2. Meaning of a Counselling Theory
What is counseling theory?
• approach or technique counselors prefer in dealing with clients.
• a frame of reference that establishes sound philosophical and conceptual
principles on which to base one’s practical advice to the client.
• Goal : to change client’s behavior (behavior modification) either abnormal or
unsatisfactory.
• Advantages :
• to conceptualize client’s problem and predict change
• to explain reality in light of the counselors’ own experience.
3. Classification of Counselling theories
• Three major classifications:-
1. Directive or Non-Directive approaches : who directs the counseling
process?
directive- controlled and directed by the counsellor (Counsellor- Centered)
Nondirective-directed and controlled by the client (client-Centered)
2. Insight-oriented or Action Oriented:
Insight-oriented –people first understand their current behavior then learn to change
that behavior.
Action-oriented -people learn to change by practicing the new behavior.
3. Affective, Cognitive or Behavioral approaches to counseling:
Affective- focuses on the feelings and emotions of the clients.
Cognitive -focuses on thinking or logical intellectual approach and
Behavioral- focuses on the specific behaviors of the client.
4. Major counseling theories
• Psychoanalytic: human beings are irrational, unconscious and biological
• Behavioral: (learning) and environment determines our behavior
• Cognitive-Behavioral: Thinking determines our behavior and emotions
• Humanistic approach: human beings are rational, good and positive.
5. Psychoanalytic counseling
• developed by Sigmund Freud.
• Psychoanalysis is designed to alleviate unconscious conflicts of clients.
• It is insight oriented, long term therapy.
The focus of the theory:
• pays attention to unconscious factors related to infantile sexuality in the
development of neurosis.
• treatment is based on insight of unconscious factors that influence our
behavior
6. Major Assumptions
• Deterministic view of human nature- behavior is determined by three things:
• Irrational forces,
• Unconscious motivation
• Biological make up or drive
• as they evolve in early psychosexual stages in the first 5 or 6 years of life.
• For Freud, human nature could be explained in terms of a conscious mind, a
preconscious mind and an unconscious mind:
• Conscious—thoughts or motives that a person is currently aware of or is remembering
• Preconscious- thoughts or motives that one can become aware of easily
• Unconscious—thoughts or motives that lie beyond a person’s normal awareness but
that can be made available through psychoanalysis.
• Unconscious mind largely determines our behavior
7.
8. Structures of Personality
• A human personality consists of three (3) systems.
• The Id: is the biological component.
• Present at birth- at the infancy/childhood stage the human behavior is characterized
by id.
• is the primary source of energy and the basis of instincts existing within the
unconscious mind.
• The primitive and selfish aspect of human behavior which demand the immediate
gratification to increase pleasure by reducing the pain. The id is ruled or work
under PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
• No negotiation to the environment because it is a biological need.
• This illogical, irrational, amoral entity serves to reduce tension and pain while
restoring pleasure.
9. 2. The Ego: This is the psychological component.
• It is the part of human nature which contacts reality to satisfy Id’s need.
• The ego controls and regulates personality
• mediates reality while formulating plans of action to satisfy needs.
• The ego is ruled by THE REALITY PRINCIPLE
• Aware of external reality “If I do this that will happen”; take care of needs appropriately
• Delays id’s immediate gratification for safety purpose.
3. The Superego: This is the social/moral component i.e. norms and values of the
society.
• The superego is the individual’s moral code judging whether action is good or bad.
• The super-ego is ruled by Perfection principle: Do only what is morally good
,avoid all morally bad things;
• This component also regulates traditions and ideals that are handed down from
generation to generation.
10. Development Personality
• Personality is very strongly influenced by early childhood experiences.
• To Freud, personality proceeds through five developmental stages,
psychosexual stages,
• during which particular kinds of pleasures must be gratified if personality
development is to proceed normally.
• Each is marked by the involvement of a particular erogenous zone of the body
1. Oral stage (0-18 months):
• centered on the mouth, infant receives satisfaction through sucking, eating, biting,
etc.
• Oral fixated adults orient their life around their mouth by overeating, alcoholism,
smoking, talking too much.
2. Anal stage (18 months-3 years):
• centered on the anus, the child receives pleasure by having and retaining bowel
movements.
• Fixation results in retentive or explosive personality
11. 3. Phallic Stage (3-6 years):
• Center of pleasure is the genitals, pleasure through masturbation and touching
• Both sexes aware anatomical difference
• The child deals and resolves phallic conflicts,
• children are sexually attracted to the opposite-sex parent and hostile toward the same-sex
parent
• Oedipus complex in males
• boy sexually desires his mother and hates his father
• but he fears his father will castrate his penis (castration anxiety).
