PERSON-CENTERED THERAPY

FOUNDER:

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

KEY CONCEPTS:

• The client has the potential to become aware of problems and the means to resolve them.
• Faith is placed in the client's capacity for self-direction.
• Mental health is a congruence of ideal self and real self.
• Maladjustment is the result of a discrepancy between what one wants to be and what one is.
• In therapy attention is given to the present moment and on experiencing and expressing feelings. (Corey, 2009)

GOALS OF THERAPY:

• To provide a safe climate conductive to clients' self-exploration, so that they can recognize blocks to growth and can experience aspects of self that were formerly denied or distorted.
• To enable them to move toward openness, greater trust in self, willingness to be a process, and increased spontaneity and aliveness.
• To find meaning in life and to experience life fully.
• To become more self-directed. (Corey, 2009)

TECHNIQUES:

• Few techniques, stresses the attitudes of the therapist and "a way of being".
• Therapist strive for active listening, reflection of feelings, clarification, "being there" for the client, and focusing on the moment-to-moment experiencing of the client.
• This model does not include diagnostic testing, interpretation, taking a case history, or probing for information. (Corey, 2009)

   

Corey, G. (2009). Theory and practice of counseling and psycotherapy. Fullerton: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning.

 

EXISTENTIAL THERAPY

KEY CONCEPTS:  

Central focus on the nature of human condition

• capacity of self-awareness
• freedom of choice to decide one's fate
• anxiety
• search for meaning
• being alone and being in a relationship with others
• striving for authenticity
• facing living and dying

• Essentially an experimental approach to counseling rather than a firm theoretical model, it stresses core human conditions.

• Interest is on the present and on what one is becoming.
• The approach that has a future orientation and stresses self-awareness before action. (Corey, 2009)

 GOALS OF THERAPY

• To help people see that they are free and to become aware of their possibilities.
• To challenge them to recognize that they are responsible for events that they formerly thought were happening to them.
• To identify factors that block freedom. (Corey, 2009)

TECHNIQUES USED 

• Few techniques flow from this approach because it stresses understanding first and techniques second.
• Therapist borrow techniques from other approaches and incorporate them in an existential framework.
• Diagnosis, testing, and external measurements are not deemed important.
• Issues addressed are freedom and responsibility, isolation and relationships, meaning and meaninglessness, living and dying. (Corey, 2009)

FIGURE ASSOCIATED WITH THERAPY 

• Viktor Frankl- emphasized concepts of freedom, responsibility, meaning, and search for values.
• Rollo May- nature of human experiences, accepting freedom and responsibility, and discovering one's identity.
• Irvin Yalom- human concerns: freedom and responsibility, existential isolation, meaninglessness and death.  (Corey, 2009)

 

Corey, G. (2009). Theory and practice of counseling and psycotherapy. Fullerton: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning.

 

Adlerian Theory

     

FOUNDER: Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

KEY CONCEPTS:

1. Integrative approach, combining cognitive, constructivist, existential, psycho-dynamic, and system perspectives.
2. View of Human Nature
3. Subjective perception of reality
4. Unity and patterns of human personality
5. Social interest and community feeling
6. Birth order and sibling relationships (Corey, 2009)

GOALS OF THERAPY:

•  Help clients identify and change their mistaken beliefs about, self, others, and life thus to participate more fully in a social world (Corey, 2009).

 TECHNIQUES:

1. Establish a relationship between client and counselor
2. Explore individuals psychological dynamics by understanding individual lifestyles, past and present
3. Encourage self-understanding and insight (motivations that operate a clients life)
4. Reorientation and reeducation (helping clients discover a new and more functional perspectives with encouragement and challenges) (Corey, 2009)

 FIGURES ASSOCIATED WITH THE THEORY:

1. Alfred Adler- he developed a theory that recognizes and stresses the effects of social class, racism, sex, and gender on the behavior of individuals (Corey, 2009).

                                Psychoanalytic Therapy

 

 

FOUNDER: Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

KEY CONCEPTS:          

1.  The dynamics of the unconscious and it's influence on behavior
2.  The role of anxiety
3.  Understanding of transference and counter transference
4.  The development of personality at various stages in the life-cycle (Corey, 2009)" 

GOALS OF THERAPY:   

1. Make unconsious conscious
2. Reconstruct basic personality
3. Assist in reliving earlier experiences and work through repressed conflicts
4. Achieve intellectual and emotional awareness (Corey, 2009).

TECHNIQUES:

1. Maintaining analytical framework
2. Free association
3. Interpretation
4. Dream analysis
5. Analysis of resistance
6. Analysis of transference (Corey, 2009)  

 FIGURES ASSOCIATED WITH THEORY:

1. Sigmund Freud- introduced the concept in 1937
2. Eric Erickson- built on Freud's ideas and extended his theories in 1963
3. Carl Gustav Jung- unlike Freud, thought the goal of therapy was to transform personality in 1913 (Corey, 2009).