The Psychological Theories behind Some Counseling Mediums - Term Paper Example

The Psychological Theories Behind Some Counseling Mediums The Psychoanalytic or Psychodynamic theory is premised on the belief that human nature is greatly affected by a person’s early childhood experiences and conflicts between impulses and prohibitions. Its founder, Sigmund Freud’s idea of the three systems of personality, the id, ego and superego being in constant battle within a person is likened to a person’s continual debate of what is right and wrong, and then behaves according to his moral decisions. Such decisions are affected by what society dictates as well as what the person truly desires for himself. Freud views human behavior as determined by irrational forces, unconscious motivations and biological and instinctual drives evolving in the first six years of life. Although the Freudian view of psychosexual stages of development coincides with other contemporary theories on human growth and development, this author opines that it is degrading to the human spirit. It demeans a person’s capacity to make sound judgments because he is viewed as enslaved by his biological fixations and primal needs. It is as if it implies that a person is imprisoned by his past experiences and that his horrible past determines his woeful future. To survive living with negative experiences that may have marred a person’s personality or life views, he develops “defense mechanisms” that aim to keep those traumatic experiences repressed in the unconscious. These defense mechanisms are usually practiced by everyone in their daily life not knowing that they are applications of Freudian thought. An example of a defense mechanism commonly used is ‘rationalization’. If a person has strived hard to reach a goal like applying for a certain job position and does not get it, he would rationalize to his family that he was not so interested in it after all. It is much like the fabled fox “sour-graping”. This is an attempt to mask his utter disappointment and maintain an “unaffected” façade to the people around him. Defense mechanisms is one aspect of the Psychoanalytic theory that this author thinks would find useful counseling, as the patterned use of whichever kind already says a lot about the coping style and personality of the client. The goals of Psychodynamic therapy are settling unresolved conflicts in a person’s past that deeply affect his current patterns of behavior and personality. It may involve bringing repressed painful memories to resurface to be dealt with consciously through the techniques of free association, dream analysis, hypnosis, transference, and analysis of resistance handled by a skilled psychoanalyst. This tedious process intends for the client to reach a level of self-understanding for him to be able to move on with his life without the heavy emotional baggage he has been carrying all his life. This understanding is necessary for an eventual change in views, personality and character. The psychodynamic therapist should be adept and very patient in coaxing the client to unearth his repressions. The ability to listen and be alert and sensitive to what the client tries to communicate (verbally or non-verbally) is crucial to her valid interpretations about the client. She must also possess maturity and maintain her professional objectivity especially when the client undergoes “transference” of remembered feelings towards a significant person in his life to the therapist. A deep level of trust must have been established between the therapist and the client to be able to achieve this feat. In order for the therapy to be successful, the client must be committed to being cooperative and ready to discover truths about himself, no matter how ugly it may be. In the course of the therapy, the client is expected not to make any drastic life changes that may affect the analysis of his problems. Psychodynamic therapy ends when both client and therapist mutually agree that they have reached the goals of therapy, that of the client reaching self-understanding, and being able to use uncovered information in confronting present conflicts and future possibilities of repetition of patterns of unwanted behavior. Gestalt Therapy offers so much to prospective clients in search of understanding their present circumstances. It is concerned with the whole well-being of a person – emotional, cognitive and even the physical manifestations of an individual’s problems. As an existential-phenomenological approach, Gestalt Therapy aims for clients to gain awareness of what they are experiencing and how they are doing it. It is existential because it is grounded on the notion that people are always in the process of becoming, remaking and rediscovering themselves. It is phenomenological because it focuses on the client’s perceptions of reality. In order for a client to fully understand his conflicts, he needs to re-experience significant scenes in his life that are responsible for it. The therapist is a trusted companion in the experience who helps him gain a better understanding of the consequences of such experience. It is believed that no matter how painful that experience is, the client needs to confront it with the help of creative techniques or experiments facilitated by a skilled therapist who uses his wise judgment and perfect timing in the choice of a productive experiment. The client needs to go through the painful experience again with more objective and sensitive thinking in the able company of the therapist. It is like gold going through fire so that it can be refined and polished. The therapist needs to be thoroughly trained in reading and interpreting a client’s verbal and more importantly, non-verbal communication and adept enough in bringing out the real feelings and thoughts of the client out in the open. Gestalt theories seem to have borrowed ideas from Psychoanalytic theories and modified it to suit its own theories. Its “channels of resistance to contact” parallels Freud’s “defense mechanisms”. Likewise, it delves deep into an individual’s dreams. Such focus on deep, underlying meanings behind a person’s actuations and speech entails thoroughness and depth in the study of the unconscious. A Gestalt therapist’s is acquired through careful study and training. Aside from that, he should learn various techniques that require a client to act on his resistance to uncomfortable truths about himself. Gestalt experiments draw much attention to the client and make him vulnerable and self-conscious. The experiments may be successful in unearthing deep issues within the client, but this author thinks much of the drama it entails (especially during group therapy) may be distracting because of the overwhelming self-consciousness it may cause the client. The meticulous dissection of a person’s make-up covers even the physical manifestations of an internal conflict. Non-verbal gestures and even diseases usually caused by stress are analyzed if they are related to unexpressed hostilities that come out in the form of “blocked energies”. Eventually, as issues are resolved, it is expected that over-all well-being follows. Like other forms of therapy, the basic goal of Gestalt therapy is to bring about self-awareness in the client. During therapy sessions, the therapist is alert enough to remind the client to use language that shows “ownership”, accountability and responsibility for feelings and conflicts. One example is using “I” statements such as “I find it difficult to talk to my father” instead of “It is difficult talking to my father”. The author finds it exhausting to be a Gestalt therapist because it requires that he be on his toes all the time to spot hidden truths the client might slip at revealing at one time or another. The client may feel violated when someone would intrude in his private thoughts, somewhat like somebody “censors” his already censored expressions to bring him back to truths that he chose to cover up. The client might feel that he needs to maintain a positive self-image to project to the world. He should also be ready for disclosure of his innermost thoughts and feelings to a trusted therapist. Another perspective that becomes a springboard for a counseling approach derives from psychological principles of learning, cognition and social behavior. “Called the social cognitive perspective by psychologist Albert Bandura, its proponents emphasize the importance of external events. Like learning theorists, they believe that we learn many of our behaviors either by conditioning or by observing others and modeling our behavior after them.” (Myers, 1995). Mental processes are emphasized meaning what we think about our situations affect our behavior. The counseling medium of Bandura’s Psychology is Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy’s (REBT). Its basic hypothesis is that our emotions stem mainly from our beliefs, evaluations, interpretations and reactions to life situations. Ellis believes that we have an inborn tendency towards growth and actualization but we often sabotage our movement toward growth due to self-defeating patterns we have learned. Through therapeutic processes, the client learns skills to isolate and dispute their irrational views which were mostly self-constructed and maintained by self-indoctrination. REBT helps clients replace such irrational views with rational and constructive ones, thus resulting in more productive change in behavior and reactions to situations. In all counseling approaches, maturity and cooperation is expected of the client as great faith is placed on him that he can change his irrational ways of thinking and inappropriate behavior. References Corey, G. (2005) Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy, 7th ed. Brooks/Cole, a division of Thomson Learning Inc. Huffman, K., Vernoy, M. & Williams, B. (1987) Psychology in Action. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Myers, D.G. (1995) Psychology, 4th Ed., New York: Worth Publishers Pervin, Cervone & John (2005) Personality: Theory & Research, 9th Edition Wiley Read More