• The boy resolve this fear through identification (learns male gender roles)
• Electra complex in Females
• girl's desire for the father and competition with the mother.
• She blames her mother for lack of penis and experience penis envy
• Learn traditional female gender roles to resolve the conflict
12. 4. Latency stage (6 and 12 years):
• is a quit period known which a time of little sexual interest.
• characterized by peer activities, academic and social learning and personal
mastery of cognitive learning and physical skills.
5. Genital stage:
• begins with onset of puberty.
• establish normal heterosexual patterns of interaction appear
13. Ego Defense Mechanisms
• Often Id immediate needs and super-ego’s moralistic prohibition are in conflict.
• This conflict results in anxiety- painful and fear experience that motivates Ego to do some
thing.
• This conflict is mediated by ego to make the person adjust to himself and to norms and
values of the society.
• when ego can not resolve the conflict normally it uses defense mechanisms:
• Ego-defense mechanisms are normal behaviors that help an individual to cope with
anxiety:
• To maintain a favorable self-concept or avoid harmful event or action.
• They do so by two things:
• Either deny or
• By distorting the reality
14. Types of DM
• Denial: refuse to accept or acknowledge anxiety-producing reality by stating it
doesn't exist. example:
• A student refuses to believe that he has flunked/ failed a course.
• Projection: Attributing your own unacceptable desires, impulses feelings and
thoughts to someone or something else. Example:
• When the student fails the examination may attribute his/her failure to the teacher
• You get really mad at your husband but scream that he’s the one mad at you
• Rationalization: distort reality by supplying a logical or rational reason but false as
opposed to the real reason. Example
• When you fail to join the degree programme at the university then you say “The University
produces jobless people”
• Sublimation: Redirecting unacceptable, instinctual drives to socially acceptable
ways. Example
• A person a person with strong feelings of aggression becomes a soldier, boxer or surgeon
15. • Repression: Unacceptable or unpleasant impulses are pushed back into the
unconscious. example
• A woman is unable to recall that that she was not raped.
• Regression: Returning back to behavior of an earlier stage or use childhood coping
mechanisms. Example:
• sitting in a corner and crying after hearing bad news;
• a boss has a temper tantrum swearing, fighting, sulking, and crying when an employee makes
a mistake
• Reaction-Formation: taking the opposite belief because the true belief causes
anxiety. Example:
• having a bias against a particular race or culture and then embracing that race or culture to
the extreme
• A mother who is unconsciously resents (hates) her child acts in an overly loving way to the
child.
Displacement: taking out impulses on a less threatening target.
• example: slamming a door instead of hitting as person, yelling at your spouse after
an argument with your boss
16. Identification: Taking on the characteristics of someone else to avoid feeling of
incompetent. The admired person’s action became a substitute for our own
Compensation: a person simply finds an alternative (substitute) activity to satisfy a
social motive. E.g. the unattractive girl/boy may become a bookworm and achieves high
scholarships
17. Counseling approach
• Psychoanalysis emphasizes the analysis of the mind.
• It focuses on past behavior; what has been happened in first 5/6 years of life
and stored in unconscious mind.
• Abnormal behavior:
• Unconsciously stored materials and intra-psychic conflict
• Goal of counseling:
• Making unconscious conscious
• Helping the client develop insight or understand the causes of his/her problem
18. The major therapeutic techniques
• Free association: clients are encouraged to report feelings and thoughts that
enters their mind freely without editing.
• Give him/her a chair and tell to close his/her eyes and say many things freely without
thinking the environment.
• Pick out few stories about the past and the current life.
• The counselor should listen very attentively with “Third Ear” which is the professional
listening, interpreting and summarization of the information.
• Interpretation Method: Point out and explain to the client the meaning in the
story of the client picked through narrating this story and come up with the
meaning. E.g. You said that they hate you. Why do you think they do so.
• Dream analysis Method: The counselor must be trained in dream analysis and
connect the problem with the dream s/he had.
19. • Analysis of Transference: Transference is when the client expresses the
feelings toward the counselor that s/had to their significant figure in past
relationship. reflects unresolved past conflicts.
• The
• Analysis of resistance: Resistance is when the refuses to discuss the
problem such as keeping quite/no response of the client.
• The counselor must be trained to understand resistance/silence.
