THEORIES OF COUNSELLING

Introduction
There are four major perspectives in psychology which are also referred to as models
or approaches. Each theory or approach involves assumptions about human
behaviour and psychological functioning. There are over 400 theories and models of
counselling and psychotherapy. However, the major perspectives are the
1. Psychodynamic,
2. Behavioural/Cognitive,
3. Humanistic
4. Eclectic
There may be different theories within each approach, but they all share some
common assumptions.

Given the complexity of human behaviour and experience, it is not surprising that
psychology has multiple pathways for approaching its subject matter. Most
psychologists agree that no one perspective is fully able to explain human behaviour
as each has its strengths and limitations and most disorders result from a combination
of factors. Each approach has something unique to offer to our understanding of
students behaviour but none offers a complete view. A contemporary holistic view
however, is the Bio-psychosocial approach which assumes that biological,
psychological and socio-cultural factors all combine and interact to produce
psychological disorders.

ECLECTICISM –(movement towards therapy integration)

An ECLECTIC approach to understanding and treating human behaviour, one which

draws and blends from theories, principles and therapies across the different
perspectives is now used by many psychologists, practitioners and therapists.

A large number of therapists identify themselves as “eclectic,” and this category

covers a broad range of practice. At its worst, eclectic practice consists of
haphazardly picking techniques without any overall theoretical rationale. This is
known as syncretism, wherein the practitioner, lacking in knowledge and skill in
selecting interventions, looks for anything that seems to work, often making little
attempt to determine whether the therapeutic procedures are indeed effective.

Such an un- critical and unsystematic combination of techniques is no better than

a narrow and dogmatic orthodoxy. This pulling of techniques from many sources
without a sound rationale results in syncretistic confusion.

Pathways Toward Psychotherapy Integration

Psychotherapy integration is best characterized by attempts to look beyond and

across the confines of single-school approaches to see what can be learned
from other perspectives and how clients can benefit from a variety of ways of
conducting therapy.
The majority of psychotherapists do not claim allegiance to a particular
therapeutic school but prefer, instead, some form of integration.

The integrative approach is characterized by openness to various ways of

integrating diverse theories and techniques, and there is a decided preference
for the term integrative over eclectic.

Although different terms are sometimes used—eclecticism, integration,

convergence, and rapprochement—the goals are very similar. The ultimate goal
of integration is to enhance the efficiency and applicability of psychotherapy.

Four of the most common pathways toward the integration of psychotherapies

identified are:
1. technical integration
2. theoretical integration
3. assimilative integration
4. common factors approach
All of these approaches to integration look beyond the restrictions of single
approaches, but they do so in distinctive ways.

Technical Integration aims at selecting the best treatment techniques for the
individual and the problem. It tends to focus on differences, chooses from many
approaches, and is a collection of techniques. This path calls for using
techniques from different schools without necessarily subscribing to the
theoretical positions that spawned them.
For those who practice from the perspective of technical integration, there is no
necessary connection between conceptual foundations and techniques.

One of the best-known forms of technical integration, which he refers to as

technical eclecticism, is Lazarus’s (1997a) multimodal therapy.

Multimodal therapists borrow from many other therapeutic models, using

techniques that have been demonstrated to be effective in dealing with specific
clinical problems. Whenever feasible, multimodal therapists employ empirically
supported techniques.

Theoretical Integration refers to a conceptual or theoretical creation beyond a

mere blending of techniques. This route has the goal of producing a conceptual
framework that synthesizes the best aspects of two or more theoretical
approaches under the assumption that the outcome will be richer than either
theory alone.

This approach emphasizes integrating the underlying theories of therapy along

with techniques from each.

Examples of this form of integration are Dialecti cal Behavior Therapy (DBT) and
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Emotion-focused therapy (EFT), which is informed by the role of emotion in
psychotherapeutic change, also can be considered a form of theoretical
integration. Greenberg (2011), a key figure of the development of EFT,
conceptualizes the model as an empirically supported, integrative, experential
approach to treatment.

EFT synthesizes concepts of person-centered therapy, Gestalt therapy,

experiential therapy and existential therapy, viewed through the lens of modern
cognitive and emotion theory.

Assimilative Integration approach is grounded in a particular school of

psychotherapy, along with an openness to selectively incorporate practices
from other therapeutic approaches.

Assimilative integration combines the advantages of a single coherent

theoretical system with the flexibility of a variety of interven tions from multiple
systems.

An example of this form of integration is mindfulness- based cognitive therapy

(MBCT), which integrates aspects of cognitive therapy and mindfulness-based stress
reduction procedures. MBCT is a comprehensive integration of the principles and
skills of mindfulness applied to the treatment of depression.

Common Factors Approach searches for common elements across different

theoretical systems. Despite many differences among the theories, a
recognizable core of counselling practice is composed of non-specific variables
common to all therapies.

Lambert (2011) concludes that common factors can be a basis for

psychotherapy integration: The common factors explanation for the general
equivalence of diverse therapeutic interventions has resulted in the dominance
of integrative practice in routine care by implying that the dogmatic advocacy
of a particular theoretical school is not supported by research.

It is also suggested that common factors can become the focal point for
integration of seemingly diverse therapy techniques.

Some of these common factors include:

1. empathic listening
2. developing a working al liance
3. opportunity for catharsis
4. practicing new behaviors
5. positive expectations of clients
6. working through one’s own conflicts
7. understanding interpersonal and intra-personal dynamics
8. learning to be self-reflective about own work
9. support
10. warmth
11. feedback
 12. reassurance
13. credibility
14. facilitative therapeutic relationship
These common factors are thought to be at least as important in accounting for
therapeutic outcomes as the unique factors that differentiate one theory from
another. Among the approaches to psychotherapy integration, the common
factors approach has the strongest empirical support.

The importance of the therapeutic alliance is a well-established critical

component of effective therapy which confirms that the client– therapist
relationship is central to therapeutic change.

Advantages of Psychotherapy Integration

One reason for the movement toward psychotherapy integration is the

recognition that no single theory is comprehensive enough to account for the
complexities of human behavior, especially when the range of client types and
their specific problems are taken into consideration. Because no one theory
contains all the truth, and because no single set of counselling techniques is
always effective in working with diverse client populations, integrative
approaches hold promise for counseling practice.

Norcross and Wampold (2011b) maintain that effective clini cal practice requires
a flexible and integrative perspective. Psychotherapy should be flexibly tailored
to the unique needs and contexts of the individual client.

Using an identical therapy relationship style and treatment method for all clients
is inappropriate and can be unethical.

Many practitioners who claim allegiance to a particular system of therapy are

expanding their theoretical outlook and developing a wider range of
therapeutic techniques to fit a more diverse population of clients.

There is a growing recognition that psychotherapy can be most effective when

contributions from various approaches are integrated.

Integrative practitioners who are open to an integrative perspective will find that
several theories play a crucial role in their personal counseling approach. Each
theory has its unique contributions and its own domain of expertise. By accepting
that each theory has strengths and weaknesses and is, by definition, “different”
from the others, practitioners have some basis to begin developing a theory that
fits for them and their clients.

It takes considerable time to learn the various theories in depth. It is not realistic for
any of us to expect that we can integrate all the theories. Instead, integration of
some aspects of some of the theories is a more realistic goal.
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic

approach to psychology. Focused not only on the mind, but also on a region of the
mind which he called the unconscious, Freud explained the unconscious as primitive
sexual and aggressive drives or instincts and the impulses and urges that arise from
those drives or instincts. He believed that the motives underlying our behaviour
involve sexual and aggressive impulses that lie in the depths of the unconscious,
hidden away from our ordinary awareness of ourselves.

Freud also believed that early childhood experiences play a determining role in
shaping our personalities and behaviour, including abnormal behaviours. He held
that abnormal behaviour patterns are rooted in unconscious conflicts originating in
childhood. These conflicts involve a dynamic struggle within the unconscious mind
between unacceptable sexual or aggressive impulses striving for expression and
opposing mental forces seeking to keep this threatening material out of conscious
awareness. Freud maintained that once these unconscious conflicts were brought
into conscious awareness they could be resolved during the course of therapy.

Central to psychoanalytic theory is the view that personality is fashioned

progressively as the individual passes through various psychosexual stages. Freud
proposed that people operate from three states of being:
 Id-which seeks self-gratification; the
 Superego-which seeks to do what is morally proper
 Ego-the rational mediator between the id and superego

Sigmund Freud: Psychosexual Stages of Development

Freud was born in 1856 and lived most of his life in Vienna. He was a gifted student
and scholar. Early in his medical career, he used hypnosis to treat his patients who
had nervous (he referred to them “neurotic”) disorders. But he soon became
disenchanted with this method because some of his patients exhibited nervous
disorders that could not be attributed to anything physical. Freud hypothesized that
something else caused his patients such distress—something the patient was
unaware of.

He began experimenting with free association of ideas, with dream analysis, and with
hypnosis to tap patients’ “unconscious” thoughts. Using these techniques, he
developed his famous psychoanalytic theory. Many psychologists and psychiatrists
were directly or indirectly influenced by Freud’s teachings (Fromm, 1980).

