Psychodynamic Theory Strengths

Psychodynamic theory, in regards to working with a diverse population, has a various amount of strengths. The first being that analytic theory can be extremely effective when altered and adapted to the standards of the culture in which the counselor practices. Counselors can help their clients delve into the environmental situations, such as a kind of abuse, that have caused major turning points in the client’s life. This divulging of, or exposure to, these environmental situations allows the client to see and understand how these situations have ultimately affected their lives in either a positive or negative way.
Psychodynamic theory has a few shortcomings when trying to describe, explain, predict, and deal with the richness and complexity
A major shortcoming of this approach is that individuals who seek help feel extremely limited because of his or her environmental factors and how these factors ultimately influence the choices they make. This essentially means that if the individual were to make an internal change, such as altering their thought processes, the environmental factors, such as racial discrimination, will still be very limiting to them –rendering the internal as pointless. Another major shortcoming of this approach revolves around how its focus is on the “philosophical assumption of self-determination.” (Corey, p. 154). This means that existential therapists do not necessarily look at the subjugation those of a different culture may have faced. Lastly, those who seek professional help are often looking for a rigid and structured counseling approach, which is not the process of existential therapy. The existential counselor is not someone who has all of the answers at their fingertips, which is what most clients look for when searching for a solution to his or her distress. Clients, instead, are encouraged to make their own decisions while the counselor offers a concrete direction without taking the responsibility of decision-making away from the