PSYCHOLOGY CORNER

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS OF COUNSELING: A REVIEW

AMY L. CHAVES

Feb. 21, 2000

(Based from the book COUNSELING IN PERSPECTIVE:

THEORY, PROCESS, SKILLS

BY:  LILY ROSQUETA-ROSALES)

CONTEXT:

            The following is a summary of  each of the main theory or approach of counseling with the goal that this would become my own future reference.  Only the main tenets are included for the sake of brevity:

 The Psychoanalytic Approach (Sigmund Freud)

            Thoughts and feelings which are kept in the unconscious are brought into the conscious level by the counselor using the “lie on the couch” method.  This type of counseling focuses on what goes on in the mind.  Included are instincts, identifications, displacements, defense mechanisms, transference, free association and Freudian symbols. The counselor allows the client to express whatever comes up in his conscious mind using the free association technique. 

              Since the goal in psychoanalytic therapy or counseling is knowing oneself,  some of the modern innovations developed are: maturation intervention, written facilitation of free association, reflection of the unconscious negativistic portion of the client’s ego, supportive intervention and massed-time therapy.

 The Non-directive Approach (Carl Ransom Rogers)

            This is a relationship-oriented approach.  It has also been called client-centered, person-centered, experiential counseling and Rogerian counseling.  It is geared towards experiential relationship and avoiding intellectualizing the client’s anxieties or affairs.  Its major strength lies in the development of the client’s autonomy, personal power, responsibility and inner strength.  The major concepts are self-actualization and self-direction.  The counselor views the client as a person who is essentially basically good, rational, independent, full of potential, positive, cooperative, realistic, trustworthy, accepting and forward-moving.  The counselor’s strategies are: listening, empathic understanding, and caring.  He encourages inquiry, hypothesis testing, and investigation of results.  He is fully involved in the client’s world of values.

 The Directive Approach (Sigmund Griffin Williamson)

            This form of counseling is concerned with the individual’s total development across life stages and environments.  It seeks to provide rational decision-making skills by seeking to put a stop in the client’s irrational, non-productive thinking and behavior. The primary tools of the directive counselor are the assessment instruments and the interviews.

            The cornerstone of directive counseling is diagnosis before the start of counseling.  The approach is teaching, mentoring and influencing.  The counselor usually gives four services as follows: guides the client into understanding himself, assists the client into knowing his strengths and weaknesses, suggests to the client concrete ways of understanding himself, and refers the client to other professional personnel workers if necessary.

            In times of immediate crisis such as rebellion, war and economic depression, directive counseling is chosen because it is expeditious.

 The Adlerian Approach  (Alfred Adler)

            This approach recognizes the importance of birth order in the family which influences one’s character and lifestyle.  Terms such as “inferiority complex,”  “masculine protest,” and “organ inferiority”  were introduced by Adler to understand the individual.                                                                                                                       

            The Adlerian approach believes that  the client can overcome feelings of inadequacy and weakness  and that clients  must believe in their own dignity and worth as persons.

            The Adlerian approach has four components:  establishment and continued enhancement of rapport through encouragement, assessment of the client’s lifestyle through a study of family constellations birth order, family environment and childhood recollections, insight into the client’s philosophy of life, goals and behavior patters, and motivating the client towards changes of behavior that benefits him and society.

            The Adlerian approach focuses on human wellness, individual growth and expansion, and social interests.  This approach is therefore considered as humanistic, holistic, phenomenological, teleological, field-theoretical, and socially-oriented.

            The interpretation is upon purpose and not upon cause, upon movement and not upon description, upon use and not upon possession.  Thus, the core of this approach is the psychology of use.

 The Behavioral Approach  (First Component: I.P. Pavlov, C.L. Hull; Second Component: B.F. Skinner;  Third Component: J. Wolpe, A. Ellis, A.A. Lazarus, J.R. Cautela, M. J. Mahoney, E.E. Kazdin, D. Meichenbaum)

            Behavioral counseling is a related group of systems, formulations, and strategies, the main thrusts of which are preventive, restorative, and controllable.  From its focus on simple phobias, it has evolved to focus attention on complex social neuroses and the whole gamut of existential problems.  The major components of this approach are:  respondent behavior (systematic sensitizing and desensitizing), operant behavior (behavior modification with individuals and groups),  and cognition (internal process treated in behavior terms).

                        This type of counseling can easily be demonstrated in the laboratory settings where client behavior can be quantified (counted and timed), rewarded or punished.  This approach however, limits the client’s autonomy, freedom of choice and higher levels of human cognition.  Control, manipulation, unwanted brainwashing, and loss of freedom are apt to result if behavioral counseling is done by scrupulous and unethical practitioners.

 The Gestalt Approach (“Frits” S. Perls)

            Gestalt is a German word which means “whole.”  It is the concept of integrating parts into a perceptual whole.  This approach is phenomenological, existential and experiential.  The strategies employed works on the individual’s awareness of personal responsibility and on restoring balance and equilibrium.  It deals more importantly with the value and meaning of the  person’s experience in the “here” and “now” in contrast to the psychoanalytic approach of the “there” and “then.”