The Role of the Unconscious

Freud stressed the role in our behavior of unconscious motivation —stemming from
impulses buried below the level of awareness. According to Freud, human behaviour
arises from the struggle between societal prohibitions and instinctual drives
associated with sex and aggression. Those drives, or impulses, lead to self-
preservation and seeking pleasure. Because certain behaviours are forbidden and
punishable, many instinctual impulses are driven out of our conscious awareness
early in our lives into the realm of the unconscious. Nonetheless, they affect our
behavior later in our lives. They find new expression in slips of the tongue (“Freudian
slips”), dreams, bizarre symptoms of mental disorder, religion, the arts, literature, and
myth. For Freud, the early years of childhood are critically important; what happens
to an individual later in life is a ripple on the surface of a personality structure that
was firmly established during the child’s first five to six years.

Psychosexual Stages
Freud said that all human beings, starting in infancy, pass through a series of
psychosexual stages. Freud proposed three key psychosexual stages of
development—oral, anal, and phallic. Each stage is dominated by the development
of sensitivity in a particular erogenous, or pleasure-giving, zone of the body; and
each stage poses a unique conflict that must be resolved before passing on to the
next stage.

If a person is unsuccessful in resolving the conflict, the resulting frustration becomes

chronic and remains a central feature of that person’s psychological makeup. This
is known as a complex. According to Freud’, the sources of conflict during the phallic
stage result in the Oedipal complex for boys and the Electra complex for girls. At this
stage a boy feels sexual love for his mother and hostile rivalry toward his father, which
causes him to fear punishment by the father through castration. A girl feels sexual
love for her father and hostile rivalry toward her mother, which leads her to conclude
that she and her mother have been castrated (because they lack penises).

This leads to “penis envy” and a feeling of inferiority. On the other hand, individuals
who do not develop a complex may become so addicted to the pleasures of a
given stage that they are not willing to move on to later stages and instead become
fixated.

Fixation is the tendency to stay at a particular stage. An individual who is troubled

by a conflict at any stage seeks to reduce tension by engaging in the behavior
characteristic of that stage.

The Tenets of Psychoanalysis

1. Inheritance and Childhood Events – a person's development is determined by
often forgotten events in early childhood besides inherited traits.
2. Human attitude, mannerism, experience and thought are influenced by irrational
drives.
3. Irrational drives are mostly unconscious
4. Defence mechanisms prevent people from seeing these irrational drives
5. Conflicts between the conscious and the unconscious can materialize in the form
of mental or emotional disturbances
6. Liberating the elements of the unconscious is achieved through bringing this
material into the conscious mind (therapeutic intervention)
Freud’s psychoanalysis is both a theory and a therapy. The words ‘psychodynamic’
and ‘psychoanalytic’ are often confusing. Freud’s theories were psychoanalytic.
However, the term ‘psychodynamic’ refers to both his theories and those of his
followers such as Jung (1964), Adler (1927) and Erikson (1950).
 Freud’s Theories of Psychosexual Development
One of Freud’s more famous theories is that of psychosexual development. He said
that as children we move through a series of stages centred on erogenous zones.
Successful completion of these stages, Freud argued, led to the development of a
healthy personality, but fixation at any stage prevents completion and therefore the
development of an unhealthy, fixated personality as an adult.

1. Oral Stage (Birth to 18 Months): Child becomes focused on oral pleasures such as
sucking. Difficulties at this stage could lead to an oral personality in adulthood
centred around smoking, drinking alcohol, biting nails and they can be pessimistic,
gullible and overly dependent on others.

2. Anal Stage (18 months to 3 Years): Focus of pleasure here is on eliminating and
retaining faeces and learning to control this due to societal norms. Fixation here can
lead to perfectionism, a need to control or alternatively the opposite; messy and
disorganised.

3. Phallic Stage (Ages 3 to 6 Years): During the phallic stage the child’s pleasure move
to the genitals and Freud argued that during this stage, boys develop an
unconscious sexual desire for their mothers and fear that because of this their fathers
will punish them by castration. This became known as the Oedipus Complex after
the Sophocles tragedy. A fixation at the stage could lead to confusion over sexual
identity or engaging in sexual deviances. Girls developed the Electra complex
towards their fathers.

4. Latency Stage (Ages 6 to puberty): Sexual urges remain largely repressed at this
stage.

5. Genital Stage (Puberty Onwards): This final stage leads to the individual switching
their interest to members of the opposite sex.
According to Freud, the development of personality occurs through a five-stage
sequence of psychosexual development.
In his later work, Freud proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three
parts: Id, Ego and Superego. Freud discussed this model in the 1920 essay ‘Beyond
the Pleasure Principle’, and elaborated upon “The Ego and the Id”.
Id, Ego and Superego
Id, Ego and Superego
Freud believed that the human mind was structured
into three parts (tripartite), the id, ego
and superego, all developing at different stages in
our lives.

The Id (or it)

The id consists of the inherited (biological)

components of personality, including the instinct
Eros (libido), and Thanatos (aggression).

The id is the impulsive and unconscious part of our

psyche which responds directly and immediately to instincts.
The id demands immediate satisfaction and when this happens pleasure is
experienced, but when it is denied we experience the opposite.
The id is not affected by reality, logic or the everyday world. It operates on
the pleasure principle which is the idea that every wishful impulse should be satisfied
immediately, regardless of the consequences.

The Ego (or I)

The ego is “that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the
external world” (Freud 1923). The ego develops in order to mediate between the
unrealistic id and the external real world.

Ideally the ego works by reason whereas the id is chaotic and totally
unreasonable. The ego operates according to the reality principle, working our
realistic ways of satisfying the id’s demands, often compromising or postponing
satisfaction.

Like the id, the ego seeks pleasure and avoids pain but unlike the id it is concerned
with devising a realistic strategy to obtain pleasure. Often the ego is weak relative to
the head-strong id. The ego has no concept of right or wrong; something is good
simply if it achieves its end of satisfying without causing harm to itself or the id.

The Superego
The superego incorporates the values and morals of society which are learned from
one's parents and others. It develops around the age of 4–5 during the phallic stage
of psychosexual development. The superego's function is to control the id's impulses,
especially those which society forbids, such as sex and aggression. It also has the
function of persuading the ego to turn to moralistic goals rather than simply realistic
ones and to strive for perfection.

The superego consists of two systems: The conscience and the ideal self. The
conscience can punish the ego through feelings of guilt and if the ego gives in to the
id’s demands the superego may make the person feel bad though guilt. The ideal
self (or ego-ideal) is an imaginary picture of how one ought to be, and represents
career aspirations, how to treat other people, and how to behave as a member of
society.

Behaviour which falls short of the ideal self may be punished by the superego through
guilt. The super-ego can also reward us through the ideal self when we behave
‘properly’ by making us feel proud. If a person’s ideal self is too high, then whatever
the person does will represent failure. The ideal self and conscience are largely
determined in childhood from parental values and how you were brought up.

Freud stated that in healthy individuals the ego is doing a good job in balancing out
the needs of these two parts of the psyche, however in those where one of the other
parts is dominant the individual struggles and problems develop in the
personality. The balancing act between these two aspects of the psyche can
sometimes be difficult for the ego and so it employs a variety of different tools to help
mediate known as defence mechanisms.

Defence Mechanisms

Examples of defence mechanisms are:

Therapeutic Techniques
Freud experimented with a number of therapeutic techniques including:
1. Hypnosis
2. Free association
3. Dream analysis
4. Transference
5. Counter-transference
6. Catharsis
Criticisms of the Psychodynamic Approach
 The greatest criticism of the psychodynamic approach is that it is unscientific
in its analysis of human behaviour. Many of the concepts central to Freud's
theories are subjective and as such impossible to scientifically test.
 The humanistic approach makes the criticism that the psychodynamic
perspective is too deterministic, leaving little room for the idea of personal
agency (free will).

ERIK ERIKSON’S PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY

Unlike Freud, who focused on early childhood with an emphasis on biological

instinctual urges as key to human development, Erik Erikson presented a model
emphasizing the challenges and tasks presented across one’s lifespan as key to
understanding human development. Further, unlike Freud, Erickson emphasized
development from within a social context. Erickson’s theory is an epigenetic theory,
which means it focuses on both the biological and genetic origins of behaviors as
interacting with the direct influence of environmental forces over time. He posited that
this biological unfolding in relation to our sociocultural settings is done in stages of
psychosocial development, where progress through each stage is in part determined
by our success, or lack of success, in all the previous stages.

Erickson posited that humans pass through 8 stages of development with each
presenting the individual with a unique developmental task, or what he termed
“crisis” (see Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development in the table below).
Erickson felt that these psychosocial crises were based on physiological development
interacting with the demands put on the individual by parents and society.

As you review the brief description of each stage, note how the resolution of any one
stage may pave the way for subsequent stage.

For example, the child who has difficulty developing a basic trust (trust vs. mistrust, Stage
1) of his or her environment may find it difficult to risk engaging in the types of self-
directed behaviours that would allow for a positive resolution to the autonomy
versus shame and doubt stage (Stage 2).

