Humanistic, cognitive behavioral, and neo-psychoanalytic counseling approaches compared

Counselling Techniques

Comparison of Humanistic Counselling Techniques of Cognitive (behavioral) and Neo-Psychoanalytic Approaches

Counselling and Its Roles

Counselling Techniques

Humanistic Counselling

Cognitive / Behavioural Counselling

Neo-Psychoanalytic Counselling

Comparison of Humanistic Counselling Techniques to Cognitive (Behavioural) and Neo-Psychoanalytic Approaches

Similarities ofofumanistic Cobehavioralechniques to Cognitive (Behavioural) and Neo-Psychoanalytic Approaches

Differences between Humanisticbehavioralg Techniques to Cognitive (Behavioural) and Neo-Psychoanalytic Approaches

Counselling is a broad subject and as such, constitutes different areas of study application and practice. Additionally it is classified using a variety of methods one being the techniques applied with reference to the practices of counselling. This paper explores the different aspects of counselling with main reference to specific techniques and their association with one another. The counselling techniques in focus here are the Humanistic, cognitive and Neo-psychoanalytic approaches whose use in the field of psychology is widespread. The section opens with an introduction, which presents an overview of what the paper entirely, entails. In this section, the paper also presents specific reason for which counselling is significant and the reason for which it emerges as a significant tool for positive change. Additionally, the paper explores the aspect of counselling as an aspect of psychology and the roles it plays. The counselling techniques follow with a brief definition of the term counselling. Also in this section, the paper addresses the different part of specific approaches to counselling, giving in depth description of the techniques. With reference to Humanistic Counselling, Cognitive / Behavioral and Neo-Psychoanalytic Techniques the paper provides definitions, features and sub-sections where applicable. The section that follows provides explores the Comparison of Human Counselling Techniques to Cognitive (behavioral) and Neo-Psychoanalytic Approaches. Here the paper addresses the different ways in which the Humanistic Counselling Techniques complements the Cognitive/behavioral counselling approach and the Neo-Psychoanalytic counselling technique. Additionally, the paper addresses the different means by which the Humanistic approach differs from the Cognitive and Neo-Psychoanalytic mechanisms. Different aspects of counselling psychology come into play here. This discussion concludes with a summary of all the contents that are, handled within the paper

Introduction

Counselling can be an effective means of enhancing change within individuals and situations, depending on the facts that present shortcomings in their relationships. The fact that it involves the generation and sometimes, maintenance of an association with another individual with whom you have no agenda with one another makes it a significant tool for change: and change to the better. Moreover, such an association creates room for those who seek counselling to have a rediscovery of who they truly, are, coupled with the capacity to achieve positive changes. There exist diverse problems and issues that require exploration through counselling. The nature of these factors varies from one issue to the other and so do the counselling processes and outcomes. Because of this, this aspect of psychology constitutes a variety of techniques and encompasses the likes of Humanistic Counselling, Cognitive counselling and Neo-Psychoanalytic counselling. Considering the use of these techniques in counselling, they possess a number of similarities, which define them. On the other hand, the techniques possess a wide range of differences considering the circumstances under which clients seek the services of the psychologists.

Counselling and Its Roles

Counselling is a confusing term sometimes. This is because it holds different meanings for different individuals and situations. Among the numerous definition of this term includes the one, which describes it simply as the act of extending advice to an individual or individuals with the aim of handling and finding solutions to personal or social issues and especially in a professional setting. Others would consider it as the process of support and directing clients, in particular, by a skilled individual on a certified basis, to determine mainly personal, social, or emotional problems and complications. Counselling has a variety of roles and depends on the scenarios under which the professional provide these services. For instance in an education or career scenario, counselling may help clients clearly define the problems that affect that as regarding their education and career goals, find means of achieving success in these scenarios and identify the areas in which they can perform to the maximum. In this case, counselling may emerge as a factor for individual or professional improvement. The role of the counselor here is to facilitate positive change and personal improvement on the part of the individual. In this context, counselling acts a powerful tool for conveying the sagacity of self-efficiency and empowerment within clients.

Counselling helps in the assessment of problems that clients present to the professional counselor. In addition, it uncovers the actual problems that individual have and which may be, expressed in other indefinable characteristics. Problems, especially those related to psychological disorders are difficult to fathom superficially. The services of counselors are therefore, necessary in such cases. Counselling paves the way through which individuals' underlying problems emerge. Moreover, it enables the management or treatment process to become a reality. Counselling, among other things, gives clients the capacity to discover several factors in their feelings, attitudes, and overall lives. This is because the phenomenon enables the clients to become open and talk freely. Because of this, counselling helps enhance more effective functioning among clients beyond the counselling sessions. It helps clients perform better when they are, left on their own to handle the issues they face in life.