              The Gestalt rules which are techniques at the same time are:  focus on the now and not on the past or future, personalizing pronouns (“I”), avoiding questions so client would not disown thoughts and feelings, not using “should” so that client is forced to assess real needs and desires, and the awareness continuum which concerns the “how” of experience and not the “why.”

            The two basic principles underlying Gestalt therapy are: the holistic principles which states that persons are organized wholes and the didactic principle of opposites which also include the principle of homeostasis.

 The Reality Approach (William Glacer)

            The philosophical base of this approach is that people are self-determining, autonomous, and responsible.  The two traits of a successful person are love and warmth.  Thus an  adjusted person is classified as  “success.”  He is happy, confident, rational, and responsible.  A maladjusted person is classified as “failure.”  He is lonely, self-critical, irrational, and irresponsible.  Reality therapy, also known as an action system focuses on involvement and motivation.  It has eight important principles:  becoming personally involve with the client, focusing on the client’s present behavior, helping the client evaluate and judge his own behavior, helping the client in making decisions and committing himself to be responsible, accepting no excuses for nonperformance and nonfulfillment of plans, eliminating punishment for client’s failures, preventing interference with reasonable consequences, and encouraging and challenging client not to give up inspite of difficulties.

            Reality therapy focuses on behavior and not on feelings.  It puts emphasis on the power and potential of positive thinking and acting.  It is a verbal system that is direct, frank, and realistic and is more often used in academic settings where two-way communication exists.  Happiness and the capacity to laugh at one’s mistakes are considered indispensable to mental health such that humor is a part of reality therapy.

            Reality therapy is concerned with the client’s conscious thoughts, not on his unconscious thoughts such as dreams or fantasies.  Confrontation and even verbal shock therapy are sometimes necessary to guide the client to responsible action and behavior.   Responsible behavior is the ultimate goal of this approach with its problem-centered and success-oriented goal.

 The Rational-Emotive Approach (Albert Ellis)

            This approach has also been known as rational therapy, semantic therapy, cognitive-behavior therapy and rational-behavior training.  It operates under the philosophical   tenet   that   an   individual   is   self-actualizing.   It   works  under   the assumption that people’s emotions are a result of their beliefs, philosophies, interpretations, and evaluation about events happening to them and not from the events as they are.  This approach also assumes that an individual is born with rational and irrational tendencies and that his irrational thinking and dysfunctional feelings and behaviors are the reflections of his emotional problems.

            Counseling in the rationale-emotive approach is active and confrontative.  The counselor considers the client’s “reality” as irrational or self-defeating when the client’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior defeat his own personal goals, values, and interests. 

            The process involved in this type of therapy is the curing of unreason by reason.  The counselor uses instruction. logic, reason, suggestion, persuasion, confrontation, deindoctrination, indoctrination and prescription of behavior.  If the counselor exhibits power during the confrontation, psychological harm on the client may result.

 The Transactional Analysis Approach  (Eric Berne)

            Transactional analysis (T.A.) evolved from the discovery of the ego states re-experienced by persons under direct stimulation of the brain.  Human behavior is explained in three separate and distinct ego states: Parent, Adult, Child.  The Parent ego explains the client’s value systems, morals and beliefs.  The Adult ego state is that part of the client that gathers and processes data in an objective and non-feeling way and makes decisions from available information and current events to which he is exposed.  The Child ego refers to spontaneous feelings and actions which may be playful, happy, eager, curious, rebellious, sad, stubborn or obedient.  The therapeutic process is geared to helping clients identify whether they are functioning as Child, Adult, or Parent in their interactions with others. 

            Responsibility is the key issue in the process.  A client is viewed as responsible for his decisions and actions and that he has the ability to make decisions for life survival.  The treatment is based on the assumption, “I’m  O.K. You’re O.K.”  Based on a group setting, transactional analysis is best in making clients immediately experience the quick change in their behavior and feelings.  There are four kinds of rational analysis used by the counselor in  T.A.:  Structural analysis (analysis of individual personality), transactional analysis (analysis of what people say and do to one another), game analysis (identification of the resulting racket feelings), and script analysis (analysis of overall life plans). 

            There are four major positions involving an individual with another:   (1) I am O.K.; You are O.K.   (2) I am O.K.; You are not O.K.    (3) I am not O.K.; You are O.K.   (4) I am not O.K.;  You are not O.K.  It is important that the counselor continues to work with his clients until they have successfully completed the T.A. contract.  This approach is now used in bigger groups as part of training programs in education, business and industry.