Erickson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development

Stages Life Stage/Age Meaning & Interpretation

Trust vs. Infant (0–1½) The infant will develop a healthy balance between trust
Mistrust and mistrust if cared for and responded to consistently.
Abuse or neglect will foster mistrust. Positive outcomes
consist of the development of hope and drive, while
negative outcomes could contribute to withdrawal.
Autonomy Toddler (1–3) Autonomy means self-reliance or independence of
vs. thought and confidence to act for oneself. Toilet
Shame &
training is a significant part of this stage. Positive
Doubt
outcomes consist of willpower and self-control, while
negative outcomes could contribute to compulsive
behaviors.
Initiative vs. Preschool (4–6) Initiative means aptitude and self-confidence to perform
Guilt actions, even with the understanding of risks and failure.
Guilt results from abandonment or believing an action
will draw disapproval. Positive outcomes foster purpose
and direction, while negative outcomes encourage
inhibition.
Industry vs. School Age (7– Industry means having a meaningful activity and the
Inferiority 12) competence to perform a skill. Inferiority means feeling
incapable of experiencing failure or inability to discover
one’s own strengths. This stage is crucial in the school
years. Positive outcomes foster competence, while
negative outcomes encourage inertia.
Identity vs. Adolescent (12– Identity means understanding of self and how one fits
Role 18) into the surrounding world, while role confusion focuses
Confusion
on the inability to understand one’s self or personal
identity. Positive outcomes foster fidelity and devotion,
while negative outcomes encourage repudiation
behavior.
Intimacy vs. Young Adult Intimacy means developing relationships with friends,
Isolation family, and partners. Isolation involves feelings of being
(19–40)
excluded from relationships or partnership. These
encompass sexual maturity, reciprocal love, support, and
emotional connection. Positive outcomes foster love and
affiliation, while negative outcomes encourage
exclusivity.
Generativity Adulthood (41– Generativity means unconditional care for one’s
vs. 65) offspring or the future generations to come, while
Stagnation
stagnation refers to self-absorption/ concentration.
Positive outcomes foster care and giving, while
negative outcomes encourage rejectivity.
Integrity vs. Mature Integrity means understanding of self and satisfaction
Despair Adult (65+) with life, while despair contributes to feelings of wasted
time, opportunity, and chances. Positive outcomes
foster wisdom, while negative outcomes encourage
despair.
Criticisms of the Psychodynamic Approach
 The greatest criticism of the psychodynamic approach is that it is unscientific
in its analysis of human behaviour. Many of the concepts central to Freud's
theories are subjective and as such impossible to scientifically test.
 The humanistic approach makes the criticism that the psychodynamic
perspective is too deterministic, leaving little room for the idea of personal
agency (free will).

THE BEHAVIOUR THEORY

Behaviourism also called the behavioural approach or perspective was the primary
paradigm in psychology between 1920s and 1950s and is based on a number of
underlying assumptions regarding methodology and behavioural analysis. Though
traditional behaviourism continues to influence modern psychology, it is no longer
the dominant force as it was in the early to mid-1900s.

The behavioural perspective focuses on observable behaviour and the important

role of learning in behaviour. However, many psychologists believe that traditional
behaviourism is too simplistic or limited to explain complex human behaviour.

Psychologists today adopt a broader, learning-based perspective called the social-

cognitive theory (formerly called social-learning theory). This perspective originated
in the 1960s with a group of learning theorists who broke away from traditional
behaviourism. They believed that behaviour is shaped not only by environmental
factors, such as rewards and punishments, but also by cognitive factors, such as the
value placed on different objects or goals and expectancies about the outcomes
of behaviour.

The behavioural perspective led to the development of behaviour therapy which

involves the systematic application of learning principles that are grounded in the
behaviourist tradition of Watson and Skinner. Today, many behaviour therapists
subscribe to a broader therapeutic approach, called cognitive-behavioural
therapy, which incorporates techniques for changing maladaptive thoughts as well
as overt behaviours.

Classical Conditioning (Pavlov)

During the 1890s Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was looking at salivation in dogs in
response to being fed, when he noticed that his dogs began to salivate whenever
he entered the room, even when he was not bringing them food.

Pavlov started from the idea that there are some things that a dog does not need to
learn. For example, dogs don’t learn to salivate whenever they see food. This reflex
is ‘hard wired’ into the dog. In behaviourist terms, it is an unconditioned response (i.e.
a stimulus-response connection that required no learning). In behaviourist terms, we
write: Unconditioned Stimulus (Food) > Unconditioned Response (Salivate)
Pavlov showed the existence of the unconditioned response by presenting a dog
with a bowl of food and the measuring its salivary secretions. However, when Pavlov
discovered that any object or event which the dogs learnt to associate with food
(such as the lab assistant) would trigger the same response, he realized that he had
made an important scientific discovery.

Pavlov knew that somehow, the dogs in his lab had learned to associate food with
his lab assistant. This must have been learned, because at one point the dogs did
not do it, and there came a point where they started, so their behaviour had
changed. A change in behaviour of this type must be the result of learning.

In behaviourist terms, the lab assistant was originally a neutral stimulus. It is called
neutral because it produces no response. What had happened was that the neutral
stimulus (the lab assistant) had become associated with an un-conditioned stimulus
(food).

In his experiment, Pavlov used a bell as his neutral stimulus. Whenever he gave food
to his dogs, he also rang a bell. After a number of repeats of this procedure, he tried
the bell on its own. The bell on its own now caused an increase in salivation.

The dog had learned an association between the bell and the food and a new
behaviour had been learnt. Because this response was learned (or conditioned), it is
called a conditioned response. The neutral stimulus has become a conditioned
stimulus:

Classical conditioning is "classical" in that it is the first systematic study of basic laws
of learning / conditioning.

John Watson proposed that the process of classical conditioning (based on Pavlov’s
observations) was able to explain all aspects of human psychology.

Classical conditioning involves learning a new behaviour through the process of

association. In simple terms two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned
response in a person or animal. There are three stages to classical conditioning. In
each stage the stimuli and responses are given special scientific terms:

Stage 1: Before Conditioning:

In this stage, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) produces an unconditioned response

(UCR) in an organism. In basic terms this means that a stimulus in the environment has
produced a behaviour or response which is unlearned (i.e. unconditioned) and
therefore is a natural response which has not been taught. In this respect no new
behaviour has been learned yet. This stage also involves another stimulus which has
no effect on a person and is called the neutral stimulus (NS). The NS could be a
person, object, place etc. The neutral stimulus in classical conditioning does not
produce a response until it is paired with the unconditioned stimulus.

Stage 2: During Conditioning:

During this stage a stimulus which produces no response (i.e. neutral) is associated
with the unconditioned stimulus at which point it now becomes known as the
conditioned stimulus (CS). Often during this stage, the UCS must be associated with
the CS on a number of occasions, or trials, for learning to take place. However, one
trial can happen on certain occasions when it is not necessary for an association to
be strengthened over time.

Stage 3: After Conditioning:

Now the conditioned stimulus (CS) has been associated with the unconditioned
stimulus (UCS) to create a new conditioned response (CR).

B.F. Skinner: Operant Conditioning

By the 1920s John B. Watson had left academic psychology and other behaviourists
were becoming influential, proposing new forms of learning other than classical
conditioning. Perhaps the most important of these was B.F. Skinner.

Skinner's views were slightly less extreme than those of Watson. Skinner believed that
we do have such a thing as a mind, but that it is simply more productive to study
observable behaviour rather than internal mental events.

Skinner believed that the best way to understand behaviour is to look at the causes
of an action and its consequences. He called this approach operant conditioning.

Skinner is regarded as the father of Operant Conditioning, but his work was based on
Thorndike’s law of effect. If the response in a connection is followed by a satisfying
state of affairs, the strength of the connection is considerably increased whereas if
followed by an annoying state of affairs, then the strength of the connection is
marginally decreased. The second contribution was his rejection of the notion that
man is simply another animal that can reason. He believed intelligence should be
defined solely in terms of greater or lesser ability to form connections).

Skinner introduced a new term into the Law of Effect called

Reinforcement. Behaviour which is reinforced tends to be repeated (strengthened);
behaviour which is not reinforced tends to die out-or be extinguished (weakened).

Skinner (1948) studied operant conditioning by conducting experiments using

animals which he placed in a “Skinner Box” which was similar to Thorndike’s puzzle
box.

B.F. Skinner (1938) coined the term operant conditioning; it means roughly changing
of behaviour by the use of reinforcement which is given after the desired response.
He identified three types of responses or operants that can follow behaviour.

 Neutral operant: responses from the environment that neither increase nor
decrease the probability of a behaviour being repeated.

 Reinforcers: Responses from the environment that increase the probability of a

behaviour being repeated. They can be either positive or negative.

 Punishers: Response from the environment that decrease the likelihood of a

behaviour being repeated. Punishment weakens behaviour.

Positive Reinforcement

Skinner showed how positive reinforcement worked by placing a hungry rat in his
Skinner box. The box contained a lever in the side and as the rat moved about the
box it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did a food pellet would
drop into a container next to the lever.

The rats quickly learned to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in
the box. The consequence of receiving food if they pressed the lever ensured that
they would repeat the action again and again.

The removal of an unpleasant reinforcement also strengthens behaviour. This is

known as negative reinforcement because it is the removal of an adverse
stimulus which is ‘rewarding’ to the animal. Negative reinforcement strengthens
behaviour because it stops or removes an unpleasant experience.

Negative Reinforcement

Skinner showed how negative reinforcement worked by placing a rat in his Skinner
box and subjecting it to an unpleasant electric current which caused it some
discomfort. As the rat moved about the box it would accidentally knock the lever.
Immediately it did so the electric current would be switched off. The rats quickly
learned to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box. The
consequence of escaping the electric current ensured that they would repeat the
action again and again.

Skinner even taught the rats to avoid the electric current by turning on a light just
before the electric current came on. The rats soon learned to press the lever when
the light came on because they knew that this would stop the electric current being
switched on. These two learned responses are known as escape learning and
avoidance learning. It is not always easy to distinguish between punishment and
negative reinforcement.

Punishment weakens behaviour. Punishment is defined as the opposite of

reinforcement since it is designed to weaken or eliminate a response rather than
increase it. Like reinforcement, punishment can work either by directly applying an
unpleasant stimulus such as a shock after a response or by removing a potentially
rewarding stimulus to punish undesirable behaviour.

