The world of the Counselor An introduction to the counseling profession 5e chapter 4

Chapter 4: Individual Approaches to Counseling
Chapter 5: Counseling Skills

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Individual Approaches to Counseling

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Offers us a framework
Knowledge builds on knowledge (Paradigm Shifts)
 See Box 4.1, p. 102
Theories are heuristic
Based on our view of human nature
Helps us work in an organized manner
Today, hundreds of counseling theories, but only some have
gained prominence

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Psychodynamic Approaches

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Existential-Humanistic Approaches

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Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches

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Post-Modern Approaches

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Overview

 Dominated early part of 20th century
 Common elements
▪ Unconscious and conscious affects person’s functioning
▪ Early child-rearing has some affect on development of
personality
▪ Past, in interaction with conscious and unconscious, affects
person’s development
▪ Have tended to be longer term
 Some approaches: psychoanalysis (Freud), analytical therapy
(Jung), individual psychology (Adlerian)

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Developed by Sigmund Freud
 First comprehensive approach to therapy
▪ Psychic energy (instincts) drive behavior
▪ Life instinct (Eros): love, intimacy, sex, survival
▪ Death instinct (Thanatos): fear, hate, self-destructive
behavior aggression
▪ All life and death instincts = libido
 Structure of personality:
▪ Id (pleasure principle)
▪ Ego (reality principle)
▪ Superego (moral imperatives)

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Psychosexual Stages: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital
Parenting affects developmental through stages
Defense mechanisms reflect that development
 Name some defense mechanisms!
Deterministic Approach
See Figure 4.1, p. 104
Long term approach that relies on making a little more of the
unconscious conscious

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Techniques

 Free Association
 Dream Analysis
 Empathy
 Developing transference
relationship

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Techniques
 Interpretation of:
▪ Resistance
▪ Defense mechanisms
▪ Parapraxes
▪ Dreams (manifest and
latent meanings)
▪ Transference

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Developed by Carl Jung
 Less pessimistic and less deterministic than Freud
 8 Psychological Types—include combinations of:
▪ Extraversion and Introversion (E or I) with
▪ Mental Functions: Thinking and Feeling (T or F); Sensing and
Intuiting (S or N)

 Information that matches psychological type goes into
consciousness. Information that doesn’t, goes into personal
unconscious.
 Our collective unconscious is inherited. Contains archetypes —
tendency to perceive things in ways we call “human”
 Well known archetypes: persona, anima and animus, shadow

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Jung believed we can make almost anything conscious
If we understand our personal and collective unconscious, we
are “whole”
Techniques:
 Goal of techniques—to make unconscious conscious
 Some techniques:
▪ Examining our dreams
▪ Meaning of symbols
▪ Creative Techniques (working with clay)
▪ Active imagination

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Developed by Alfred Adler
“Teleology”—we inherently are goal directed
We move to fulfill one drive—striving for perfection.
 All other drives subsumed by this one
Part of being human: having feelings of inferiority
Feelings of inferiority lead us to our subjective final goal
Our private logic leads us toward our final goal
Drive toward our subjective goal results in development of
behaviors that compensate for feelings of inferiority
You can tell how a person is driven toward his/her goal through
his/her style of life

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Work through feelings of inferiority, and you will move toward
social interest (Gemeinschaftsgefuhl)
Followers: Dreikrus and Dinkmeyer
 Worked with children whose typical behaviors from feelings
of inferiority yield:
▪ Attention seeking, use of power, revenge seeking, and
inadequacy
Sometimes seen as an early humanistic approach (through
education and counseling one can change)
One of first approaches to work with families

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Phase of therapy
 Building relationship
 Assessing lifestyle
 Insight and
interpretation
 Reeducation and
reorientation

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Techniques:
 Exploring family constellation
 Examining early recollections
 Encouragement
 Democratically held discussion groups
 Limit setting
 Acting “as if” spitting in client’s soup
 Setting logical and natural

consequences

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Overview
 Loosely based on existential philosophy
 Deals with struggles of living and how we construct
meaning in our lives
 Tends to be optimistic and not deterministic
 Phenomenological perspective
 Focus on consciousness and the relationship
 Help people “self-actualize”
 Three approaches: Existential Therapy, Person-Centered,

