To Be a Therapist - Personal Statement Example

139838 The beginning, as the proverb says, is half the whole, so that a bad start does as much harm as all the later mistakes put together. Aristotle Carl Rogers, the American Psychologist, popularised the method of Person Centred Counselling, in an immense contribution to counselling field. It is based on the understanding that every individual is unique and is capable of doing the best for himself even under difficult circumstances. Initially, Rogers, through sound recordings, looked for the crucial turn in the client change or information. These observations helped him eventually to realise that the counsellor should be guided by the patient, and not the other way around. He changed the counsellor's role from an advisor to that of a listener. This approach is not a formal exalted theory, but as the name says, a different approach that has proved to be useful and more effective. It honours the need to talk, communicate and understand self of the individual in need of therapy and stands on the basis that individual's need is more important than that of the counsellor, because counsellor, after all, is a mere supporter, or a prop up, and not the main hero of the drama. It establishes the human trust in basic values, principles and desire to improve in harmony with the rest of the world. "Rogers is holistic in his thinking, tending to look at the complete organism in order to understand and explain behaviour. He believes that humans are innately good and that they are growth orientated. Phenomenological understands individual perception of reality. Determinism, cause and effect relationships in having freedom, the organism has an actualising tendency" http://www.valmillscounselling.co.uk/person_centered_counseling.htm This approach depends on the assumption that given the proper circumstances and understanding, a person is capable of finding solutions for his inner problems and nothing could be a longer lasting cure. The main theory under which the Person centred counselling works is that the patient is fully capable of handling his problems and monitoring his future growth. It believes that the main authority here is not the psychologist, but the patient himself and counselling goes on according to the patient's observations about himself. It believes that all people might not have had a highly favourable condition to develop, grow and manage their lives and might feel stifled, or might have developed a very difficult, punishing self identity that might not be easy to maintain at all times and under all circumstances. When personal experiences are not conducive with the self identity of the person, psychological problems occur because the individual is unable to cope with the experiences and still maintain the personal identity to which he has become accustomed to, or of which he had a certain self confidence and pride. The self-concept of the person clashes with the experiences he is going through and this might make the self-worth plummet down in his opinion and acceptance might become difficult. His judgement of his self-worth gets shaken because he cannot feel comfortable with it any more, as its fundamental base has not been firm recently. Explaining his Theory of Personality, Carl Rogers says: "In endeavouring to order our perceptions of the individual as he appears in therapy, a theory of the development of personality, and of the dynamics of behaviour, has been constructed," (Kirschenbaum and Henderson, 1990. p.244). The essence of person centred counselling is the meeting and understanding between counsellor and his patient. Undoubtedly, it is very hard to establish a complete and unquestionable understanding and this is considered to be one of the most difficult types of counselling, but with perhaps the best results. It forces the counsellor to be authentic, supportive, empathic and mainly non-judgemental. It has three core conditions that would contribute a lot to the therapeutic change: 1. Unconditional positive regard. 2. Empathic Understanding. 3. Congruence. With unconditional positive regard, the person is unconditionally accepted by the counsellor and he is allowed to explore all his feelings, problems, uncertainties, without any fear of rejection or ridicule. He could express all the thoughts that are bothering him and he would not be stopped by the psychologist. There are no pre-regulated standards that the person has to meet. He could take control of the situation and the psychologist would be happy to proceed depending on his interpretation of the problem. Actually, psychologist or counsellor gets guided by the patient here. According to the second core point, counsellor understands and appreciates the thoughts of the individual, respects him and tries to see the world from the patient's point of view, and meets the patient half way. The most important issue here is the understanding and sympathy of the counsellor towards his patient. It encourages existential view of living, development of self and importance of relationships. Successful therapeutical relationship is the fundamental requirement of this counselling. According the third point of congruence, it only means that the counsellor is authentic and genuine. He will maintain transparency with the client and would not be stand-offish in the old professional way. There will not be any controlling authority, or a show of knowing more than the affected individual. Counsellor is only an