Negative Reinforcement strengthens behaviour because a negative condition is

stopped or avoided as a consequence of the behaviour. Punishment, on the other
hand, weakens behaviour because a negative condition is introduced or
experienced as a consequence of the behaviour.

The Behavioural Approach

Key Features

 Stimulus --> Response

 Classical Conditioning & Operant Conditioning
 Reinforcement & Punishment (Skinner)
 Social Learning Theory (Bandura)
 Reductionism

Basic Assumptions

 Psychology should be seen as a science, to be studied in a scientific manner.

 Behaviourism is primarily concerned with observable behaviour, as opposed to
internal events like cognition and thinking.
 Behaviour is the result of stimulus – response (i.e. all behaviour, no matter how
complex, can be reduced to a simple stimulus – response features).
 Behaviour is determined by the environment (e.g. conditioning).

Reductionism can be defined as the breaking down of a complex phenomenon into

simpler components (Biology). There are many arguments against reductionism in
psychology. One of the most predominant arguments is the involvement of
environmental factors in shaping our behaviour.
 COGNITIVE BEHAVIOUR THEORY (CBT)

In the 1950's, psychologist Albert Ellis, and psychiatrist Aaron Beck, independently
developed two very similar theories. Both of these theories resulted in effective forms
of cognitive therapy and continue to be widely practiced today. While behavioural
learning theory emphasizes the role of the environment, cognitive theory emphasizes
the key role of the mind's cognitions in determining behaviour. These cognitions
include a person's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and perceptions.

The first stage of cognitive therapy involves the therapist and the client agreeing on
the nature of the problem and on the goals for therapy. This stage is called
collaborative empiricism. The client’s negative thoughts are then tested out by the
therapist challenging them or by the client engaging in certain forms of behaviour
between therapy sessions. It is hoped that the client will come to accept that many
of his/her negative thoughts are irrational and unrealistic.

Throughout the 1950s there was a shift in emphasis from behaviourist’s stimulus–
response relationships to an approach that attempts to explain behaviour in terms
of the mind. The cognitive approach began to revolutionize psychology in the late
1950’s and early 1960’s, to become the dominant approach in psychology by the
late 1970s.

Several factors were important in this:

 Dissatisfaction with the behaviourist approach in its simple emphasis on external

behaviour rather than internal processes
 The development of better experimental methods and
 Comparison between human and computer processing of information.

Cognitive psychologists study people’s mental processes in an effort to understand

how people gain knowledge about themselves and the world around them. It
focuses on the way human’s process information and internal processes including
perception, attention, language, memory and thinking.

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) was developed by clinical psychologist

Albert Ellis in 1950s.

The basic assumption of REBT is that people’s way of interpreting events and their
experience determine the formation of the psychological difficulties they face. REBT
is based on the premise that thoughts, emotions, and behaviors influence one
another to a great extent and that they have a reciprocal cause and effect
relationship.

In other words, in REBT a person’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are considered
as a whole because according to the basic assumption of REBT, the way an
individual evaluates or views an event is influenced by their state of mind and in
return may determine in what kind of emotional state that person will be in.
When developing REBT, Ellis was influenced by the Roman philosopher Epictetus, who
argued that “people are not only influenced by situations but also by how they view
those situations”. Ellis (2010) indicates that how people make themselves
uncomfortable is more important than the actions they actualized; he says that
“people make themselves uncomfortable with the things that happen to them, with
their thoughts, emotions, and actions”.

What affects the individual in a given situation is his or her perception of it and the
thought, emotion and behavior components he or she developed in relation to this
perception, and not the actual situation itself. These components can influence the
individual singularly or holistically.

Ellis meant that people create their own reality themselves, and the most critical
factor determining what the behavior of the individual will be is what his perception
of reality is, and not the reality interpreted by the outside. Reality interpreted by the
outsiders may not be the same with the reality of the individual. In other words,
something that affects the individual immensely may not be as effective for others.
At the basis, lies the fact that the perception of reality of the individual is different
from the perception of reality of others.

View of Human Being

According to Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), people:
 are responsible for their own behavior. They can easily decide whether a
behavior is “good” or “bad,” whether a behavior harms or benefits them
 are active beings capable of taking responsibility of their own behavior, and
that the main responsibility falls onto them rather than on their environment or
other people.
 looked at rather neutrally.
 have some good and some bad within themselves
 have the potential of both rational and irrational or faulty thinking

In short, according to REBT, people are beings who are capable of rational and
irrational thinking. There may be times when people do not or cannot use their
rational thinking skills. Then, they can be disturbed since they approach things
irrationally or since they cannot evaluate the situation rationally.

Albert Ellis’s A-B-C Model of Personality

Ellis argued that anxiety and depression occur as the end point in a 3-point
sequence.

 (A)-Activating event (Antecedent)

 (B)-Beliefs

 (C)-Consequences of our beliefs

The ABC model shows that A does not cause C. It is B that causes C. According to
the ABC model, anxiety and depression are not a Consequence (C) of unpleasant
events (Antecedent) (A). Instead these negative mood states (C) are produced by
the irrational thoughts or beliefs (B) that follow from the occurrence of unpleasant
events (A). The interpretations that are produced at point (C) depend on the
individual’s belief system (B).

In 1962 Ellis developed rational-emotive therapy as a way of removing irrational and

self-defeating thoughts and replacing them with more rational and positive ones. He
argued that individuals who are anxious or depressed should create a point D. This
is a dispute belief system that allows them to interpret life’s events in ways that do
not cause them emotional distress.

CBT suggests that problems are often of your own making. That is, it is not the situation
itself that makes you unhappy, but how you think about, and react to, the situation.

CBT has a number of elements:

 Its primary goal is to change cognitive distortions.

 It is usually short term
 It maintains a large behavioural component
 It is directive
 Therapy focuses on the here and now
 It focuses on skills to help individuals cope better with their emotional problems
 CBT is one of the most effective treatments for conditions where anxiety or
depression is the main problem
 It is the most effective psychological treatment for moderate and severe
depression
 It is as effective as antidepressants for many types of depression.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) differs from most other types of therapies in a
number of ways. These are;
 Pragmatic-CBT helps identify specific problems and then an attempt is made
to solve them.

 Highly structured-rather than talking freely about their life, the individual and
the therapist will discuss the specific problems and set goals for the client to
achieve. As part of this, the client may be given homework in the form of
activities that they should try to complete before the next therapy session.

 Concerned with the present-unlike some other therapies that attempt to

explore and possibly resolve past issues, CBT is mainly concerned with how
individuals think and act now.

 Collaborative - the CBT therapist will not tell the individual what to do; they will
work with the client in order to help them to improve their situation.

Cognitive Techniques

 Self-instruction training: this involves interrupting the flow of stress or negative

emotion provoking thoughts by replacing them with pre-prepared realistic or
coping ones.

 Cognitive Challenge-Socratic method or guided discovery: this involves the

therapist helping the client to identify distorted patterns of thinking that are
 contributing to their problems by directly challenging their assumptions. One
technique developed to identify and challenge core beliefs is the downward
arrow technique.

Key questions include:

 What is your concern about….?

 What would the implications be…?
 What would the consequences be….?
 What would the ultimate consequences be….?

Behavioural Strategies
Two commonly used behavioural strategies used in depression are behavioural
activation and behavioural challenge.

 Behavioural activation is usually targeted at people who are significantly

depressed, and involves increasing levels of activity in a planned progressive
manner.

 Behavioural challenge involves setting up behavioural experiments within the

therapy session or as homework that directly test the cognitive beliefs that
clients hold, in the expectation that negative beliefs are disconfirmed and
more positive ones affirmed.

Relaxation Techniques

The relaxation process most commonly taught is a derivative of Jacobson’s deep

muscle relaxation technique. This involves alternately tensing and relaxing muscle
groups, throughout the body in an ordered sequence. As the client becomes more
skilled, the emphasis of practice shifts towards relaxation without prior tension.

Effectiveness of CBT

CBT combines the advantages of cognitive and behavioural therapy and so

provides appropriate treatment for a wide range of disorders. Cognitive Behavioural
Therapy has proven in scientific studies to be effective for a wide variety of problems
including:

 mood disorders
 anxiety disorders
 personality disorders
 eating disorders e.g. Bulimia Nervosa and Anorexia Nervosa
 substance abuse disorders
 psychotic disorders
 post-traumatic stress disorder
 OCD
 clinical depression
 panic disorders

However, CBT has limited appropriateness for the treatment of schizophrenia,

however, schizophrenia is a very complicated disorder and extremely hard to treat
successfully. Becks approach is considered more sophisticated than Ellis’s. Ellis
assumed that similar irrational beliefs underlie most mental disorders, whereas Beck
argued that specific irrational beliefs tend to be associated with each disorder.

