Evaluating Humanistic Counselling Paper

Evaluating Humanistic Counselling

Humanistic counselling is the kind of counselling where the specialist provides their clients with the chance to reflect on themselves and evaluate their personal awareness by understanding who they are, their individual feelings and the likelihood that they could choose several factors about their individual lives (Counsellor Guide, 2000); (Rowan, 2014). The humanistic approach focuses majorly on bringing out an individual’s unique characteristics such as growth and potential among others that could be used on individual level to impose positive change (Copson and Grayling, 2015). Humanism is relating to a psychological approach which studies a person. Maslow wanted to understand what motivates people
– he had faith in that individual. Humanism can as be referred to as Phenomenological, this means that personality is studied from the point of view of the individual’s subjective experience for Rogers that was how an individual perceives and looks at an event, he redirected psychology towards the study of the self. Researchers agree on there being various faces of humanistic counselling, all which focus on a workable relation between the therapist and the client. Humanistic counsellors combine past experiences or happenings, explore the present and focus on applicable factors that could be used to forecast and eventually enable the achievement of a desirable ‘normal’ future (Counsellor Guide, 2000). Humanisms’ aim is to discover what the problem is, why the client’s self-actualisation has failed, flip the negative reach self-congruence and regain self-actualisation – to flip the negative into a positive. Humanistic counselling therefore focuses on helping clients attain the best they could possibly do; which is featured in the Seven stages of Roger’s process, to get through to the clients and as the therapist use the core conditions: Empathy, Congruence and unconditional positive regard. Humanists are believers that there is goodness in everyone and focus on seeing clients attain growth and get to the self-actualization level. There are existing various counselling theories that are used in the line of humanistic counselling to enable an understanding with clients and hopefully the origin of their conditions. The psychodynamic/psychoanalysis theory is among the most applied in counselling. This theory has a historical perspective that focuses on identifying past occurrences that could be affecting the current life of an individual (Staff, 2015). For instance, this theory is important as it enables clients with traumatic experiences not only come to terms with such experiences, but also commence on a recovery journey (Eagle, 2013). Behavioural theory developed by B.F Skinner and built upon learning as a factor to influence behaviour (Copson and Grayling, 2015). This theory is applied by humanistic counsellors to condition clients/patients modify behaviour into specific ways as desired. The cognitive theory as developed by Aaron Beck aims at establishing how people’s thinking influences on emotions and behaviour. As opposed to the psychoanalysis theory, the theory focuses on establishing the present situation of distorted thinking as opposed to past experiences (Baars, 1993). The theory is applicable to humanistic counselling and has been found to aid in the treatment of sicknesses such as substance abuse, personality disorders among other disorders. A number of established and existing humanistic counselling forms include humanistic psychotherapy, transpersonal psychology, transactional analysis counselling, gestalt counselling, depth therapy and reality therapy among others. All these forms are applicable in different situations depending on the problem at hand for the counsellor. This section will concentrate on evaluating the different forms of humanistic counselling as mentioned above and giving appropriate situations where each of them is applicable. It is realizable that these forms of counselling are mainly person-based and solution-focused. They seek to bring out the better person in individuals. Depth therapy refers to an interdisciplinary collection of approaches to counselling and therapy which engages the unconscious component rather than some predefined specific elements in a person. This approach bases its argument on the fact that human beings hold traits of nature that may play part in how they react to rather natural processes but unconsciously (Shephard and FdSc 2016). The natural processes such as think, work, feel or choose could then be affected negatively which then results in distress and an individual may have to seek professional help to bring about a balance in themselves. Depth therapy is therefore used to assist individuals to realize and identify such factors and in the process understand their current situations. Humanistic counselling plays a big role in this process and is naturally displayed by the nature of relationship that is created between the patient and the counsellor. This is a relatively new form of humanistic counselling described by the developers as a bio-psycho-social mechanism to counselling. It concludes that every human being has in-build needs that are basic for their mental health and therefore requires to be met (Shephard and FdSc, 2016). It’s a client-based model that appraises the counsellor-client relationship as a catalyst for healing to the client and bringing about recovery in the positive (Whitton, 2003). This mechanism takes into consideration of human experiences evaluating individual experiences against them to enable come up with an appropriate and relevant therapeutic schedule that is used for the development, stronger and better formation of a patient’s being. According to researchers, the fundamental pillars of humanistic psychotherapy are individual responsibility and it’s linkage to individual empowerment (Whitton, 2003). Exploring a patient’s past enables the counsellor to forecast on the future for both the physical and emotional anatomy of the individual and how it all influences their current status in a family, work and even community setting.
