The analysis History and Trends in Counselling - Research Paper Example

? History and Trends in Counselling Psychological problems at present are more than that in the past. It will become even more in future because of the rapid changes in the life styles, life philosophies and attitudes of people. Counselling helps people to get rid of their mental tensions or emotional problems up to certain extent. Medicines alone cannot solve many of the mental problems. A good word is hundred times more effective than a medicine for people with psychological problems. As in the case of many other segments in human life, counselling principles are also undergoing tremendous changes. The needs of the present generation are extremely different from the needs of the past generation and therefore counsellors should find new ways to cater the needs of the current and future generation. This paper analyses the history and trends in counselling. History & Trends in Counselling The world is undergoing tremendous changes at present because of the rapid progresses in science and technology. Yesterday’s precious things are becoming waste today whereas today’s precious things may become waste tomorrow. For example, when it was invented radio brought tremendous changes in the world in the past. Today, television, mobile phones and internet established supremacy over radio. The popular laptops and cell phones are currently giving way for tablet PC’s. In short, changes are taking place in every segment of human life at present. Human forced to fine tune his life philosophies and attitudes in conjunction with the changes happened in technology and science. Yesterday’s life principles are not applicable today and it is difficult to predict what is going to happen in future. For example, same sex marriages or the concepts of staying together were not in the distant dreams of the past generation. However, such things are common at present in many countries. In order to keep in pace with these changes, many of the sociological and psychological principles were also changed in the past. Counselling is one area in which tremendous changes were observed in the past. New life styles brought new challenges to the current counsellors. It is difficult for the counsellors to analyse a topic with the help of single dimension. For example, counsellors earlier considered homosexuality as a behavioural problem whereas at present they have realised that it is unwise to categorize it as a behavioural problem alone. Homosexuality has root causes in the changing life styles of the people. Without an analysis of the changing life styles, it is difficult for the counsellors to perform their duties well. In short, counselling in the past, present and future may not be the same. History of Counselling “Plato said, "The greatest mistake in the treatment of disease is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, but the two cannot be separated." We must address cognitive, behavioral, affective and spiritual issues”(Powel, 2005, p.2). In other words, the importance of counseling was better known even to ancient philosophers like Plato. Man is a social animal and he requires advises and guidance from his fellow humans in order to lead a meaningful life. No human is mature at the time of his birth. He acquires maturity through the interactions with his surrounding and environment. “The first known school guidance program in the United States dates to 1889, when a Detroit school principal, Jesse B. Davis, introduced a guidance curriculum that was delivered in each English class in his school” (Bauman et al, 2003, p.1). Teenagers are vulnerable to developmental problems. Sex hormones are hyper active during teenage period and it is difficult for the teenagers to take sound decisions during this period. The above awareness forced academic scholars to think in terms of implementing guidance programs in school compounds. The father of professional counseling is believed to be Frank Parsons who founded education to work center in Boston in 1906 (History of Counseling profession, n.d, p.2). Apart from the education center, Parsons also established a Bureau of Vocational Guidance in Boston. He used this bureau to train young people to become counselors in schools, colleges and other areas in which the services of counselors were inevitable at that time. The incorporation of counseling with psychotherapy was happened during the initial periods of twentieth century even though Plato like philosophers predicted the usefulness of counseling in solving many of the psychological problems. One of the major contributors for the counseling in psychology was Sigmund Freud who devised the psychotherapy treatment in which counseling plays a major role. Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Sandor Ferenczi, Karl Abraham and Otto Rank etc are some other prominent personalities who raised the standards of counselling to its present stage. The 1940's and 1950's marked an important expansion in the field of counselling. The US psychologist Carl Rogers (influenced by Alfred Adler and Otto Rank) established the person centred approach, which is at the heart of most current practice. The person centred approach is now listed under the 'humanistic' branch of psychotherapy. There are now thought to be three general types of psychological therapies; behavioural therapies, psychoanalytical and psychodynamic therapies and humanistic therapies (The History of Counselling and Psychotherapy, 2011). Today, counseling is an unavoidable part of any kind of psychological therapies. Counseling techniques are used to identify the root causes of the mental problems faced by the patient. Identification of the causes of mental problems is vital in determining the treatment options. Elimination of the root causes of the psychological problem is important in the treatment procedure of the mental patient. This can be done with the help of counseling sessions alone in the case