psychotherapy to treat emotional and psychological problems through talking rather than physical treatment.
The therapist used cognitive behavioral techniques to address her depression.
Many therapists encourage clients to keep a journal between sessions.
Similarpsychotherapist, counselor, analyst, psychologist
Note
Narrowed to the talking cure, the word carries the vocabulary of psychotherapy into everyday speech. Joris Luyendijk, in The Guardian Weekly in 2013, borrows a therapist's stages of recovery to describe Britain's denial about its banks. Charlie Berens and Myles Montplaisir joke in 2024 that Midwesterners' therapists are bartenders. That figurative stretch, meaning whoever hears your troubles, works for this sense but not for a physical therapist.
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Origin
Formed from "therapy" combined with the suffix "-ist," which names a person who does something.