acutely and sympathetically understanding friend, and there will not be any kind of intimidation. "Few would argue with the idea that the therapist should be interested, even concerned; but how much warmth should he or she feel and communicate Part of this problem results from the differing concepts of warmth in a relationship. Under most circumstances, warmth is a quality of emotional intensity that signals that one likes or cares about another," (Lewis, 1978, p.68). To these three principles, Rogers included the influence of East by borrowing from eastern philosophies such as Zen and Toaism and Buddhist thoughts of self-mastery and meditation. To a certain extent, it needs courage to hope for a change by making choices and face it and naturally, this has to be the choice of the individual and not that of the psychologist. Having made that choice it is his responsibility and option to continue in that path, with meaningful help from the counsellor. "Rogers had a paradoxical view of the question of free will and determinism. While he certainly believed in the existence of free choice, and that exercising it is not only possible but desirable, in his scientific work he proceeded from the point of view that humankind is determined by a combination of environmental and genetic factos," (Merry, 1996, p.47). The above three core conditions in the counsellor are expected to help in the growth of the individual, make him understanding and accept the reality, see himself in a totally different way, and if necessary, come out of the rigid frame of self-concept and become kind to himself. Psychologists believe that this kind of counselling takes away the pressures and hesitations from the patient, makes him master of the situation, and helps him in developing his personality. "The human psyche has evolved ways of protecting itself from the feelings of anxiety that inevitably arise from this rich mix of conscious and unconscious feelings. These are called 'mechanisms of defence'. They can be consciously adopted to ward off danger from the utside world or unconsciously used to cope with anxiety arising from within," (Kenworthy et al, 1992, p.53). No doubt there exists a humanistic approach to human nature in this kind of counselling, because it is patient-oriented and is part of humanistic psychology. It deals with the never static human minds, which is forever evolving, changing, developing and making choices between reality and unreality. It is always rediscovering itself and it is impossible to predict or judge this great aspect of human mind easily. It is based on the theory of Actualisation. "'actualisation' is a theory about the processes of growth and development that attempts to explain what we can observe about those processes. In other words, a plant or an animal will develop from, a relatively simple form (an egg or a seed, for example) into a much more complex form as it matures towards adulthood," (Merry, p.16). Roger himself pointed out the necessity of self-actualisation and hence developing self-regard, because 'we are, in short, dealing with an organism which is always motivated, is always 'up to something', always seeking1.' Both authentic worth and potential worth are very important here. A fully functioning person always accepts himself in totality, lives in present, knows his own value, positively experiences life, grasps life with all its purpose and meaning, has a healthy outlook towards society, of a mixture of idealistic scepticism. If a person cannot achieve these ideal conditions, he might be helped to do so and this is exactly where person oriented counselling comes in, and here is an approach that focuses on the person as the central figure who has to explore himself, which will lead to re-organising, developing, moving forward with better motivation into the processes of change. "Rogers (1959) has defined experience as everything that is in awareness and potentially available for awareness." (Rennie, 1998, p. 9). The leading edge of the client's experience will be the pointer for the counsellor to know where and how to get involved to be of help. It works on the theory of actualisation of self-worth and realising achievement potentials with the help and support of counsellor. "The person-centred therapist facilitates the exploration and expression of the feelings around client issues. This offers an opportunity for the client to increase self-awareness and gain insights or make sense of their world. Person-centred counsellors believe that it is through this process of learning that an individual can achieve "actualisation", i.e., the achievement of potentials and goals, with the additional potential of a resolution specific to the client," http://www.openroad.org.uk/personcounselling.htm This was criticised by many psychologists as unnatural, undisciplined and impractical. Another reason of criticism is that the counsellor will be aware of only the problems that are identifiable for the patient, whereas the patient might be having many more hidden problems of which he might not be aware of, but as a professional, counsellor could be aware of those problems. Hence, entirely depending only on the patient might not be a great idea, after all. Also there are ethical issues which the individual might be overlooking from his point of view and naturally, those views have to be corrected. Assuming that people are basically good, trustworthy, and innocent is too nave. It is criticised that there is