THE HUMANISTIC THEORIES

The Humanistic Approach began in response to concerns by therapists against

perceived limitations of Psychodynamic theories, especially psychoanalysis.
Individuals like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow felt existing (psychodynamic)
theories failed to adequately address issues like the meaning of behaviour and the
nature of healthy growth.
Maslow’s ideas surrounding the Hierarchy of Needs concerning the responsibility of
employers to provide a workplace environment that encourages and enables
employees to fulfill their own unique potential (self-actualization) are today more
relevant than ever.
Humanist psychologist Carl Rogers opposed psychoanalytic personality theory as he
was dissatisfied with the ‘dehumanizing nature’ of this school of thought. The central
tenet of humanistic psychology is that people have drives, that lead them to engage
in activities resulting in personal satisfaction and a contribution to society: the
actualizing tendency.
In humanistic psychology it is emphasized people have free will and they play an
active role in determining how they behave. Accordingly, humanistic psychology
focuses on subjective experiences of persons as opposed to forced, definitive factors
that determine behaviour.
Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers were proponents of this view, which is based on
the “phenomenal field”.
Maslow and Rogers emphasized a view of the person as an active, creative,
experiencing human being who lives in the present and subjectively responds to
current perceptions, relationships and encounters. They disagree with the dark,
pessimistic outlook of those in the Freudian psychoanalysis ranks, but rather view
humanistic theories as positive and optimistic proposals which stress the tendency of
the human personality toward growth and self-actualization. This progressing self will
remain the center of its constantly changing world, a world that will help mould the
self but not necessarily confine it.
Rather, the self has opportunity for maturation based on its encounters with this world.
This understanding attempts to reduce the acceptance of hopeless redundancy.
Humanistic therapy typically relies on the client for information of the past and its
effect on the present, therefore the client dictates the type of guidance the therapist
may initiate. This allows for an individualized approach to therapy.
Rogers tried to model a particular approach to therapy, that is he stressed the
reflective or empathetic response. This response type takes the client’s viewpoint and
reflects back his or her feeling and the context for it. An example of a reflective
response would be, “It seems you are feeling anxious about your upcoming
marriage”. This response type seeks to clarify the therapist’s understanding while also
encouraging the client to think more deeply and seek to fully understand the feelings
they have expressed.
I. ABRAHAM MASLOW (Hierarchy of Needs)
Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs model in the 1940-50’s in the
USA, and the Hierarchy of Needs theory remains valid even today for understanding
human motivation, management training, and personal development. Indeed,
Maslow’s ideas surrounding the Hierarchy of Needs concerning the responsibility of
employers to provide a workplace environment that encourages and enables
employees to fulfill their own unique potential (self-actualization) are today more
relevant than ever. The same applies to students in school who are moving towards
achievement of their full potential.
Maslow took this idea and created his now famous hierarchy of needs that laid out
five broader layers:
1. the physiological needs
2. the needs for safety and security
3. the needs for love and belonging
4. the needs for esteem
5. the need to actualize the self in that order
Humanistic psychologists believe that free will and conscious choice are essential
aspects of the human experience. Psychologists who adopt a humanistic
perspective believe that psychology should focus on conscious experiences, even if
those experiences are subjective and cannot be directly observed and scientifically
measured.

Humanistic psychologists view each of us as individuals who possess distinctive

clusters of traits and abilities and unique frames of reference or perspectives on life.
They emphasize the value of self-awareness and of becoming an authentic person
by being true to oneself. They also stress the creative potentials of individuals and
their ability to make choices that imbue their lives with meaning and purpose.

The humanist movement had an enormous influence on the course of psychology

and contributed new ways of thinking about mental health. It offered a new
approach to understand human behaviours and motivations and led to the
development of new techniques and approaches to psychotherapy. Some of the
major ideas and concepts that emerged as a result of the humanist movement
include emphasis on:

 Self-concept
 Hierarchy of needs
 Unconditional positive regard
 Free will
 Client-centred therapy
 Self-actualization
 Fully-functioning person
 Peak experiences
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-

tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.

From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological (food and
clothing), safety (job security), love and belonging needs (friendship), esteem and
self-actualization.

Needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend
to needs higher up.

Deficiency needs vs. growth needs

This five-stage model can be divided into deficiency needs and growth needs. The
first four levels are often referred to as deficiency needs (D-needs), and the top level
is known as growth or being needs (B-needs).

Deficiency needs arise due to deprivation and are said to motivate people when
they are unmet. Also, the motivation to fulfill such needs will become stronger the
longer the duration they are denied. For example, the longer a person goes without
food, the hungrier they will become.

Maslow (1943) initially stated that individuals must satisfy lower level deficit needs
before progressing on to meet higher level growth needs. However, he later clarified
that satisfaction of a needs is not an “all-or-none” phenomenon, admitting that his
earlier statements may have given “the false impression that a need must be satisfied
100 percent before the next need emerges”

When a deficit need has been 'more or less' satisfied it will go away, and our activities
become habitually directed towards meeting the next set of needs that we have
yet to satisfy. These then become our salient needs. However, growth needs continue
to be felt and may even become stronger once they have been engaged.
Growth needs do not stem from a lack of something, but rather from a desire to grow
as a person. Once these growth needs have been reasonably satisfied, one may be
able to reach the highest level called self-actualization.

Every person is capable and has the desire to move up the hierarchy toward a level
of self-actualization. Unfortunately, progress is often disrupted by a failure to meet
lower level needs. Life experiences, including divorce and loss of a job, may cause
an individual to fluctuate between levels of the hierarchy. Therefore, not everyone
will move through the hierarchy in a unit-directional manner but may move back
and forth between the different types of needs.

The Hierarchy of Needs Five-Stage Model

Maslow (1943, 1954) stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and
that some needs take precedence over others.

Our most basic need is for physical survival, and this will be the first thing that
motivates our behavior. Once that level is fulfilled the next level up is what motivates
us, and so on.

1. Physiological needs - these are biological requirements for human survival, e.g. air,
food, drink, shelter, clothing, warmth, sex, sleep.

If these needs are not satisfied the human body cannot function optimally. Maslow
considered physiological needs the most important as all the other needs become
secondary until these needs are met.

2. Safety needs - once an individual’s physiological needs are satisfied, the needs for
security and safety become salient. People want to experience order, predictability
and control in their lives. These needs can be fulfilled by the family and society (e.g.
police, schools, business and medical care).

For example, emotional security, financial security (e.g. employment, social welfare),
law and order, freedom from fear, social stability, property, health and wellbeing
(e.g. safety against accidents and injury).

3. Love and belongingness needs - after physiological and safety needs have been
fulfilled, the third level of human needs is social and involves feelings of
belongingness. Belongingness, refers to a human emotional need for interpersonal
relationships, affiliating, connectedness, and being part of a group.

Examples of belongingness needs include friendship, intimacy, trust, and

acceptance, receiving and giving affection, and love.

4. Esteem needs are the fourth level in Maslow’s hierarchy and include self-worth,
accomplishment and respect. Maslow classified esteem needs into two categories:
(i) esteem for oneself (dignity, achievement, mastery, independence) and (ii) the
desire for reputation or respect from others (e.g., status, prestige).
Maslow indicated that the need for respect or reputation is most important for
children and adolescents and precedes real self-esteem or dignity.

5. Self-actualization needs are the highest level in Maslow's hierarchy, and refer to
the realization of a person's potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and
peak experiences. Maslow (1943) describes this level as the desire to accomplish
everything that one can, to become the most that one can be.

Individuals may perceive or focus on this need very specifically. For example, one
individual may have a strong desire to become an ideal teacher. For others, it may
be expressed creatively, in paintings, pictures, or inventions.

II. PERSON CENTRED THEORY (by Carl Rogers)

Founded by humanist psychologist, Carl Ransom Rogers, Person-centred therapy
(PCT), also known as client-centred therapy or Rogerian therapy, is a relationship-
oriented approach.

Humanistic psychology is based on an optimistic view of human nature and the

direction of people’s movement is basically towards self-actualization built on a
single “force of life” he calls the actualizing tendency. It is defined as the built-in
motivation present in every life-form to develop its potentials to the fullest extent
possible. Rogers believes that all creatures strive to make the very best of their
existence. If they fail to do so, it is not for a lack of desire.
It is a humanistic approach and also contains elements of the existential approach
such as they both stress the importance of individual experience in life. However, PCT
does acknowledge the interdependence of human beings and our need for
communication and connection with others.

Rogers differed from the psychodynamic and behavioural approaches of the day in
that he believed clients would be better helped if they were encouraged to focus
on their current subjective understanding rather than on an unconscious motive or
of another person’s interpretation of a situation.

Rogers’ work influenced the direction that counselling practice and theory took,
particularly with regards to the “role of the client-therapist relationship as a means to
growth and change” that have also been embraced by other theoretical
approaches.

Rogers was deliberate in his use of the term “client” rather than using “patient”, as
the latter term implied a state of illness, being sick and seeking a cure. For Rogers,
the essence is in the clients control over their own destiny and seeking assistance to
overcome their difficulties. This approach is based on the fundamental belief that
people are essentially trustworthy, social and creative.

At the heart of this therapy is an optimism about our capabilities and primary
motivation. This view is expressed in the therapist’s willingness to step out of the role
of the expert and take on a more facilitatory role, working alongside the client to
enable the client to realize their own self-understanding and tap into their own
resources.

Self-directed growth takes place and they are enabled to solve their own problems
without receiving direct intervention from a therapist or expert. It is noteworthy that
while Rogers started out calling this a non-directive approach, he did realize and
acknowledge after some time that therapists’ guide, even in subtle ways.

However, the emphasis still remains on the therapist allowing the client to lead the
conversation, and not try to steer the client in any particular direction.

According to Rogers the therapist’s attitudes and personal characteristics and

the quality of the client-therapist relationship was primarily what determined the
outcome of the therapeutic process.

Rogers claimed that every human being is a unified whole with the tendency to
actualize. Rogers stated “this is the inherent tendency of the organism to develop all
its capacities in ways which serve to maintain or enhance the organism.” This
actualizing tendency is not viewed by Rogers as an inner drive that compels us, but
as part of our disposition (our qualities and characteristics) that we exhibit in the way
we approach life. We have an innate capacity to order our internal and external
experiences in such a way that is beneficial and enhancing for us.