Gestalt Therapy

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A number of theorists developed this approach: Frankl
(Logotherapy); May, Bugental, Yalom
 Central tenets of most existential approaches
▪ Born into a world with no inherent meaning
▪ We make our meaning
▪ Struggle throughout life to be “human”
▪ Most people live a life of limited self-reflecton
▪ We are born alone, die alone, and mostly live alone
▪ Choice about who we are
▪ Can gain awareness about choices we made
▪ See Box 4.4, p. 110
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Developed by Carl Rogers (“client-centered therapy”)
 We all have need to be regarded
 Conditions of worth placed on us by significant others

 Help people become more congruent and gain a more
realistic sense of ideal self
 "Necessary & sufficient conditions" (pp. 110-111)
 “Techniques”:
▪ Congruence/genuineness
▪ Unconditional positive regard
▪ Empathic understanding
 See Box 4.5, p. 111

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Developed by Fritz Perls
 Based on Gestalt psychology, phenomenology, &
existentialism
 More directive
 Self-regulation, need identification, and need-fulfillment
 Only aware of needs in “foreground”
 “Blockages” or “impasses” yield “unfinished business”
 Now = experience = awareness = reality
 Anti-deterministic
 Techniques “push” one into awareness (pp. 114-115)

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Overview
 Pavlov (1848-1936): Classical Conditioning
 Skinner (1904-1990): Operant Conditioning
 Bandura: Modeling or Social Learning (1940s)
 Recent Years:
▪ Cognitive Structures
▪ illogical Ways of Thinking
 See common assumptions (p. 116)
 Approaches: Modern-Day Behavior Therapy, Rational
Emotive Behavior Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, Reality
Therapy and Choice Theory

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Developed by Many Different Indivdiuals
 Based on an understanding of classical condition,
modeling, and operant conditioning
 Therapeutic stages
1. Building the relationship
2. Clinical Assessment
3. Focusing on Problem Areas and Setting Goals

4. Choosing Techniques and Working on Goals
5. Assessment of Goal Completion
6. Closure and follow-up
 Some techniques: See Box 4.8

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REBT: Developed by Albert Ellis
 Complex interaction between thinking, feeling, & acting
 Mostly, focus on Rational vs. Irrational Thinking
 People have cognitive distortions
 People often driven by 1 or more of 3 core irrational beliefs

(see Box 4.9, p. 120)
 ABCs of feeling and behaving
 Relationship important, but not critical (see Box 4.10, p. 120)

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Developed by Aaron Beck

 Continuity hypothesis: older emotional responses continue
into modern day world
 Diathesis-stress model: biological/genetic/environmental
model—under stress, our (unique) disorders are shown
 Rational, pragmatic, antideterministic, educative, empirical
 We all have “core beliefs” that drive us—embedded beliefs
often out of our awareness
 We can have negative core beliefs (see Box 4.11)

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Cognitive Therapy (cont’d)
 Core beliefs lead to intermediate beliefs (“attitudes, rules,
and expectations”)
 Intermediate beliefs lead to automatic thoughts
 Automatic thoughts related to certain “cognitive
distortions (see Table 4.1, p. 123)
 Automatic thoughts lead to possible reactions to certain
situations (see Figure 4.2, p. 124)
 Treatment: focus on automatic thoughts, get to
intermediate beliefs, then get to core beliefs—change core
beliefs through thinking and acting differently

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Developed by Glasser—originally called Reality Therapy
 Five genetically based needs: survival, love and belonging,
power, freedom, and fun
 Unique “need-strength profile”
 We can only satisfy our needs and control our behaviors in
the present
 Since birth, we create a “quality world” to determine how
to satisfy our needs
 Some quality worlds lead to destructive behaviors

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 Reality Therapy (cont’d)

▪ Can change the pictures in our quality worlds and our
behaviors
▪ Total behavior: We can only choose our actions and
thoughts
▪ Use internal-control language, not external control
language
▪ Techniques: see WDEP system (Figure 4.3, p. 127)
▪ Anti-deterministic

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Overview
 Based on post-modernism, social constructionism, poststructuralism
▪ Post-modernists: Questions modernism and many
assumptions and beliefs we take for granted
▪ Social Constructionism: Values are transmitted through
language via social milieu (family, culture, society)
▪ Post-structuralism: Questioning of “inherent truths” or
“structures” we have believed
 Two approaches: Narrative Therapy and Solution-Focused
Brief Therapy

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