nothing new about it, as all good therapists anyway make the patients to feel good and it is not very easy to apply all these conditions very truthfully. Counsellors have their own hypothesis and they will definitely hide it from their patients and would not show their inner feelings. They also criticise that this type of counselling is still at its infancy, and will remain so for a long time, as it lacks a concrete theory and will continue to be in an experimental stage with every new patient. It is argued that Person centred counselling is not good enough for very disturbed people, cannot guide destructive and evil people, cannot always establish rapport with cunning and fundamentally bad individuals, and it cannot work at all occasions unless it is combined with other psychological tools, researches and methods. Human nature is considered to be too mercurial for an ideal counselling like the present one. Disturbed minds could be very cunning and dangerous and need discipline and control. People who need help are capable of hiding all their murderous instincts from the counsellor. While learning and growing, it might be too late for the counsellor to grasp the situation and under those circumstances, dangerous specimens could be unpleasant to society. Rule of authority is very essential to control perverted and sadist minds and they cannot be trusted to chalk out their own growth to personal gratification and become part of a civil society. Also they say that this approach revolves around the clients' and their counsellors' reflexivity, defined as 'self-awareness' and it is not enough to treat a psychologically disturbed individual completely. But the advocates of this method argue that reflexivity could be used as an additional advantage because the whole experience of our 'human beingness' is based on our thinking about ourselves and that is exactly what the reflexivity does. They argue that reflexivity and its embodiment are the regions from where the human psychology stems up. It is the silent activity that controls the human existence. Even while being vocal, it dwells on feelings, emotions and understandings. "Non-reflexive talk is simply the talk itself, within which those involved in discussion are not deliberating on what they are saying but rather are just saying it in expression of an intention in the process of fulfilment. Reflexive talk, on the other hand, involves thoughts and feelings between utterances..," (Rennie, 1998, p.5). Even though Roger's method has come under steady criticism, no one can deny that it is a very idealistic combined with approach, as it represents the philosophical holism in it. Person centred Therapists help by active and involved listening with deeper empathy, which is concerned not only with feelings, but with understanding the person's needs, inner necessities and compulsions and this, is what Roger meant when he said "To my mind, empathy is in itself a healing agent. It is one of the most potent aspects of therapy, because it releases, it confirms, it brings even the most frightened client into the human race. If a person is understood, he or she belongs (Rogers, 1986b)2. There is no doubt that the training, skill and inner compassion of a therapist is of great value in Person Centred Counselling. The present approach to counselling is very strongly influenced by Person Centred Approach. It has effectively 'reigned in' the counsellor's natural 'impulse to effect change.' With the locus of responsibility shifted, counsellors feel less under pressure and are able to help well. It has also led to being interested in client instead of reacting positively or negatively or judging them harshly and this judgement sometimes, in spite of the trained background, could lead to unnecessary prejudices. Rennie says, with this approach, he has learnt to tolerate the ambiguity. All three core points are about being supportive, understanding and kind. The main objective is understanding the person from his own point of view. Counsellors will interpret not only the conversation but also the body language of the patient and so far, the approach has proved quite successful. It is accepted as perhaps the most effective of all methods by prominent psychologists today. No doubt, there is flourishing criticism against it as unrealistic, idealistic and cumbersome. It is also argued that theory does not have legs to stand under difficult circumstances. With all that the fact remains that Person Centred Counselling had been very successful in recent years. Psychologists working in prisons have found it unquestionably useful, as it has become one of the best tools to reach and understand criminals. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Kirschenbaum, Howard and Henderson, Valerie Land (1990), ed. Carl Rogers Reader, London, Constable. 2. Kenworthy, Neil, Gillian Snowley and Cynthia Gilling (1992), ed.,Common Foundation Studies in Nursing, Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone. 3. Lewis, Jerry M. (1973), To be a Therapist, New York, Brunner/Mazel Publishers. 4. Merry, Tony (1996), Invitation to Person Centred Psychology, London: Whurr Publishers Ltd. 5. Merry, Tony (1999), Learning and Being in Person-Centred Counselling, Herefordshire, PCCS Books Ltd. 6. Rennie, David L. (1998), Person-Centred Counselling, An Experiential Approach, London, Sage Publications. ONLINE RESOURCES: 1. http://www.valmillscounselling.co.uk/person_centered_counseling.htm 2. Read More