A person’s identity is formed through a series of personal experiences, which reflect

how the individual is perceived by both him or herself and the outside world – the
phenomenological field. The concept of the self is, according to Rogers, primarily
conscious. The most important determinants of behaviour are those that are
conscious or are capable of becoming conscious. Rogers argues that a notion of
the self that includes a reference to the unconscious (as with Freud) cannot be
studied objectively as it cannot be directly known.
Rogerian personality theory distinguishes between two personalities:
1. The real-self is created through the actualizing tendency; it is the self that one can
become. The demands of society, however, do not always support the
actualizing tendency and we are forced to live under conditions that are out of
step with our tendencies.
2. The ideal-self is the ideal created through the demands of society. Rogers does
not see it as something to strive for (that is the real self) but an ideal imposed on
us we can never fully reach. Rogers’ view of ‘hidden’ personality relates to the
person one could be given the right circumstances within society and for an
individual to be truly happy (and for self-actualization to be realized) their public
and private selves must be as similar as possible.

Core Conditions
We value to be loved, and another thing that we value is positive self-regard, that is,
self-esteem, self-worth, and a positive self-image. We achieve this positive self-regard
by experiencing the positive regard others show us over our years of growing up.
Without this self-regard, we feel small and helpless, and again we fail to become all
that we can be.

Our society leads us astray with conditions of worth. As we grow up, our parents,
teachers, peers, the media and others, only give us what we need when we show
we are “worthy,” rather than just because we need it. We get a drink when we finish
our class, we get something sweet when we finish our vegetables and most
importantly, we get love and affection if and only if we “behave” or perform.
Getting positive regard on “on condition” Rogers calls conditional positive regard as
opposed to unconditional positive regard. Because we do indeed need positive
regard, these conditions are very powerful, and we bend ourselves into a shape
determined, not by our organismic valuing or our actualizing tendency, but by a
society that may or may not truly have our best interests at heart. A “good little boy
or girl” may not be a healthy or happy boy or girl.
Over time, this “conditioning” leads us to have conditional positive self-regard as
well. We begin to like ourselves only if we meet up with the standards others have
applied to us, rather than if we are truly actualizing our potentials. And since these
standards were created without keeping each individual in mind, more often than
not we find ourselves unable to meet them, and therefore unable to maintain any
sense of self-esteem.
Rogers therefore felt that a therapist, in order to be effective, must have three very
special qualities:
1) Congruence—genuineness, honesty, trustworthiness with the client.
2) Empathy—the ability to feel what the client feels
3) Respect—acceptance, unconditional positive regard towards the client.
He says these qualities are “necessary and sufficient:” If the therapist shows these
three qualities, the client will improve, even if no other special “techniques” are used.
If the therapist does not show these three qualities, the client’s improvement will be
minimal, no matter how many “techniques” are used.
The Fully Functioning Person
Rogers, like Maslow, is just as interested in describing the healthy person. His term is
“fully-functioning,” and involves the following qualities:
1) Openness to experience: This is the opposite of defensiveness. It is the
accurate perception of one’s experiences in the world, including one’s
feelings. It also means being able to accept reality, again including one’s
feelings. Feelings are such an important part of openness because they
convey organismic valuing. If you cannot be open to your feelings, you cannot
be open to actualization. The hard part, of course, is distinguishing real feelings
from the anxieties brought on by conditions of worth.
2) Existential living: This is living in the here-and-now. Rogers, as a part of getting
in touch with reality, insists that we not live in the past or the future —the one is
gone, and the other isn’t anything at all, yet! The present is the only reality we
have.
 3) Organismic trusting: We should allow ourselves to be guided by the organismic
valuing process. We should trust ourselves, do what feels right, what comes
natural. Rogers meant trust your real self, and you can only know what your
real self has to say if you are open to experience and living existentially. In other
words, organismic trusting assumes you are in contact with the actualizing
tendency.

4) Experiential freedom: Rogers felt that it was irrelevant whether or not people
really had free will. We feel very much as if we do. This is not to say, of course,
that we are free to do anything at all: We are surrounded by a deterministic
universe, so that, flap my arms as much as I like, I will not fly like Superman. It
means that we feel free when choices are available to us. Rogers says that the
fully-functioning person acknowledges that feeling of freedom, and takes
responsibility for his choices.
5) Creativity: If you feel free and responsible, you will act accordingly, and
participate in the world. A fully-functioning person, in touch with actualization,
will feel obliged by their nature to contribute to the actualization of others,
even life itself. This can be through creativity in the arts or sciences, through
social concern and parental love, or simply by doing one’s best at one’s job.
Creativity as Rogers uses it is very close to Erikson’s generativity.
Abraham Maslow, a pioneer in the development of humanistic psychology, played
an influential role in Rogers’ ideas about the human being as a fully functioning
being, with self-actualization as the central theme on which Maslow built his work,
and is mirrored in the more recent positive psychology movement, which, like
Maslow and Rogers, focuses on the healthy aspects of human existence, self-
fulfillment and effective interventions to aid a satisfactory life, as opposed to merely
looking at treating mental illness.

The field of humanistic and positive psychology help bring attention to the possibility
that if we focus only on disorder such as anxiety, neuroses and hostility, we may be
severely limiting our understanding of a person’s condition. In Rogers view, attitudes
and behaviours that create a growth-producing climate helps people to develop
their capacities and promotes constructive change in others. Based on his work with
emotionally troubled people, he believed that human beings have a remarkable
and inherent capacity to self-heal, to move from a state of maladjustment to a state
of health and of growth, enabling us to realize our full potential, to be autonomous
and self-determined. Human also need
relationships, we are social beings, in need of connectedness to others.

Rogers ascribed four traits to people who are becoming increasingly actualized.
They:
i. have an openness to experience
ii. trust themselves
iii. possess an internal source of evaluation
iv. have a willingness to continue growing

The most basic GOAL of PCT is encouraging these characteristics within people.
In the PCT the greatest tools a therapist owns is in their way of being and attitude,
not in their knowledge and techniques which are designed to get a
client to do something which is a way of doing. This is confirmed to be the case, when
seeing greater personality change in a client through the attitudes of the therapist
than through any techniques attempted to bring about these changes.

Rogers asserted that there are Six Core Conditions required for therapeutic
change to happen:
1) Client-therapist psychological contact–a relationship must exist between the
two and each person’s perception of the other is important
2) Client’s incongruence–the incongruence that exists between the client’s
experience and awareness i.e. the discrepancy between how the client sees
themselves (self-concept) or would like to see themselves (ideal self-concept)
and their experience in reality. This can provide the motivation to seek therapy.
3) Therapist’s attribute of congruence/authenticity within the therapeutic
relationship–the therapist is deeply involved and is not playing a part (acting),
and can facilitate the relationship by drawing on own experiences and
appropriate disclosure.
4) Therapist’s attribute of Unconditional Positive Regard – the therapist accepts
the client unconditionally, without judgment or disapproval/approval. This
helps the client as they become more self-aware and discover where their
view of their own self-worth has been influenced and become distorted.
5) Therapist’s attribute of empathic understanding–the therapist empathically
understands the client’s internal frame of reference. This empathy helps the
client to accept that the therapist has unconditional positive regard for them,
and are not being judgmental.
6) Client perception–the client perceives, at least to some degree, the therapists
unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding (desire to
understand and appreciate the clients’ perspective).

Rogers maintained that if these six conditions existed over a period of time,
constructive personality change would occur. Essentially he felt that as a person
becomes more aware of their real-self they will find their perception of their self will
become more like their actual experience of themselves and he likened this to a
person “getting behind the mask”.

The client-therapist relationship is an equal one and the greater the quality of
this relationship, the greater the process of change. The therapist acts as an
example to the client, as long as the client values the relationship, and so as
the client sees the therapist respecting and valuing them, they begin to have
respect and value for themselves. The therapist acts as mirror of the client’s
thoughts and feelings, helping the client to more clearly understand their own
inner thoughts, perceptions and emotions.

A central aspect of PCT is the self-concept. This part of our being plays a central role
in our development and functioning. Our self-concept begins to form at a young
age, when we start to realize that we are separate from others (at 6 – 7 months) and
that how we behave can have an impact on others. It corresponds with our
conscious awareness of ourselves.

It is Rogers’ belief that in therapy the emphasis should be on how clients act
in their world and are able to move forward in ways that are constructive and
how they can deal with hurdles in a successful way. Clients learn to exercise
choice, to make good decisions through a process of self-reflection and growing
self-awareness. The client learns to trust themselves to manage their own lives. This
gives them freedom, and with freedom comes creativity and flexibility and
opportunity to move towards increased self-actualization.

This approach is also applicable in a group setting where the therapist takes
on the role of a facilitator, creating a space that is safe for healing to take
place. Each group member will make their own decisions and follow their own
unique path, but it will be done with the support of the other group members
and in the presence of the facilitator. The way of being of the facilitator can
create a productive environment for growth to happen.

Strengths

Many people are lost and lonely in this modern society and their argument for
person-centred therapy is that it is all about contact, building relationship and
listening empathically, something which is much needed in a world where therapy
could be losing its humanity, with its boundaries, policy responses and measurements
of success.

Limitations

Critiques of this approach have argued the lack of structure and long term
sustainability of such an abstract approach, particularly practicing exclusively within
this framework.