It enables build a foundation for problem-solving and defeat psychological barriers enabling the patient, with the aid of the counsellor work towards positive grounds and better life of purpose (Copson & Grayling, 2015). Transpersonal psychology, researchers found has five founding pillars which were decided as personal consciousness, the ultimate potential, spiritual, beyond the self and transcendence (Shephard and FdSc, 2016). As a result, counselling and psychology authors harmonize on transpersonal psychology as being involved with the study of an individual’s highest abilities, spirituality, transcendence condition, consideration and awareness (Fall, Holden, and Marquis, 2011). These are the universal underlying characteristics of humanity in general. Transpersonal psychology focuses to see beyond the obvious personal status and tries to understand the individual away from the physical appearance, culture, gender or even age. This form of psychology contributes a great deal in human development, individual qualities, the spirituality and consciousness (Daniels,
2016). Based upon a patient’s individual growth and development nature, the Transactional analysis counselling builds a link on one’s past experiences and its contributions in present-times opinions and preferences (Fall, Holden, and Marquis, 2011). This form of counselling borrows reference from the three ego states of an individual which touch on child, adult and parent ego states. This definitely contributes to an individual’s reflectional abilities in their past and its influence on present choices and life decisions. This practice does not only help the counsellor identify the base root of a client’s problems but also enables an appropriate external influence onto the situation. The counsellor has the responsibility to encourage and ensure that their clients look over their past options and choices they made and explore other options that could have possibly turned the situation differently. Gestalt’s theory enables the counsellor to present the patient with the option to go over their reflection and perceptions and how they in the first place were conceived (Eagle, 2013). This is the way it the patient is made aware of their body, mind and spirit. It works in a greater extent to present the client with a deeper understanding of their personal experiences and the influences they have brought upon their body, mind and spirit. In this method, a counsellor focuses on making their patient more aware of themselves before offering therapy. A counsellor has to engage discovery tools such as engaging participation and role-playing which ensures that a humanistic rapport is built between the two and the patient is more receptive when healing therapy is finally induced (Rowan, 2014). Developed by psychiatrist William Glasser in the 1960s, this theory takes the here and now approach and ignores the approaches of most other humanistic counselling of past experiences and other historical trends (Eagle, 2013). It takes the perception that a patient’s mental distress does not necessarily translate to some sort of mental illnesses but instead to suffering from socially universal human condition due to unmet individual psychological needs. The therapy enables the clients to acknowledge their improper behaviour and direct them to attaining logical ways of acting and engaging with the world around them (Wubbolding, 2011). It therefore follows a specific route that starts by involvement of the clients with the counsellor, assessing the behaviour at hand, planning on better, available and achievable behaviour (Wubbolding, 2011). In this case, Humanistic counselling from the above discussion is definitely one of the most effective forms of counselling in existence and that could be easily influential to a society.
Clearly, humanistic counselling holds many benefits for the clients that use it. They do attempt a collaborative therapeutic relationship that facilitates a beneficial mechanism to clients who are experiencing psychological pain. However, that being said Humanism highlights that negativity is down to the problem and should not be absorbed by the clients and they should resolve it, deal with it and turn it into a positive experience. The juxtaposition of that is practicing Humanistic counsellors cannot help the client come to a conclusion or hand them “tips/guidance”, that solutions are to be concluded by the client. This can be deemed unsupportive and useless; it creates limitations the clients could seek more structure and overseeing, perhaps within a cultural need; therefore, not catering to everyone’s needs. It shifts focus on individual behaviour as opposed to relational genes and other factors. This turns out helpful for the client as all they have to consult and focus on are themselves (Faris & Ooijen, 2011). Humanistic counselling is also known to satisfy the mind as it focuses on the positive of an individual, self-achievements and fulfilment which is what humans seek to attain in the first place (Whitton,
2003). In this counselling, a counsellor can easily obtain a genuine foresight of their clients due to the range of information provided and also by plainly observing their behaviour. Non-directional essence of the individual-centred approaches based on humanism gives clients the comfort to effectively and honestly communicate with the counsellor. The nature that the counsellors also focus on a client as an individual and stays away from generalizations encourages positivity from both ends. From the discussion above and focusing on counselling as a whole, it’s evident that humanistic counselling would be used in a variety of situations and on different classifications of clients (how severe their mental illness). However, it’s clear that humanistic counselling might not work in some situations. For starters, most counselling clients plainly suffer some illnesses and not disorders, as a result, counselling is only a secondary form of treatment to them. In this case humanistic counselling sails well with clients whose conditions are deviations from the ‘human’ or societal expectations. Meaning, humanistic counselling would not work for clients suffering from severe mental illnesses. Mental illnesses in counselling is more common than not in clients who seek counselling. With helping the clients focus on the past and plan on the present and the future could not work for someone whose thinking and reasoning is not right in the first place (Faris and van Ooijen, 2011). Therefore, CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) would be more effective for those who suffer from a mental ailment. Secondly, it could at times promote frustration to clients as in many instances, they are required to think and remember the past which in most cases, many would want to leave it buried far off, they also cannot receive any advice from the counsellor, or in fact any judgement. In addition, some scholars find the approach to favour and focus around western cultures. In this light, this will negatively affect persons with diverse cultural backgrounds and to some extent may result to contradictions and confusion for the clients (Counsellor Guide, 2000); (Copson and Grayling, 2015). It’s clear that humanistic counselling is a basic part of counselling itself as a whole. As such it could be engaged in formulating healthier humanistic societies by bringing healing to individuals first and using other counselling approaches into the mix, perhaps like REBT to make this therapy stronger, and to be universal; those with mental illness and for those who do not, it would be vital. However, this form of counselling is backed up by many other forms for not only correct diagnosis, but also for sustainability of clients and the profession.