Theories of Counseling and current approach.

Learning outcome.
1. Apply current approach of counseling while providing counseling

Theories of counseling or theoretical approaches to counseling

 Psychoanalytic theory
 Humanistic theory (self theory)
 Trait theory
 Field theory.
 Behaviouristic learning theory

Current approach
 Developmental counseling
 Reality counseling
 Rational emotive therapy.

Current approach.
Reality therapy (William Glasser)

1. View of Human Nature

a. Glasser maintains that people act on a conscious level and that they are not driven
by instincts and the unconscious.
b. Glasser believes that there is a health/growth forces in every person that seeks both
physical and psychological health/growth. He separates these into the old brain or
primitive physical needs and into the new brain or psychological needs. While the old
brain contents itself with maintaining life, the new brain seeks belonging, power,
freedom and fun.
c. Glasser believes that identity or a healthy sense of self is necessary. A success
identity comes from being loved and accepted. A failure identity comes from not
having needs for acceptance, love and worth met. A person must experience identity
before they can perform a task.
d. Glasser suggests that human learning is a lifelong process; therefore,one can change
one’s identity at any time in one’s personal history by learning what needs to be
learned.
e. Glasser believes that humans are self-determined. He believes that each person has
within themselves a picture or perception of themselves. Each person then behaves in
a way that is determined or controlled by this image of self so that the self image can
be maintained. This control theory has three parts (Gladding:
 B is the behavior
 C is the control, where a comparison is made between the desired image and the
image the behavior is producing.
 P is the perception or the development of the image.

1. Role of the Counselor

a. The counselor is a teacher and a model to the client.

b. The counselor creates an atmosphere of acceptance and warmth helping the client
focus on the control of displayed thoughts and actions.
c. The reality counselor used “ing” verbs to help the client describe their thoughts and
action, ie angering, bullying, intimidating, excusing.
d. The focus of therapy is on the behavior that the client needs or wants to change and
how to change that behavior in a positive manner.
e. Reality therapy does not generally use formal assessment techniques or diagnostic
categories .

3. Goals
a. The first goal of reality therapy is to help the client to become psychologically
strong and rational. A strong and rational person is one that is autonomous and
behaves responsibly toward self and others.
b. goal is to help the clients to determine what they want in life .
c. An important goal is to help the client to develop a practical plan to accomplish
their personal needs and desires.
d. Establishing an involved and meaningful relationship with the client is another goal
of therapy.
e. The counselor helps the client put the past behind and focus on the present and the
outcome of present behaviors.
f. Another goal is to accept no excuses and to eliminate punishment from the client’s
life.

4. Techniques
The main technique has three basic steps .:
o Through involvement with the client, the counselor helps the client to see the
reality and understand how a behavior is unrealistic.
o The counselor separates the client from the behavior and rejects the behavior
without rejecting the client.
o The final step is to teach the client how to fulfil their needs realistically and
positively.
A. Glasser uses humor to point out absurdity without being sarcastic.
B. Glasser uses confrontation to help the client accept responsibility for behavior
C. Reality therapy uses a system termed WDEP. The system consists of
establishing what the clients want, what they have doing, evaluate how helpful their
actions have been, and to plan for how they want to behave in the future
D. The eight steps that reality therapy uses to accomplish its goals and techniques:
i. Establishing a relationship.
ii. Focusing on present behavior.
iii. Client evaluation of his or her behavior.
iv, Developing a contract or plan of action.
v. Getting a commitment from the client.
vi. Not accepting excuses.
vii. Allowing reasonable consequences but refusing to use punishment.
viii. Refusing to give up on the client.
ix. Glasser final technique is never give up.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) Role-Play - Complicated Grief.mp4

Rational-Emotive Therapy (Albert Ellis)