Counselling Techniques

With the ever increasing knowledge and occurrence of psychological conditions in the society, the studies and acts that focus on the prevention and management of psychological issues and their outcomes. Counselling entails the skilled and principle application of relationship to enhance personality knowledge and emotional approval and growth and the best possible advancement of personal resources. The process has the goal of providing a prospect for working towards a life that is not only pleasurable but also productive. Counselling appears in a variety of forms with each of the relationships vary based on the nature of the need that emerge in the process. Additionally, other parameters like the need for personal development and the provision of the resolution to explicit issues and whose nature also governs the nature of counselling that practitioners advance. It is also imperative to understand that decision-making, personal insight development, career establishment, knowledge advancement, and the individual or group's ability to survive during crises are also subject to counselling whenever such need arises.

This aspect of psychology extensively, involves working through the emotions, inner feelings, or conflicts with the view of enhancing relationships with other and different environments. Counselling in many cases occurs in sessions with the counselor and the client(s) talking through and attempting to find solutions to the existing issues. The role of the counselor in these sessions includes facilitation where he or she controls most of the events that unfold in the process. Counsellor's works in manners that respect the values of the client, his or her self-determination, and the resources. The client on the other hand, requires cooperating by presenting the counselor with true information about his thoughts, feelings, and attitudes among other things.

Mechanisms for conducting counselling vary and, governed by diverse parameters. This is because the problems that clients present and the issues that emerge during the process are different for individuals, groups, and environments. The natures of situations under which the clients seek the services of the clients generally determine whether a counsellor would use one technique of counselling or the other. Among the counselling techniques known for the works of psychology include, Humanistic Counselling Techniques, Neo-Psychoanalytic counselling approach and the cognitive or behavioral counselling approach among others.

Humanistic Counselling

Humanistic mechanisms in counselling are significant in helping counselling clients settle on different choices from among a variety that are presented to them. Humanistic counselling in exploring the client's issues and attempting to find solutions provides the client with extensive freedom to be himself/herself, in the counselling situation as probable. In this form of counselling, the role of the counselor hinges towards the acceptance of the clients in whatever way he or she appears in addition to providing the client with direction on how to perceive his or her choices objectively. What is more, the practitioner takes care not to impose his/her views and choices of the clients with the aim of influencing the client's behavior towards a certain direction. Among the aspects of humanistic counselling include, gestalts techniques, active listening, and non-confrontational questions.

Non-confrontational questions in humanistic counselling constitutes the use of open ended queries and serves to help the client explore deeper into the issues at hand and his or her thoughts about them. These questions present an opening point for deeper contemplation and leaves out the counselor's standpoint. Because of this, the client gets that chance to independently, express the thought without the practitioner influencing them. Active listening facilitates this approach to counselling by aiding the client with the identification of his/her personal feelings and thoughts. The counselor achieves this by summarizing for the client the subtexts or the composition of what he or she is expressing. Active listening makes the client able to perceive what the counselor also sees. The importance of this visibility is in the way it helps clients accept themselves just as they are. In some instances, active listening presents the clients with proper capacities in realizing their own thoughts and attitude beyond the therapy sessions. It is however important for counselors to note that, while applying active listening, they should take care of rewording the emotional content and not focus on repeating such content word for word. This is because repeating the content verbatim may translate to, not actually, listening, an aspect known as a glib.

With reference to gestalt technique, this relates to a division of this form of counselling which focus on assisting the client put together his/her thoughts, experiences, and feelings. This is a mean of understanding and judging the clients' behavior as they usually correspond to the feelings, emotions, experiences, values, and thoughts. The gestalt mechanism applies two common approaches, which are, the psychodrama and the free association approaches. The former entails dialoguing with portions of the self, for instance, the inner child. With this approach, counselors may request the clients to change from one chair to another. This enables the client to converse from the perspective of each such characteristic or to put down in writing dialogues between these features. With the free associating approach, the counselor asks the client to mention the first phrase of word that pops out of their mind as a rejoinder to some phrases, expression, or unfinished sentences.

Cognitive / Behavioral Counselling

Cognitive Behavioral Counselling technique, abbreviated as CBT entails the characteristics of both the cognitive and behavioral therapies. Cognitive counselling entails the process by which counselors help clients learn how to recognize and reinstate warped feelings and attitude, eventually altering the associated consistent conduct towards them. This form of counselling more often than not, focus on the present and is a treatment, which hinge towards finding solutions to problems. Cognitive therapy, per se, a function with the view that distress limits one's ability to recognize their distorted personal thoughts. It actually acts as a factor for identification and reassessment of such thoughts. In addressing these issues, behavioral counselling cause individuals to attain more flexible thinking approaches and help them achieve positivity. Moreover, the therapies arm the clients with the capacity to face challenges rather that evade them. As for Behavioral Counselling technique, the effectiveness comes in the ability of the approach to facilitate behavior modification among clients. Behaviors under which this kind of counselling applies include phobias, addictions, and anxiety disorders among others. Basing on the belief that behavior can be reconditioned or unlearnt since, it is in the first place, learnt this category of therapy focuses not on the past to establish the logic behind the behavior in question. It therefore looks at the present of the situation.