of patients with moderate problems whereas in the case of patients with severe mental problems, medications are required along with counseling. Trends in Counselling Duncan, Hubble and Miller show that the single most important factor in change in counseling is the strength of the therapeutic alliance (30 percent). Other key issues are extra-therapeutic factors (40 percent), which are the stage of readiness of change of the client and the setting to which the client returns. Hope and expectancy accounts for 15 percent of change. And only 15 percent of change can be attributed to technique (Powel, 2005, p.2). Establishing is warm relationship between the counselor and counselee is essential for the success of the treatment. Only after building strong relations with the therapist or the counselor, the patient will reveal the causes of his agony. According to the trends in modern day counseling procedures, initial counseling sessions are mostly used for building relations with the patient by the therapist. The patient’s or the client’s mind may have lot of hidden faculties to which the client may not allow any intrusion in normal cases. These hidden faculties of mind may have the reasons enclosed for the mental problems suffered by him. It is necessary for the counselor to leak into or penetrate the wall of the client’s mind and explore the details stored there. Many people have the illusions that counselling is another way of advising. According to the modern trends in counselling, counsellors never try to advise their clients; instead they create a feeling of self-awareness in the minds of the client. The counsellor will act as a person with a mirror in hand through which the counselee can see his image. There are many cases in which people fail to analyse certain things correctly. Counsellor can help such people in creating better self-awareness. Self-awareness help the clients better understand the faults in their thinking process and behaviour. Identification of faults is necessary to correct the faulty behaviour. Counsellor will act as a tool to help the clients in identifying and correcting their abnormal behaviours. Thus “counselling can provide people with a regular time and space to talk about their problems and explore difficult feelings in a confidential and dependable environment” (Counselling Skills, 2007). Counselling usually consists of two types of questions from the counsellor; open questions and closed questions. An open question is one that is used in order to gathering lots of information with the intent of getting a long answer. A closed question is one used to gather specific information - it can normally be answered with either a single word or a short phrase (Steven 2008). The intentions of the counsellor are different while using open and closed questions. Open questions may often relate to general things like the family, society, environment, culture etc in which the client interacts in his daily life. The client can describe the answers in few sentences for the open questions. On the other hand, closed questions are intended to obtain some specific information and the client may not have many chances to avoid the exact answers. “Counselling psychology has always seemed to be the answer to the friction between psychiatry and psychology. See a psychologist if you're normal and have problems, see a psychiatrist if you're crazy” (Berg, 1959, p.250). The intervention of a psychiatrist is necessary only in the cases of patients with chronic mental problems. For example, an extremely violent mental patient needs medications to settle his emotions first and then proceed to the services of a psychologist. There are many cases, in which people with psychological problems suffer from delusions, connected thoughts and negative thoughts. An experienced counsellor or therapist can easily solve these problems. However, if the patient exhibit abnormal behaviours, the service of a psychiatrist is necessary. According to Stockton & Guneri (2011), “one of the basic issues in counselling is the apparent misconceptions regarding the terms guidance and counselling and the purpose, roles, and functions of counsellors”(Stockton & Guneri, 2011, p.100). Many people have the false belief that counselling and guidance are one and the same thing. Both counselling and guidance are used to solve similar life problems; however the approaches in counselling and guidance are extremely different. In the case of guidance, readymade solutions are there for each problem and therefore the guide need not devise any new strategies to solve the problems of his client. On the other hand, a counsellor forced to devise new methods to solve the problems of his client because of the arrival of new problems at rapid pace. After the counselling session, the client himself identifies the root causes of his problem and tries to take remedial actions whereas in guidance, the client may not get deep insight into the problems he is facing. The role of the counsellor is to facilitate the person’s resolution of the issues, whilst respect their values, personal resources, culture and capacity for choice. Counselling can provide people with a regular time and space to talk about their problems and explore difficult feelings in a confidential and dependable environment (Counselling Skills, 2007) Counselling is not a process to make a new personality. It is a process of fine tuning of a defective personality to act in a particular way. All the positive individual characteristics of the person will be retained whereas the negative characteristics will be wiped off after the counselling sessions. In other words, counselling helps a person to identify his personality defects and shows way to correct it. The counsellor explains the reasons of his problems in an in depth manner so that the counselee will get better self-awareness. With the help of a counsellor, a person can explore feelings and express them better, examine beliefs, and work toward making healthy changes” (What is Counseling? 