Define different theoretical perspectives used in counselling. Analyse the advantages and disadvantages of different theoretical perspectives in health and social care

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Developing Counselling Skills

Define different theoretical perspectives used in counselling

While people are doing counselling work there are different theoretical approaches that are used. These are the psychodynamic approach, the cognitive behavioural approach and the humanistic approach. Each of the three approaches are based on certain assumptions and beliefs about human nature and it focuses on explaining a part of human experience.

The psychoanalytical approach began with Sigmund Freud and he had ideas about personality, abnormality and treatment and he came to view that people were driven by basic instincts, like aggression.

“The psychodynamic or psychoanalytic model is based on the work of Freud. Freud was a major theorist, and probably the most widely known in psychology.” (Cox, 2000)

Freud was really interested in neurotic disorders and these conditions were characterised by excessive anxiety and in some cases by depression, fatigue, insomnia or paralysis.

In counselling today the psychoanalytic approach is used for a number of therapies. Features of psychoanalytic psychotherapy which are used in counselling include; , , analysis of , ,  using hypnosis and  and these are all used to study the unconscious mind. The psychodynamic approach believes it is the social, rather than the sexual world, that has a greater influence on our personality development.

Freud distinguished three states of mind, which were the conscious, which is what we are aware of in the here and now, the preconscious, which consists of things we can bring back easily into consciousness from our memory, and the unconscious, which stores all the thoughts, feelings and ideas we have during our life. These thoughts cannot be brought easily into consciousness and they can have a major influence on our feelings and our behaviour in the here and now.

Freud was particularly interested in the unconscious part of the mind and through his approach he tried to reach the repressed thoughts and memories and bring them into consciousness. This was so as his clients could have an insight into their problems and try to overcome them with psychoanalytical support and to bring them to a better state of mental health.

Through his work, Freud discovered that the mind consists of three interrelated systems, which for Freud, was a useful way of thinking about how personalities develop. These three systems are; the id, which is a mass of powerful pleasure-seeking instincts, the ego, which acts according to the reality principle and has to find safe and acceptable ways to satisfy the id’s basic demands, and the super ego, which is like our conscious. It is concerned with right and wrong, and it incorporates the moral values which a person learns initially from their parents. These three systems are constantly in tension with each other, for example the id and the super ego are usually in direct conflict, while the ego acts as a neutral and therefore it makes an individual balanced.

Behaviourism is focused towards the external factors in a person’s environment that would affect how they behave. The behaviourist approach began with John Watson who believed that psychology should be studied by observing a person’s behaviour because he was interested in what people did rather than what they thought of.

Ivan Pavlov accidentally discovered the conditioned reflexes while studying a dog’s digestive process. Pavlov then developed laws of conditioning to establish classical conditioning. Pavlov stated that the process of classical conditioning was able to explain all of the aspects of human psychology, which was everything from speech to emotional responses that were patterns of stimulus and response.

Cognitive approach analyses behaviour in terms of the Activating events, Beliefs and the emotional or behavioural Consequences (ABC). Two Americans, Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck came to the same conclusion and so they developed the cognitive approach to understanding problem behaviour. It was called cognitive because it focuses on thinking.

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The cognitive approach says that thinking and feeling come between the stimulus and the response and in order to help people who have problems with their behaviour, counsellors need to help them examine what they think and feel.

The cognitive approach assumes that what people think and what they believe are quite rational, but sometimes their thinking is distorted and this can lead to social, emotional and behaviour difficulties.

In behavioural therapy people learn to change certain behaviours and cognitive therapy focuses on thoughts, assumptions and beliefs. With cognitive therapy, people may learn to recognize and change faulty ...

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