2: Counseling Psychology:

Counseling Psychology is a generalist health service (HSP) specialty in

professional psychology that uses a broad range of culturally-informed
and culturally-sensitive practices to help people improve their well-
being, prevent and alleviate distress and maladjustment, resolve crises,
and increase their ability to function better in their lives.

2: Aim and Goals of Counseling Psychology:

Counseling aims at helping the clients understand and accept themselves
‘’as they are’’.
The main objective of counseling is to bring about a voluntary change in
the client.
There are five commonly goals of counseling.
 FACILITATING BEHAVIOR CHANGE.
 IMPROVING RELATIONSHIP.
 FACILITATE CLIENT'S POTENTIAL.
 PROMOTING DECISION MAKING.
 ENHANCE POTENTIAL AND SELF.
 DEVELOPMENTAL GOALS.

3: Scope of Counseling Psychology:

The scope of Counseling Psychology can be understood by these areas:

1:Clinical Social Worker

After pursuing a degree in counselling psychology, you can go on to

work as a social worker with governmental and non-governmental
organizations. In this role you will get to work with women, children,
and individuals from marginalized strata of the society who have gone
through mental, physical, social, and emotional abuse, often assault.
2:Rehabilitation Counsellor

Often people with disabilities or patients with a deadly disease or after a

serious trauma who have lost certain physical and/or mental abilities,
need help to deal with its effect before they re-enter society. That is what
rehabilitation counsellors help with. Rehabilitation Counsellors are
responsible to make sure an individual has come to terms with their
disease or disability and facilitating their transition back into their
normal lives. They are often associated with hospitals and clinical
centers, but can also work outside the healthcare system.

3:Mental Health Counsellors

After graduating with a counselling psychology degree, you can work as

a mental health counsellor and treat people with emotional and mental
disorders. Mental health counsellors use therapeutic techniques to deal
with issues such as depression, anxiety, addiction, stress, trauma, grief,
bulimia, anorexia, etc.

4:School Counsellors

The role of a school counsellor is two-fold.

On one hand, they deal with problems that students often can’t or don’t
want to talk about with their parents like bullying, shaming, low self-
esteem, etc. On the other hand, they also help students in making
decisions like subject selection, choosing a career and college, and what
academic grades and non-academic profile is needed for them to pursue
their chosen career.

5: Career Counsellors

If you want to work with students and guide them on something really
specific, i.e., their career choices, you can work as a career counsellor.
While a degree in counselling psychology will train you on how to deal
with students, parents, and teachers; career counselling needs something
extra – information on career trends, college application and admission
processes.

4: History of Counseling Psychology:

To understand the history of counselling, we begin with the realization

that human beings find a good deal of comfort in sharing their problems.
Carl Jung, the father of analytical psychology, put it another way,

“We are all in some way or other kept asunder by our secrets”[1],
meaning that by keeping secrets, especially painful ones, we separate
ourselves from others and create problems for ourselves.

Although counselling as a profession and discipline is a product of the

19th and 20th centuries, the underlying principles of counselling are as
old as human problems.. As our society has become more complex, roles
have become more formalized, and as Jung observed, the origins of
psychotherapy lie in the confessional where priests would act as the
listener and advisor for the troubled individual and still do.

Counselling as a method was really as a result of the work of Carl Rogers

and Abraham Maslow. The term “counselling” was coined by Carl
Rogers, who, lacking a medical qualification was prevented from calling
his work psychotherapy. Rogers and Maslow developed a new person-
centered or humanistic approach. They believed in the innate desire of
people to ‘self-actualize’ and proposed that everyone has an inbuilt
tendency to self-fulfillment and growth. The counsellor’s role is to
provide an empathic and facilitative environment in which the client can
discover their own answers.
Counselling took off after the Second World War, and Carl Rogers was
invited to set up a counselling center at the University of Chicago in
1945. The US Veterans Administration funded the training of counsellors
and psychologists by offering paid internships for graduate study.

Counselling psychology programmed proliferated first in the USA and

then worldwide. The therapeutic disciplines have continued to evolve
and develop beyond the three schools of psychoanalytical, behaviorist,
and humanistic, including cognitive, gestalt, transactional analysis and
others.

There have been many developments in counselling since the

1950s. A lot of research has taken place and is still taking
place. Alongside the development of counselling techniques,
we have also expanded our knowledge of the biology of the
brain and how it works.

5: Approaches to Counseling Psychology:

There are a number of different approaches used by professional
counsellors. Perhaps the three main approaches are psychodynamic,
humanistic and behavioral.