  The Logotherapy Approach  (Victor Frankl)

            This is a philosophically oriented psychotherapy or approach.  It focuses on what it means to be human and challenges the client to make attitudinal changes for his sake and others.  It is a humanistic-existential approach with three basic concepts: freedom of the will, will to meaning, and meaning of life.  Although freedom is the core of the humanistic-existential perspective, there are limitations to human freedom: physical, social and psychological.  However, inspite of the limitations imposed by heredity, health, economic, political or psychological forces, man possess the freedom to transcend (self-transcendence) certain limits inorder to make a stand, expressed in his attitude and action.  This going beyond human limits propels the client to reach a spiritual or existential dimension that allows him to discover meaning inspite of pain, suffering and misery.

            The will to meaning guides behavior.  When one goes beyond self through self-detachment and self-transcendence, the client discovers self-actualization, meanings,  and creative, experiential and attitudinal values.  However, the meaning of life is unique to every person because it grows in the context of that person’s life.  Logotherapy is best applied to persons suffering from physical and psychological trauma of all kinds.  It is now often used in booth psychotherapy and medical treatment. The process of counseling is non-didactic and nonconformative.   Thus, a life which seems hopeless can have  meaning.  Even pain and suffering can have meaning.

 The Multimodal Approach  (Arnold Lazarus)

            This is a comprehensive approach to psychological intervention that uses an integrated body of techniques drawn from behavior, cognitive and insight therapies.  It adopts and adapts techniques from other counseling approaches.   It is also called technical eclecticism, born from the merger of the social learning theory and the systems theory. This approach emphasizes assessment, especially on the data gathered during the initial interview and from the Multimodal Life History Questionnaire.  There are four phases involved in the gathering of data or information:   (Phase 1.)  The counselor gathers specific information about the client’s problem with emphasis on target behavior.  The counselor leads his client to talk about the BASIC (Behavior, Affect, Sensation, Imagery, Cognition).   (Phase 2.)  The counselor guides the client into describing events that precede the problem.   (Phase 3.)   The counselor assesses  the conditions which brought about or contributed to the problem.    (Phase 4.)   Booth counselor and client discuss possibilities of using intervention strategies for well-being and the eventual solution of the problem.

            Two techniques are used to avoid counselor-client conflict: bridging and tracking.  Bridging is staying with the client’s preferred modality.  Tracking is ordering the sequence of the various modalities used.  A second-order BASIC is necessary for assessment if the client is having difficulties in solving his problem:  The client does things, the counselor assesses behavior.  The client has feelings and moods, the counselor assesses affect.  The client has sensory and physiological changes, the counselor assesses sensation.  The client sees himself and others in real and fantastic situations, the counselor assesses imagery.  The client thinks, the counselor assesses  cognition.   The  client is  not  dependent on the counselor for making final decisions and the counselor is expected to be flexible towards his client.  This type of approach is used with individuals, groups, couples and families.  It can also be used with children and in mental hospitals. 

EXPERIENCE:

            Of all the approaches or theories I have outlined in the preceding pages, I choose Logotherapy as my point of experience because not only is it philosophical in perspective and therefore is in conduit with my field of specialization, but because I have also been using it in my counseling of people in general, and of students in particular.   I have also been fortunate to read Victor Frankl’s book entitled, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he narrated  his personal harrowing experience of what concentration camp was like during the Nazi regime of Hitler.

               I could identify with Logotherapy because of my own experience of pain—the pain of being betrayed by my husband—and how I was able to cope and am still coping with it.  It is true that one  can rise above certain limits and circumstances that cannot be changed.  What I do is to change my attitude towards the situation of being betrayed.  There is something spiritual in this will to rise above the things or conditions in life that cannot be changed.  Somehow, It forces me to confront pain and still find meaning and positive aspects from it without denying that I am suffering.

REFLECTION:

            When I look back at my own experience of being betrayed and the pain that comes with it,  I am thankful that I am a teacher of Philosophy because I can look at my problem and situation objectively and with rationality.  I don’t deny that I have feelings that maybe normal for anyone who has been hurt because of  the betrayal of a spouse but in my case I have a larger horizon to consider and my feelings are just but an aspect of an otherwise meaningful world.  So I am less bitter and less miserable because of this philosophical perspective. 

            So even if my husband is  still having an affair at the present, I  always see to it that I find meaning not in his affair but from his affair.   Since my husband’s affair, he is always not home so the time that I am alone, I consider that as my precious space for I can find time to study, read my favorite books, watch interesting television programs and psyche myself positively through meditation and other self-enriching activities with my kids.   When I feel deprived of love and attention, I recognize that I have been reared in a very loving family and that the love I received from my parents as an only child is enough to sustain me when I feel deprived.  The love and attention that I get from close friends also affirms me and reaffirms my faith in humanity.  Above all, I have been loved unconditionally by one Person, remember?  In God’s love and blessings I feel so secure.

ACTION:

            I would like to extend what I learned about counseling from Logotherapy to those  who  are  hurt  both  in body  and  in  spirit.   That is  why  I am taking this course because I would like to help—in helping others I am also helping myself.  That is the paradox of helping others in times of need.  Therefore I resolved that I would make sure that I am going to be an excellent counselor or therapist when the right time comes.

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