Cognitive behavioral Counselling, in combining the principles and practices of the two forms of counselling mechanisms, entails the way individuals in under counselling conduct themselves together with how they respond to the behaviors or thoughts in question. Like behavioral counselling, it looks at the here and then and not the trigger of the problem. It then splits overwhelming issues two minor portions with the view of making them feasible to handle. Cognitive/Behavioral Counselling eventually classifies these smaller bits of problems under, physical feelings, emotions, thoughts, and actions. This technique of counselling explains that each of these portions has the capacity of affecting one another, for instance, the way an individual thinks about thins has the ability to determine one's feelings, emotions, physical reactions and finally, general conduct. Cognitive behavioral Counselling is based on the opinion that people learn obstructive traditions of thoughts and conducts through an extensive period. Nevertheless, recognizing these thoughts and their ability to challenge individual's behaviors and feelings are given room for the individuals to confront unconstructive ways of thoughts. This leads to constructive judgment and behavioral changes. Cognitive behavioral counselling can take place with one individuals, couples, families, or groups and depends on the problem and the comfort of the client.

Comparison of Humanistic Counselling Techniques of Cognitive (behavioral) and Neo-Psychoanalytic Approaches

Counselling entails, a broad range of topics, and thus a wide range of discussion on the subject continues to emerge. Categorizing this subject also comes with a wide variety of parameters with one of them being the mechanisms through which counselors accomplish their tasks. The techniques for counselling are numerous with the humanistic, cognitive, / behavioral and neo-analytical constituting the major classifications of the approaches. Like other facets of the subjects. These techniques present a number of similarities. On the other hand, they differ in some respect and the paper explores the contrast between Humanistic Techniques against Cognitive / Behavioral and Neo-Psychoanalytic methods.

Similarities of Humanistic Counselling Techniques to Cognitive (behavioral) and Neo-Psychoanalytic Approaches

The fact that, Humanistic, cognitive / Behavioral and Neo-psychoanalytic Counselling techniques share goals is evident. Like many other techniques of counselling, these approaches aim to extend psychological support to the clients. Irrespective of the fact that these techniques have different principles and beliefs, their goal of providing the clients with the capacity to readjust to fitting life through the provision of a variety of resources cannot be undermined. These approaches aim to solve problems of different characteristic as presented within the clients with the view of facilitating, among other things, decision making. Moreover, both the techniques aid those who seek the services of counselling professionals gain some form of understanding and insight, enhance individual effectiveness, attain self-actualization and achieve a positive mental health. By working through the emotions, inner feelings, or conflicts of the victims, these forms of counselling help clients enhance relationships with others and different environments and thus become more realistic and productive that before.

The other similarity emerges in some of the notions that the theories that govern these therapy techniques advance. The belief that individuals have the ability to make choices and achieve self-consciousness is common across all these counselling techniques. This is irrespective of the fact that the achievement of these capabilities is limited among many individuals. As humanistic counselling demonstrates, counselling entails active listening where the counselor helps to translate the clients, their actual thought and thus enhancing their visibility and the ability to understand who they really are. Because client becomes able to fathom their individual though, they gain the ability to understand their behavior, not only within the therapy session but also while on their own. This technique applies the gestalt method which focuses on assisting the client put together his/her thoughts, experiences, and feelings. At the same level, cognitive behavioral counselling gives room for the clients to confront unconstructive ways of thinking causing them to gain constructive judgment and behavioral changes. Neo-psychoanalytic approach, like the two embarrasses the aspect of self-awareness and choices by showing that unconscious self-centeredness makes individuals prone to psychological problems. As such the counselling procedures emphasize on helping the clients make out the mistaken goals and reject self-centeredness, isolation, and egotism. Additionally it encourages the patients to make the choice of establishing meaningful and healthy interpersonal relationships.

Both Humanistic and Cognitive Behavioral and Neo-Psychoanalytic techniques encourage self-acceptance and aids the clients avoid unconstructive over generalized behaviors like self- judgement among other thoughts. According to all the theories that support these techniques of counselling, major psychological problems emanate from a feeling of non-appreciation from within the individuals. The internal thought, emotions, and feelings lead people into thinking they have shortcomings or try to escape from problems, which in the actual sense do not exist. In Humanistic Counselling technique, counselors focus on helping the patient identify the behavioral shortcomings that come from negative thinking. In a sense, it engages the patient to separate from the tendency of pressuring himself into being perfect since such only lead to self-destruction. With Neo-psychoanalytic approaches, counselors centered on aiding the clients establish the mistaken goals with the view of refraining from with self-centeredness, isolation, and egotism.