1:Psychodynamic Approach to Counselling

Psychodynamic counselling evolved from the work of Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939). During his career as a medical doctor, Freud came across
many patients who suffered from medical conditions which appeared to
have no ‘physical cause’.
This led him to believe that the origin of such illnesses lay in the
unconscious mind of the patient.
Psychodynamic counselling is based on Freud’s idea that true
knowledge of people and their problems is possible through an
understanding of three particular areas of the human mind.
These areas are:
 The Conscious – things that we are aware of, including feelings or
emotions, such as anger, sadness, grief, delight, surprise, and
happiness.
 The Subconscious – these are things that are below our conscious
awareness but fairly easily accessible. They may include, for
example, events that we have forgotten, but will easily remember
when asked an appropriate question.
 The Unconscious – this is the area of the mind where memories
have been suppressed and is usually very difficult to access. Such
memories may include extremely traumatic events that have been
blocked off and require a highly skilled practitioner to help
recover.
Freud's main interest and aim was to bring things from the unconscious
into the conscious. This practice is known as psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis is used to encourage the client to examine childhood or
early memory trauma to gain a deeper understanding of events.
Freud maintained that the personality consists of three related
elements:
  The Id works as Pleasure principle, with satisfying the basic needs
of food, comfort and pleasure. It is therefore present from (or
possibly before) birth.
 The Ego works as “Reality Principle”. It is the logical and
common sense side to our personality. Freud believed that the Ego
develops as the infant becomes aware that it is a separate being
from its parents.
 The Superego develops later in a child’s life, from about the age
of three. The Superego works as Moral Principle. The Superego
curbs and controls the basic instincts. It therefore acts as our
conscience.

The main goal of psychodynamic counselling, therefore, is to help

people to balance the three elements of their personality so that
neither the Id nor the Superego is dominant.

2: Behavioral Approach to Counselling

The behavioral approach to counselling focuses on the assumption that
the environment determines an individual’s behavior.
How an individual responds to a given situation is the result of past
learning, and usually behavior that has been reinforced in the past. For
example, suppose that a child picked up a spider and took it to their
mother. If she was frightened of spiders, she might scream. The child
would then learn that spiders are frightening. Next time, instead of
picking up the spider, the child will probably scream and run to their
mother, who may say ‘ooh, I hate spiders, they’re so creepy’, reinforcing
the child’s behavior. As a result, the child may develop a fear of spiders
and run away screaming (response) at the sight of a spider (stimulus).
Behavior therapy focuses on individual behavior and aims to help people
to modify unwanted behaviors. Unwanted behavior is defined as an
undesired response to something or someone in the environment. Using
this approach, a counsellor would identify the unwanted behavior with a
client and together they would work to change or adapt the behavior.
Clients might be taught skills to help them manage their lives more
effectively. For example, they may be taught how to relax in situations
that produce an anxiety response. Another method involves learning
desirable behavior by watching and copying others

3:Humanistic Approach to Counselling

Humanistic counselling recognizes the uniqueness of every individual.

It assumes that everyone has an innate capacity to grow emotionally and
psychologically towards the goals of self-actualization and personal
fulfilment.
Humanistic counsellors therefore aim to help clients to explore their own
thoughts and feelings and to work out their own solutions to their
problems.
This is very similar to the approach used in coaching, except that
coaches are more focused on the present, and less on the past. In
essence, coaching aims to address the issue of ‘how’, and counselling
looks at ‘why’.
What is Coaching?
The American psychologist, Carl Rogers (1902-1987) developed one of
the most commonly used humanistic therapies, client-centered
counselling. This encourages the client to concentrate on how they feel
at the present moment, this is also the essence of mindfulness.

Client-Centered Counselling
The central theme of client-centered counselling is the belief that we
all have inherent resources that enable us to deal with whatever life
brings.
Client-centered therapy focuses on the belief that the client—and not the
counsellor—is the expert on their own thoughts, feelings, experiences
and problems.. The counsellor does not suggest any course of action,
make recommendations, ask probing questions or try to interpret
anything the client says. The responsibility for working out problems
rests wholly with the client.
A trained client-centered counsellor aims to show empathy, warmth and
genuineness, which they believe will enable the client's self-
understanding and psychological growth.
 Empathy involves being able to understand the client’s issues
from their own frame of reference.
 Warmth is to show the client that they are valued, during the
counselling session. The counsellor must be non-judgmental,
accepting whatever the client says or does.
 Genuineness (sometimes termed congruence) refers to the
counsellor's ability to be open and honest and not to act in a
superior manner or hide behind a 'professional' facade.

5: Status of Counseling Psychology in world:

In recent days, counseling psychology as a profession has expanded and
is now represented in many countries around the world. The number of
people employed as Counselors has been growing at a rate of 4.9% in
2016. Some of the best countries to study Counseling include the UK,
the US, Canada, Norway and Sweden. These are the countries that have
the best counseling finding and research and also offer the best career
opportunities after the graduation.