1. View of Human Nature

a. RET assumes that the individual has the capacity to be completely rational,
irrational, sensible or crazy, which Ellis believes is biologically inherent.
b. Ellis is most concerned with irrational thinking especially that which creates
upsetting or irrational thoughts.
c. Ellis lists the most common irrational beliefs that clients find disturbing
(Ellis, 1984, p.266)
1. It is absolutely essential to be loved or approved of by every significant person
in one’s life.
2. To be worthwhile, a person must be competent, adequate, and achieving in
everything attempted.
3. Some people are wicked, bad, and villainous and therefore should be blamed or
punished.
4. It is terrible and a catastrophe whenever events do not occur as one hopes.
5. Unhappiness is the result of outside events, and therefore a person has no
control over such despair.
6. Something potentially dangerous or harmful should be cause to great concern
and should always be kept in mind.
7. Running away from difficulties and responsibilities is easier than facing them.
8. A person must depend on others and must have someone stronger on whom to
rely.
9. The past determines one’s present behavior thus cannot be changed.
10.A person should be upset by the problems and difficulties of others.
11.There is always a right answer to every problem, and a failure to find this
answer is a catastrophe.
d. Ellis sees the individual as being easily disturbed because of gullibility and
suggestibility
e. Ellis is a proponent of the individual thinking of their behavior as separate from
their personhood, i.e. "I did a bad thing" rather than "I am a bad person."
f. Ellis believes that each individual has the ability to control their thoughts, feelings
and their actions. In order to gain this control, a person must first understand what
they are telling themselves (self-talk) about the event or situation.
g. Ellis believes that cognitions about events or situations can be of four types:
positive, negative, neutral, or mixed. These cognitions result in like thoughts with
positive leading to positive thoughts, negative leading to negative thoughts,
etc.

2. Role of the Counselor

a. Counselors are direct and active in their teaching and correcting the client’s
cognition.
b. Ellis believes that a good RET counselor must be bright, knowledgeable,
empathetic, persistent, scientific, interested in helping others and use RET in their
personal lives (Ellis, 1980).
c. The counselor does not rely heavily on the DSM-IV categories.

3. Goals
a. The primary goal is to help people live rational and productive lives
b. RET helps people see that it is their thoughts and beliefs about events that creates
difficulties, not the events or situations themselves
c. RET helps the client to understand that wishes and wants are not entitlements to be
demanded. Thinking that involves the words must, should, ought, have to, and need
are demands, not an expression of wants or desires.
d. RET helps clients stop catastrophizing when wants and desires are not met
e. RET stresses the appropriateness of the emotional response to the situation or event.
An situation or event need not elicit more of a response than is appropriate
f. RET assists people in changing self-defeating behaviors or cognitions
g. RET espouses acceptance and tolerance of self and of others in order to achieve life
goals

4. Techniques
a. The first few sessions are devoted to learning the ABC principle:
1. Activating event
2. Belief or thought process
3. Emotional Consequences
b. Cognitive disputation is aimed at asking the client questions challenging the logic
of the client’s response.
c. Imaginal disputation has the client use imagery to examine a situation where they
become upset. The technique is used in one of two ways:
1. The client imagines the situation, examines the self-talk, and then changes the
self talk leading to a more moderate response.
2. The client imagines a situation in which they respond differently than is
habitual, and are asked to examine the self-talk in this imagery.
d. The Emotional Control Card is an actual card intended for the client to carry in
their wallet which has a list of inappropriate or self-destructive feelings countered
with appropriate non-defeating feelings. In a difficult situation, the client has this
reference card on their person to help them intervene in their own self-talk
e. Behavioral disputation involves having the client behave in a way that is opposite
to the way they would like to respond to the event or situation
f. Confrontation occurs when the counselor challenges an illogical or irrational belief
that the client is expressing
g. Encouragement involves explicitly urging the client to use RET rather than to
continue self-defeating responses
The preceding material was outlined from the following text: Gladding, S.T. (1996).
Developmental counseling/DCT.

 Ivey (1986, 1999) developed Developmental Counseling and Therapy based on

a metaphorical use of Piaget's theory and cognitive stages.
 Ivey (1993, 1999) proposed that developmental theory and counseling can be
integrated (Crespi & Generali 1995).Therefor he further develop this into
systematic model that incorporates understanding the meaning of a client's
cognitive developmental functioning, assessing the nature of that
functioning, and selecting interventions in an intentional manner to address
specific needs of clients in relation to identified and co-constructed issues (Ivey
& Goncalves,1987, 1988).
 Similar to Piagetian theory, (sensor motor, preoperational, concrete, and
formal operational) DCT identifies four modalities of cognitive-emotional
development(CED) that people fluctuate and flow between throughout the life
process.
 These modalities of development are cyclical and not mutually exclusive.
 An inability to process an issue from the perspective of one or more modalities
constitutes a developmental block, and counseling becomes a process of
removal of such blocks (Ivey, 1999; Myers, 1998).

The four developmental orientations in DCT include sensorimotor, concrete, formal

operations, and dialectic/ systemic (Ivey, 1993).
1. Sensorimotor refers to the experiencing of feelings, with particular emphasis
on the idea that feelings are physically embedded and represent an in-body type of
experience.
2. In the concrete modality, people can relate linear, sequential details of life
experiences, and in the later aspects of this stage, can engage in causal reasoning (i.e.,
if / then thinking).
3. The formal operational modality is one in which people are able to see their
patterns of behavior, thought, and feeling and to reflect on the meaning of those
patterns.
4. The dialectic modality is reflected in the ability to take multiple perspectives
and see multiple aspects of people and situations. In addition, persons who think
dialectically are able to view themselves in systems and understand the impact of
systems and multiple interacting systems (e.g., gender, culture, family) on their
behavior and functioning.