Some of the tools and procedures that the counselors use in the counselling procedures among the approaches relate. Both the forms of managing psychological issues rely on some forms of theories or beliefs. These theories and beliefs help provide explanations for the existence of the problems that affect their clients and pave the way from the management of the same conditions. The other tool that is common among the procedure is the listening part. All the counselors in the sessions provide extensive room for the patients to speak as a means of getting to understand the patients and the issues affecting them. In addition, this mechanism engages the clients in the session making them feel significant in the process and hence enhancing their capacity to cooperate and therefore, assist the counselors in finding a solution for their problems. Moreover, the need for the creation of any positive relationship between the client and the counselor is widespread in the three techniques.

Differences between Humanistic Counselling Techniques to Cognitive (behavioral) and Neo-Psychoanalytic Approaches

One of the ways in which Humanistic Counselling Techniques differs from Cognitive Behavioral and Neo-Psychoanalytic Approaches is in the center of focus of the techniques, humanistic approach is person centered and aims at helping the client to achieve unconditional constructive regard. Major activities in the procedures of counselling constitute talking and sharing between the counselor and the client. This is because, the process of taking is what forms the basis for the client's treatment as opposed to the conclusion that the counselor can uncover from the patient. The other two therapeutic processes depend on other factors other than the client. Cognitive behavioral counselling and Neo-psychoanalytical approaches hinge more, towards the behaviors and conducts of thought processes that the patient was experiencing at the time of treatment. The neo-psychoanalytical technique on the other hand, hinges on the goals that individuals have and the way the achievement of these goals govern the individual's psychological outcome.

The aspect of time revolves around the neo-psychoanalytic and the cognitive behavioral approaches to counselling as opposed to the humanistic technique. According to neo-psychoanalytic therapeutic techniques, the future goal of the individual is examined majorly as the main essence of living. Also in dealing with the problems that emerge with the client's psychology, the patient's past are put into consideration. The fact that most of the theories that relate to this counselling technique recognizes individuals past and childhood and a factor of adulthood behavior is to credit for this. The personality of an individual and the factors that govern his future goal in life are, according to this mode of counselling, a product of the individual past. With reference to cognitive behavioral therapy, the client's condition at the time of counselling serves as s guide to the discovery of the problems and the pathway to formulating a remedy. Cognitive behavioral therapy puts focus on the here and then of the problem before splitting the s overwhelming issues with minor portions with the view of making them feasible to handle. The aspect of time lacks in humanistic techniques since the major center of focus is on the client, his/her feelings, emotions, attitudes, and thoughts and how they govern the resultant behavior.

In Humanistic counselling, psychologists begin from the supposition that every human being has his/her own exceptional manner of perceiving and appreciating the world and that their behavior and doing simply make logic in this light. As a result, the manner of questions that these councillors extend to the patients revolves around the individual's objective perception of life. These questions totally differ from those that other psychologists, the Cognitive behavioral and neo-psychoanalytic, included ask. The objectivity in the questions emerges in inquiries like what really defines the individual client. It therefore tends to undermine the aspect of subjectivity in their sessions. Consequently, the modes that these counselors use in examining their clients are objective say by applying open-ended questions. In interviewing their clients, for instance, counselors who apply this mode of therapy extensively use unstructured interviews. This is because such questions allow individual to give their own viewpoint without getting any influence from the psychologist. Cognitive behavioral approach and the neo-psychoanalytic approaches may apply both the structured and unstructured questions as they are given room for subjectivity. Some of the questions that these counselors present to the clients are leading and May therefore come in the form of multiple choices. Here the client has the possibility of providing answers based on, not his individual opinion, but on the choices that the questionnaires present to them.

Conclusion

Counselling is a necessary phenomenon in the society, which is increasingly becoming aware of the existence of diverse psychological problems and the need to address them. The roles of counselling today are numerous and relate to the provision of psychological support, the facilitation of decision making and problem solving capacities within clients and the ability of clients to adjust to their environment. Other goals include encouragement of self-actualization, resource delivery, the acquisition of understanding and insight, and the improvement of personal effectiveness. The process of counselling takes different shapes depending on the circumstances that around the process. The techniques that psychologist use in advancing their roles as counselors are subsequently numerous and include the likes of Humanistic Techniques, to Cognitive Behavioral Techniques and Neo-Psychoanalytic Techniques. The three methods compare in a variety of angles with the similarities and differences between them being rife. These approaches of counselling are similar in the sense that they have common goals, they believe in the aspect of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and making of choices and they have more or less the same tools and techniques to facilitate the process. With reference to the differences, These approaches differ in their subject of focus, the presence of time factor in some and not some of the approaches and the presumptions that the belief that govern these approaches rely on, among other factors