COUNSELING
COUNSELING
Counseling deals with developmental and adjustment problem of a normal individual. It is concerned with bringing about voluntary change in the client. Counseling denotes a wide variety of procedures for helping individuals achieve adjustment, such as therapeutic discussions, the administration and interpretation of tests, vocational assistance.
Counseling process implies continuous changes that take place in the client in promoting personality change in desired direction.
COUNSELING PROCESS usually includes
• Initial appointment
• Pre counseling session
• Development of facilitative relationship
• Specification of goals and considering factors related to achieving solution
• Development and implementation of program
• Evaluation of result
• Termination of relationship
• Follow up
Counseling process by and large is the same for all problems and for all individuals. However, certain differences exist with regard to types of counseling.
COUNSELING APPROACHES:
o Client – Centered Counseling
o Existential Counseling
o Psychoanalytic Counseling
o Gestalt Counseling
o Adlerian Counseling
o Narrative therapy
o Behavior Counseling
o Rational emotive Behavior therapy
o Strategic Counseling
o Multimodal Counseling (BASIC ID)
o Reality therapy
o Expressive Therapies
Client Centered therapy was found by Carl Rogers. It is a non-directive approach, based on a subjective view of human experiencing, it places more faith in and give responsibility to the client in dealing with problems. This model does not include diagnostic testing, interpretation, taking case history, and questioning or probing for information.
Existential counseling is particularly rich and difficult theory because it intersects so many different fields. This approach has been minimally concerned with the techniques and specific intervention of counseling, concentrating instead on philosophical principals that aid understanding of the client. The goal of the therapy is to enable one to be free and responsible for the direction of one’s life.
Psychoanalytic counseling is based on the theory given by Sigmund Freud. The client gains insight by talking, sometimes by dream analysis and by developing a rational control by understanding ‘transference’, analysis of resistance. Diagnosis and testing are often used. Questions are used to develop case history. The therapy deals with client’s anxiety and aims at making the unconscious conscious.
Gestalt therapy describes human existence in terms of awareness. The focus is on ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the behavior and the central role of ‘unfinished business’ from the past that interferes with present. The therapist assists the client the client in developing the means to his/her own interpretations. Their goal is to challenge the client to accept responsibility of taking internal support as opposed to external support. Its main contribution is the emphasis on doing and expressing rather than on merely talking about feelings.
Aderaian Counseling: Alfred Adler developed a remarkably integrative theory of his time. Adlerian counseling is a collaborative effort between the client and the counselor. They respect each other and develop a therapeutic relationship based on trust. They work together in exploring and identifying the client’s style of life, the mistaken goals and faulty assumption. The major goal of the counseling is to kindle the social feeling in the client.
Narrative therapy seek to help people to‘re-story’ their lives to change the narrative about what took place. Therapist acts as facilitator of change. Therapist emphasizes listening to the clients with an open mind, without judgment or blame. The focus is on helping the client to deal with the problem as their enemy to be defeated. The client is helped to explore all the ways this problem has been disruptive, to him/her and to others.
Behavioral counseling is based on the principle of learning theory. The basic philosophy is that, humans are shaped and determined by socio-cultural conditioning. Focus is on overt behavior, development of specific treatment plans. The therapist is active and directive and functions as a teacher or trainer in helping the client learn more effective behavior. It is a pragmatic approach based on experimental validation of results.
Rational Emotive Behavior therapy: their primary goal is to help client identify their patterns of irrational thinking, those habitual beliefs that lead one to misperceive reality and subsequently learn alternative tools of thinking. Therapy is a process of re-education. The therapist functions as a teacher. Its main contribution is that it points out the necessity of practice and doing to actually change problem behavior
Strategic counseling combines the methods and theory from a number of disciplines into dramatic action-oriented helping model. The therapist follow an orderly sequence of steps: understanding the dynamics of the client’s relationship, identifying the source of conflict, and planning a strategy for change.
Counselor’s role is highly active and directive. Strategies are all individually designed to match the client’s personal style and situation.
Multimodal counseling: It is called so because it seeks to understand and intervene at all levels of all seven modalities of human personality. It permits the practitioner to understand at glance – how the client characteristically function, – How, where, and why the presenting problem manifests itself, – how specifically to use the profile as a blueprint for promoting change.
Reality therapy is based on growth motivation and is anti deterministic. The focus is on what can be done now. The goal of the therapy is to guide the client toward learning realistic and responsible behavior and developing a ‘success identity’. The approach is basically active, directive, dyadic therapy, supportive and confrontational.
Expressive therapies include a variety of therapeutic approaches. Frequently the use of expressive therapy is not theoretically isolated but occurs as an adjunct to other theoretical modalities. The following therapies come under this approach –
Art therapy, Music and dance therapy, Bio-feedback, Play-therapy, Hypnotherapy, Exercise.
COUNSELING APPLICATION
The counseling is used for several purposes. The different counseling applications are –
• Group Counseling and Individual Counseling
• School counseling
• College counseling and student services
• Career Counseling
• Marital, Family and Sex counseling
• Addiction Counseling
• Rehabilitation and Mental health Counseling
• Counseling Diverse Population (aged, physically challenged)