Developmental blocks
defined as the inability to experience a particular event or circumstance in one of the
four modalities, may he experienced at one or several levels with regard to specific
situations or issues (Myers, 1998).
For example, an individual whose father died when she was 7 years old may, as a
teenager or adult, experience a sensorimotor block as she has difficulty expressing
emotion around the event. This may happen because of her difficulty at age 7 to
process grief in a helpful manner. However, she may be able to recount the details of
his illness and the family response (concrete), explain her pattern of dealing with loss
(formal operational), and explain the way that she responds ill relation to how other
members of the family respond (dialectic), Or, this same individual may, as an adult,
be unable to "let go" of relationships, and fail to understand how earlier models of loss
and grief influence how she reacts as an adult. Ivey (1999) would describe her as
operating under a powerful system of "rules" for responding to situations, rules that
were learned in her family.
Therefore, process of DCT, as an intervention, helps these adults overcome their
blocks.

Assessing cognitive style.

Ivey developed the Standard Cognitive Developmental Interview (SCDI) to facilitate

exploration and movement through the four cognitive styles. This is a structured, 1
hour or more, clinical assessment during which a particular issue or presenting
problem or developmental block is explored in considerable depth. The assessment is
unique in that it is at once an assessment, an intervention, and the foundation for
treatment planning.

The assessment process begins with:

Sensorimotor cognitive style is assessed with the creation of an image related to

the presenting issue. For example, a counselor would ask the client to think of one
specific time when his or her presenting issue or problem happened. The client would
then be asked to describe that time as if it were happening right now. For example, if
the presenting issue was arguments with the client’s spouse, the client would be asked
to think of one particular argument and describe that one argument in detail. The goal
in exploring the image is to help the client connect with sensorimotor experiencing in
the present.

Concrete style is facilitated by asking the client to provide an example of another

time he or she felt the same way. After exploration of a second and sometimes third
example.

Formal operational thinking is explored by asking for reflections on similarities or

patterns between the original image and the subsequent example or examples.

Dialectic style is fostered by asking the client to reflect on the origins of the pattern
and on how others might view and explain the client’s experiences. An important part
of this process is helping clients uncover the “rule” that is guiding their behavior in
the circum-stances described, and that is keeping them stuck relative to their
presenting issue.

Throughout the interview, it is important that counselors “stay out of the client’s way”
by focusing on the client’s constructions of meaning. This requires the use of basic
microcounseling skills such as attending, listening, paraphrasing, summarizing,
questioning, and encouraging. The image is encouraged by an open-ended question
that begins with “Tell me what happens for you when you focus on [whatever issue
the client has presented].”

For more reference for SCDI https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/counseling-

psychology/counseling-therapy/developmental-counseling-and-therapy/

Following an assessment of the client's preferred modalities and possible

developmental blocks, the DCT model provides a useful paradigm for planning and
implementing appropriate in interventions to facilitate change.
Ivey (1991, 1999) linked preferred theories and interventions with each of the four
modalities, noting that the selection of an appropriate intervention will most likely
result in successful outcomes.
 Sensorimotor: bodywork (acupuncture, massage, yoga); catharsis; exercise
(walking, jogging); focusing on emotions in the here-and-now; Gestalt interventions;
guided imagery; medication; meditation; psychodynamic free association; relaxation
training
 Concrete: assertiveness training; behavioral counts and charts; cognitive
automatic thoughts charts; crisis intervention; decision and problem solving;
desensitization and establishment of anxiety hierarchies; narratives and story telling;
psychoeducational skills training; reality therapy; Rational Emotive Behavior
Therapy; thought stopping.
 Formal: cognitive therapy; dream analysis; logotherapy; narratives and
reflecting on stories; person-centered therapy; psychodynamic therapies; Rational
Emotive Behavior Therapy
 Dialectic Systemic: advocacy for social justice; community genograms;
community or neighborhood action; consciousness raising groups; family dream
analysis; family genograms; feminist therapy; multicultural counseling and therapy;
self-help groups

DCT Applications.

DCT has been used successfully with children, adolescents, and adults of all ages. It is
effective and appropriate for a wide range of client populations and issues.

Development and assessment interview with

carriehttps://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/J_Myers_Developmental_200
2.pdf