Other important concerns relate to multiculturalist effectiveness. How easily can one
translate the core conditions into practice in certain cultures? In collectivist cultures
personal preferences such as self-awareness and autonomy are not placed in high
regard. Social expectations and the common good hold more value. This does not
mean that we can conclude this approach will not work in multiple cultures, simply
that there is room for a variety of approaches. This applies in any setting.

As stated by Cain (2010) “a rigid insistence on a non-directive style of counselling for

all clients, regardless of their cultural background or personal preference, may be
perceived as an imposition that does not fit the client’s interpersonal and therapeutic
needs”.

Rogers himself said it as “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned
how to learn and change” (Rogers,1969).
 3. GESTALT THERAPY

Gestalt is a German word, with its closest translation generally agreed to be pattern,
form, shape or configuration. Yet it is more than any of these descriptions. In German
it relates to the overall appearance of a person, their totality, where their energy is
located.

It would be summarized as a relational therapy that synthesizes three key

philosophies that have been described as the ‘pillars of gestalt’, these being:

1. Field Theory: the person’s experience is explored in the context of their situation or
field (terms situation and field are used interchangeably).

2. Phenomenology: the search for understanding through what is obvious and/or

revealed, rather than through what is interpreted by the observer.

3. Dialogue: a specific form of contacting (not just talking) that is concerned with the
between of the relationship and what emerges in that between.

In the gestalt therapist’s work these philosophies weave in and out of one another
and the relational perspective is at the core of each of these three philosophies.

Gestalt is an experiential therapy and as such experimentation is key to the

approach. The mind/body split so prevalent in Western culture is actively
discouraged within gestalt’s holistic view of the individual/environmental fields that
are seen as co-dependent. The approach’s radical view of self as process, rather
than seeing self as something belonging to the individual sets it apart from virtually
all other psychotherapies.

Gestalt therapy is an existential, phenomenological, and process-based approach

created on the premise that individuals must be understood in the context of their
ongoing relationship with the environment. The initial goal is for clients to gain
awareness of what they are experiencing and how they are doing it. Through this
awareness, change automatically occurs.

The approach is phenomenological because it focuses on the client’s perceptions

of reality and existential because it is grounded in the notion that people are always
in the process of becoming, remaking, and rediscovering themselves.

As an existential approach, Gestalt therapy gives special attention to existence as

individuals experience it and affirms the human capacity for growth and healing
through interpersonal contact and insight. The approach focuses on the here and
now, the what and how, and the I/Thou of relating.

Gestalt Therapy Concepts

1. Figure and Ground

Examples of the concept of figure and ground have been illustrated visually through
diagrammatic examples (see below). However, it should be born in mind that in
gestalt figure and ground is used to describe any process of experiencing.
Picture yourself watching a fascinating film at the cinema. The image that you gaze
upon on the screen is the figure whilst the ground is everything that surrounds that
image; the less prominent images on the screen, the screen, the cinema itself, the
person sitting beside you, your journey to the cinema, what happened to you earlier
in the day, your life outside, your relationships, the whole of your history, your cultural
background. All of this forms the ground of your experience from which you create
your figure from the image on the screen. Your ground will profoundly affect how
you form that figure.

As the film unfolds a couple on the screen embrace and kiss. Your fascination in the
film may subside as sadness surfaces as a new figure emerges from your ground of a
past relationship, or this may trigger thoughts that there is too much gratuitous sex on
view nowadays with this reaction stemming from the ground of your parents’ prudish
attitudes.

This key gestalt therapy concept was first discussed and illustrated by the
predecessors of gestalt therapy, the gestalt psychologists. The concept has often
been illustrated by the depiction of a vase and two face profiles (see figures below).
There is the figure known as the Rubin vase (Fig. 1) and the ambiguous lady (Fig. 2)
that show the relationship between figure and ground. One image cannot exist
without the other and in the two examples where only one image can be figural at
any moment whilst the other forms the ground.

The process of figure formation is of interest to gestalt therapists in terms of what figure
the individual selects and how it is chosen. In other words, how does this person make
sense of their world at this moment in time (and then the next moment and then the
next moment)? The figure emerges from an undifferentiated background of
experience out of which focused needs and interests surface.

In a healthy process of figure formation these needs and interests will emerge with
clarity and sharpness, stimulating energy. It will be a fluid process that will be
updated in response to changing situations. When the process of figure formation
becomes rigid or habitual, relating to a past environment rather than the here and
now, awareness of the novel is diminished or closed. Consequently, the person does
not integrate the new experience.

In relating to our environment, competing needs rise and fall originating from either
an internal experience or external stimuli. As we continue with this lecture, other
figures will emerge as different needs/ interests surface.

A need for a drink may become figural from your ground, something you read may
touch a memory, a seemingly random need such as a wish to contact your
boy/girlfriend in another lecture may surface, you may become bored, someone
may call you etc.

In certain states, such as acute anxiety, figure formation is rapid and poorly
differentiated from the ground from which it emerges. Assimilation of the experience
does not take place. One blurred figure follows another as flitting attention leads to
a cluttering of incomplete gestalts. Contact with the environment is diminished –
breathing becomes shallow and rapid, negative thoughts and projected fantasies
race, the whole bodily system speeds up. The person’s failure to form clearly
differentiated figures leads to them responding primarily from an internal pole,
increasing their sense of isolation.

Conversely, in a healthy process the emerging figure will be the dominant need at
that moment and will be well defined, standing out from the background, what is
referred to as good form. We could think of the difference as watching television with
a damaged aerial and watching a television in high definition.

Fig. 1: Vase Fig. 2. Old Hag or Young Lady

2. The Here and Now

In gestalt therapy we centre on here and now moments of experience. This is not to
deny that experience has its roots in the past, or to ignore the existence of hopes
and fears for the future, but these are experienced in the present moment. We focus
on immediate experience and in doing so concentrate on what and how the client
perceives their situation now, rather than digging around in an attempt to discover
why they might perceive their situation this way. We believe that it is through
heightened awareness of the way each individual selects and forms their figures of
interest from the ground of their experience in the present moment that growth is
achieved.

Gestalt’s focus on the ‘here and now’ was borne out of Fritz Perls’s criticism of
Sigmund Freud’s archaeological approach to therapy. Perls asserted that, ‘there is
no other reality than the present’ (1947) and in collaboration with the co-founders of
gestalt therapy, he developed a brilliant explication of the here and now moment
at a time when almost all around were concentrating on the archaic. In health the
most pressing and relevant need emerges from the plethora of possibilities available
to us.

These figures flow one to another, emerge and recede from the ground of our
experience. This process of choice takes place in the present and it is what is selected
and how it is chosen that is of particular interest to gestalt therapists. Facilitating a
client to explore their moment-to-moment awareness in the here and now can
provide a platform for them to consider their motivation for making such choices,
and provide an opportunity to reassess whether this motivation fits with their here and
now situation.

Behaviour in the present may reflect a behaviour that is causing the client problems
in their wider field due to an outdated creative adjustment. A client who struggles to
decide where to sit in the therapy room may be encountering difficulties in making
decisions ‘where to be’ in their world, alternatively they may feel under scrutiny in
therapy which may mirror past experiences. In this sense gestalt therapy can be The
here and now.

In this sense gestalt therapy can be seen as a microcosm of the client’s everyday life
and part of that microcosm will be the therapist’s here and now reactions. It is not
the gestalt therapist’s task to interpret or explain the client’s behaviour, to do so
would be to move away from the immediacy of the present. Indeed, part of the
therapeutic task in gestalt is to focus on immediate awareness, to notice the subtle
ways in which direct relating may be sidestepped through ‘talking about’ in the past
tense.

3. Holism and The Orientation Towards Health

Gestalt therapy is a holistic body-centred psychotherapy. Holism, sometimes

descriptively spelt wholism, as the word suggests sees the world as a complete
interrelated entirety.

The philosophy of holism integrates well with gestalt as both see wholes as being in a
constant state of flux, continually developing and evolving, rather than being static
entities. ‘The evolution of the universe, is nothing but the record of this whole-making
activity in its progressive development’.

A well-known gestalt maxim that originates from gestalt’s integration of holism into its
approach is that “the whole is different from and greater than the sum of its parts”.
This often misunderstood phrase refers to the unity of human beings as complete
organisms, and to the unity of human beings and our entire environment. Hence,
gestalt therapy differs from many approaches in that it does not treat psychological
events separately as isolated from the individual and their whole situation. A truly
holistic approach such as gestalt does not exclude any relevant dimension in its
approach, no matter how seemingly.

4. Introjection

The hardest battle is to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night
and day, to make you everybody else (1994).

The process of introjection can be described in simple terms as swallowing whole

messages from the environment and emerged from Perls’ interest in the
development of dental aggression. When the infant cuts teeth choice increases as
chewing over what enters the body becomes possible. However, the environment
needs to be supportive of this increased ability to differentiate, if force-fed by carers,
this selection process can be inhibited and the infant may learn to take in whatever
is offered without discrimination. Such a process is not limited to physical nourishment,
the degree to which we ‘chew over’ information or messages we receive will reflect
in how we are in the world.
In introjection the person takes on board without question an attitude, trait or way of
being from the environment resulting in the building of an internalized rulebook of
shoulds, oughts and similar absolutes. Such messages are all around us: in our
upbringing, our schooling, our religion and our culture. They are in the air we breathe
and the ground upon which we walk. They may have been born from actual
statements, e.g. ‘Big boys don’t cry’, ‘Don’t be angry’, made by people we can
identify or through a process akin to osmosis.

