Counselling Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Counselling - Essay Example This approach is not a formal exalted theory, but as the name says, a different approach that has proved to be useful and more effective. It honours the need to talk, communicate and understand self of the individual in need of therapy and stands on the basis that individual's need is more important than that of the counsellor, because counsellor, after all, is a mere supporter, or a prop up, and not the main hero of the drama. It establishes the human trust in basic values, principles and desire to improve in harmony with the rest of the world. "Rogers is holistic in his thinking, tending to look at the complete organism in order to understand and explain behaviour. He believes that humans are innately good and that they are growth orientated. Phenomenological understands individual perception of reality. Determinism, cause and effect relationships in having freedom, the organism has an actualising tendency" This approach depends on the assumption that given the proper circumstances and understanding, a person is capable of finding solutions for his inner problems and nothing could be a longer lasting cure. The main theory under which the Person centred counselling works is that the patient is fully capable of handling his problems and monitoring his future growth. It believes that the main authority here is not the psychologist, but the patient himself and counselling goes on according to the patient's observations about himself. It believes that all people might not have had a highly favourable condition to develop, grow and manage their lives and might feel stifled, or might have developed a very difficult, punishing self identity that might not be easy to maintain at all times and under all circumstances. When personal experiences are not conducive with the self identity of the person, psychological problems occur because the individual is unable to cope with the experiences and sti ll maintain the personal identity to which he has become accustomed to, or of which he had a certain self confidence and pride. The self-concept of the person clashes with the experiences he is going through and this might make the self-worth plummet down in his opinion and acceptance might become difficult. His judgement of his self-worth gets shaken because he cannot feel comfortable with it any more, as its fundamental base has not been firm recently. Explaining his Theory of Personality, Carl Rogers says: "In endeavouring to order our perceptions of the individual as he appears in therapy, a theory of the development of personality, and of the dynamics of behaviour, has been constructed," (Kirschenbaum and Henderson, 1990. p.244). The essence of person centred counselling is the meeting and understanding between counsellor and his patient. Undoubtedly, it is very hard to establish a complete and unquestionable understanding and this is considered to be one of the most difficult types of counselling, but with perhaps the best results. It forces the counsellor to be authentic, supportive, empathic and mainly non-judgemental. It has three core conditions that would contribute a lot to the therapeutic change: 1. Unconditional positive regard. 2. Empathic Understanding. 3. Congruence. With