Well first of all, what I meant by "other interactions"? Some of these are Asylums, Mental Hospitals and Community Mental Health Centers. Asylums began hundreds of years ago in medieval Europe. Originating in monasteries, they were the "first institutions meant primarily for persons with psychological disorders". The big difference however between these and any psychotherapeutic ideas is that no therapy was offered. The sole purpose of these establishments was to get the people off the streets and out of the public view. Some of the residents were chained and many of them beaten. As they became more crowded the situation became worse as did the conditions of those that lived there and so the psychological disorders quickly became more acute. Asylums had nothing in common with modern ideas of psychotherapy. .

             The next form of interaction we will discuss is that of Mental Hospitals. Over the ensuing years, these hospitals became the more accepted practice with after efforts for Humanitarian Reform, which began in the eighteenth century, became the norm. They too were well filled, indeed by Rathus states that " by the mid-1950's, more than a million people resided in state, county, Veterans Administration, or private facilities". The purposes of these Hospitals were far different than those of the old asylums and similarities can be made between these establishments and ideas of psychotherapy. As has been previously noted, psychotherapy is a form of therapy. These hospitals were designed not just as mental prisons, but as places where treatments were offered. There were still many problems however. Unlike psychotherapy where there is actual communication between the therapist and the client, patients would have been very lucky to have received such one-on-one treatment. The hospitals were overcrowded and it was not uncommon for there to be one doctor or psychiatrist to be responsible for a two or three hundred people (Ibid.