The Functions of Safety in Psychotherapy: An Integrative Theoretical Perspective across Therapeutic Schools

Objective: There is a growing consensus that safety plays a central role in human development and psychotherapy and that lack of safety undermines mental health, yet its role in psychotherapy has not been thoroughly examined. This paper identifies and integrates different functions of safety in psychotherapy on a theoretical basis. Method: A panoramic overview of the concept of safety was conducted across psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and humanistic approaches, representing major paradigms in contemporary psychotherapy. The literature was analyzed, compared, and synthesized to identify common functions of safety in ontogenesis and clinical practice. Results: Safety is rightly prioritized across psychotherapy schools for its developmental value in promoting change and adaptation. Five main functions of safety were identified: securing survival, facilitating restoration, promoting exploration, sustaining risk-taking, and enabling integration. These functions are complementary and context-dependent. Safety stands in a dialectical, paradoxical relationship to development and psychotherapy: progress requires enough, adequately timed and dosed safety rather than maximal safety. Conclusions: Safety provides a necessary basis for restoration, exploration, and therapeutic progress, but its misdosage, misconstruction, or misuse may hinder healthy development of attachment, identity, autonomy, and self/regulation, and the capacity to tolerate danger, risk, and frustration. Future research should further explore and empirically test safety’s role in psychotherapy.