2009). Formal degrees in psychology alone may not make a good counsellor. Academic qualifications will assist the counsellor definitely; however, common sense, better communication skills, ability to ask timely questions, ability to convince the client etc are some other necessary skills needed for a counsellor. Immense patience is required for the counsellor as the responses of the client may not be predictable. As per modern trends in counselling, apart from individual factors, cultural factors also give more importance in counselling sessions. It is not necessary that a behavioural problem in one culture may not be the behavioural problem in another culture. For example, in Western countries same sex marriage is a common thing at present. In Canada like countries, same sex marriage has even legal protection. If two males or females in Canada like to stay together, Canadian society may not take it as an unaccepted behaviour at present. On the other hand, if such things happen either in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, it should definitely be considered as a behavioural problem because of the differences in culture between Canada and Saudi Arabia. In other words a counsellor should know the cultural factors of the client first in order to identify whether the problems of the client is behavioural or not. It is not necessary that counselling is always provided to mental patients alone. “Counselling covers a wide spectrum from the highly trained counsellor to someone who uses counselling skills as part of their role, for example, a nurse or teacher” (Counselling Skills, 2007). Individuals and communities need counselling of some kind to correct their problems. “Individual counselling provides an opportunity to learn to make better decisions, improve one’s relationships, and generally increase personal effectiveness (What is Counseling? 2009). Community counselling is currently taking place through different channels such as telephone counselling, face-to-face counselling, and support groups. Telephone counselling is usually provided when the clients are in crisis and need emergency support. Counselling in schools is another major development in counselling in the modern era. School councillors give more attention towards “academic-related issues, career guidance and development issues, and psychosocial and mental-health-related issues of the children” (See & Ng2010, p.19) Over the years, changes in the profession of counselling are reflective of a large number of factors that include broad societal as well as more focused political, familial, economic, and cultural dimensions. These changes have influenced the counselling profession, which is composed of members embedded in the larger society. Evidence of changes includes credentialing such as licensure and certification and changes in the accreditation of counsellor training programs (Helwig & Schmidt, 2011, p.148) As in the case of other segments of human life, trends in counselling are also undergoing drastic changes. Modern day counsellors have better access to technology than the counsellors in the past. For example, it is possible for the modern counsellors to video record the entire counselling sessions for future use. It is necessary for the counsellor to double check the verbal and nonverbal responses of the counselee in response to his questions. Studying of these responses will help the counsellor to arrive at better conclusions. Internet is another channel which brought tremendous changes in counselling. One of the major features of internet counselling is the fact that the counsellor and the counselee can interact freely even if they happen to be in distant parts of the world. Using video/audio conferencing technologies, the counsellor and the counselee can create a virtual world almost similar to a real world. Another major advantage of internet counselling is the privacy offered by internet. Many of the patients like to hide their information while seeking counselling. Internet provides good platforms for such people. Conclusions Counselling is one of the most important branches in dealing with behavioural or psychological problems of the individuals and the communities. It is difficult for a person to self-identify his drawbacks or problems in his thinking pattern. A counsellor can act as a mirror through which the client can see his image or behavioural problems. Counselling is not advising; it is helping the client to self-identify and rectify his problems. Counselling works both at individual level and community level. In many of the schools, academic counselling is being conducted at present in order to prepare students better for their future needs and also to wipe off their psychological problems. At the individual level, counselling is used to correct the behavioural problems of the people and to improve their personalities. Over the past few years counselling techniques have developed a lot and it will develop further in future because of the availability of better technologies at present. References Berg IA (1959). Book Reviews: Comments on Current Books and the Passing Scene. Journal of Counselling Psychology. Vol. 6, No. 3, 1959. EBSCOhost Bauman S, Siegel J, Falco L, Szymanski G, Davis A, & Seabolt K (2003). Trends in school counseling journals: the first fifty years. Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KOC/is_2_7/ai_112905222/ Counselling Skills (2007). 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Counseling in Malaysia: History, Current Status, and Future Trends Journal of Counselling & Development • Winter 2010 • Volume 88. EBSCOhost The History of Counselling and Psychotherapy (2011). Retrieved from http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/history.html What Is Counseling? (2003), Retrieved from http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwcou/lifeshops/whatcounseling.htm Read More