The person responding to introjected material, usually out of awareness, will feel a
strong pressure to conform to these internalized rules and is likely to feel
uncomfortable if they go against them. This process will have originally been a
developmental manoeuvre to ensure safety or acceptance and was the best way
of creatively adjusting to the environment at the time. As such the client’s creative
genius stands before us, an energy that may be directed restrictively but an energy
that displays the creative potential of the individual.

It is neither negative nor positive to introject per se. Introjection is part of a learning
process, we may need to reconsider what we have learnt, but first we need to take
on board that learning, and that may mean initially swallowing whole before
assimilating later. When first learning to look both ways before crossing a road it
doesn’t really matter whether one introjects that message or not. Introjects allow us
to internalize significant societal rules and to function within different societal systems.

Experiential Exercise

Think back to your childhood. What messages or instructions were part of your daily
life? What messages did you receive about your body, honesty, morality, sex? Now
reflect on how many of these early instructions you still follow. Have you freely chosen
all of them as an adult or are there some you just live by without question?

The process of introjection often occurs out of awareness in response to stereotyping.

5. Confluence

In geography confluence describes the point where two rivers merge into one. In
gestalt it carries a similar meaning–a merging or dissolving of the contact boundary
that leads to a lack of differentiation from the other. Such a lack of differentiation
can be a beautiful and life-enriching experience such as when confluent moments
are enjoyed merging when making love, the sense of losing oneself in a group or
crowd singing as one, merging with your environment when completing a creative
piece of work or feeling at one with whatever you believe in spiritually.

Indeed, as therapists we need an ability to move in and out of confluent moments

to understand, empathize and practice inclusion with our clients. A wonderful
example of an experience of confluence is when we fall in love, we ‘fall’ from
ourselves into the other.

However, this is not to deny that a confluent way of being can be an unhealthy way
of being. The confluent person leans on the other as difference is denied; if the other
person leaves that relationship they collapse. Should both partners enter a ‘contract
of confluence’ their attitudes, beliefs and feelings do not differ, between them they
may behave as if they were one person. They may begin to dress in similar ways and
even look similar.

Confluence is marked by the proverbial ‘we’, with any conflict that threatens to
disrupt the confluent system being avoided. Such systems are by no means restricted
to couples but can occur in any relationship between individuals or groups or
organizations including therapist and client. Where such confluence is present, even
a relatively mild challenge is likely to threaten the existence of those involved. With
a complete lack of friction there is a lack of vibrant contact in this low-energy way
of being. The confluent person in ‘going with the flow’ may not end up where they
truly would like to be, but they will expend very little energy in getting there.

A person who seeks a dysfunctional closeness in a relationship demonstrates an

unwillingness to discover his or her own resources; a person who invests in
confluence’s polar opposite, isolation, demonstrates an unwillingness to engage in
healthy dependence; a person who has the ability to flow with fluidity along a
continuum between these polarities in relation to the changing situations they
encounter demonstrates an ability to live healthily.

In therapy confluence can be difficult to break. The therapist needs to be aware of

their reactions to this presentation. With the low-energy field created, one can
become confluent with the confluence. Observing and stating differences,
monitoring energy levels, saying what you see, allowing yourself to work
spontaneously are all possible ways of increasing the level of contact that will act as
an antidote to confluence.

6. Unfinished Business

In gestalt we believe that human beings have a natural tendency and a need to
make meaningful wholes from their experience. Even if the whole is not present, we
seek completion.

It is a human need to complete to make sense of our world. The gestalt concept of
unfinished business is concerned with our need to complete the uncompleted. Our
life is basically nothing but an infinite number of unfinished situations or incomplete
gestalts.

As soon as one task or situation is completed another arises. These incomplete

gestalts will include major life events such as an on-going grieving process. It may not
be possible or may be inappropriate to complete some unfinished business in the
actual situation. However, if we fail to find some form of resolution we can become
cluttered with these unresolved situations that then seek expression through
psychological distress and physical illness.

Patterns where completion is avoided result in the forming of fixed gestalts where
awareness is blocked, satisfaction dampened, withdrawal avoided, impulses turned
inwards and the possibility of allowing oneself psychological space is denied. Such
processes can then become habitual particularly when supported culturally.

Unfinished business may result in tension that in turn tends to motivate us towards
completion. Incomplete tasks take up more psychological space than completed
tasks.
 7. The Five-Layer Model

Fritz Perls developed the ‘five-layer model of neurosis’ towards the end of his career.
Having first presented the model in one of his four lectures given in 1966, he altered
his thinking about the layers18 with his later model outlining the levels of neurotic
disturbances covered below (Perls, 1969). This later model is the one that is usually
quoted and it takes the form of ‘peeling an onion’ on the way to the central ‘layer’
of authenticity.

The five layers are described as follows:

Phoney/Facade

Phobic /Role Play

Impasse/Stuckness

Implosive

Explosive/Authentic

i. The Phoney Layer – This is the level of ordinary social chitchat. Cultural norms
may be followed in a programmed way. Examples of this superficial level of
relating are talking about the weather or a greeting of ‘how are you?’ with no
real interest in the true reply, which may generally be a clichéd ‘oh, fine’.
ii. The Role or Role-Playing Layer – As the name suggests the individual functions
in role. The person acts and adapts to the role whether that be the ‘tough’
manager, the ‘vulnerable’ client or the ‘caring’ therapist. If this type of relating
persists, people can become role-locked into this inauthentic way of being.
iii. The Impasse Layer – This is marked by stuckness. In the impasse layer there is
an internal conflict between staying with the impasse and moving back to the
relative comfort of living through roles and clichés. Characterized by existential
angst and confusion the therapist needs to support the client in staying with
the unknown in the faith that something will emerge from the client’s internal
conflict.
iv. The Implosive Layer – Sometimes referred to as the death layer. The client
needs to make an authentic choice, but there are so many choices that will
all move the client in different directions. Their muscles pull and push in different
directions. In the face of these opposing choices the client is paralyzed. It
might be tempting here for the therapist to offer some direction but to do so
could rob the client of the opportunity to discover their authentic ‘core’.
v. Explosion/Authentic Layer – This is where the client contacts their authentic
self. Perls identified four types of explosion, ‘. . . explosion into joy, into grief, into
orgasm and into anger’.

8. Touch in Therapy

Use of touch can be evocative, expressive and intimate. The word ‘touch’ is often
used in language to indicate a deep-felt sense, as in ‘I feel touched’. The degree to
which we use touch in our relationships in Western culture generally indicates the
degree of closeness in those relationships.

The use of touch in therapy is controversial. The less tactile the culture, the more
controversial it becomes–controversy fuelled by touch often being sexualized. Such
cultural field conditions mean that we need to exercise caution in the use of touch
in therapy.

Out-of-awareness expression of sexual feelings, infantilizing, soothing emotions the

therapist finds uncomfortable, creating/maintaining a hierarchy in the relationship
can all be conveyed through the use of touch. The different dynamics of different
gender and sexuality combinations between client and therapist further complicates
this potential minefield. As well as exercising discretion when using touch in therapy,
we also need informed consent. It is useful for the therapist to give some explanation
about how touch might possibly assist the client and, if it feels appropriate, a basic
and understandable outline of your thinking. If the therapist is using touch in a
specialized way they need to ensure that they have adequate training and
supervision in using such techniques.

Therapist’s Function and Role

Language can both describe and conceal. By focusing on language, clients are
able to increase their awareness of what they are experiencing in the present
moment and of how they are avoiding coming into contact with this here-and-now
experience. The following rare examples of the aspects of language that Gestalt
therapists might focus on:

 “It” talk: When clients say “it” instead of “I,” they are using depersonalizing
language. The counselor may ask them to substitute personal pronouns for
impersonal ones so that they will assume an increased sense of responsibility.
For example, if a client says, “It is difficult to make friends,” he could be asked
to restate this by making an “I” statement—“I have trouble making friends.”
 “You” talk: Global and impersonal language tends to keep the person hidden.
The therapist often points out generalized uses of “you” and asks the client to
substitute “I” when this is what is meant.
 Questions: Questions have a tendency to keep the questioner hidden, safe
and unknown. Gestalt counsellors often ask clients to change their questions
into statements. In making personal statements, clients begin to assume
responsibility for what they say. They may become aware of how they are
keeping themselves mysterious through a barrage of questions and how this
serves to prevent them from making declarations that express themselves.

 Language that denies power: Some clients have a tendency to deny their
personal power by adding “qualifiers” or “disclaimers” to their statements. The
therapist may also point out to clients how certain qualifiers subtract from their
effectiveness. Experimenting with omitting qualifiers such as:
o “maybe,”
o “perhaps,”
o “sort of,”
o “I guess,”
o “possibly,”
 o “I suppose”

can help clients change ambivalent messages into clear and direct statements.

Likewise, when clients say:

o “I can’t,” they are really implying “I won’t.” Asking clients to substitute

“won’t” for “can’t” often assists them in owning and accepting their
power by taking responsibility for their decisions.

The counselor must be careful in intervening so that clients do not feel that
everything they say is subject to scrutiny. Rather than fostering a morbid kind of
introspection, the counsellor hopes to foster awareness of what is really being
expressed through words.

 Listening to clients’ metaphors: It’s important for the therapist to learn how
to listen to the metaphors of clients. By tuning into metaphors, the therapist
gets rich clues to clients’ internal struggles.

Examples of metaphors that can be amplified include client statements such as:

o “It’s hard for me to spill my guts in here.”

o “At times I feel that I don’t have a leg to stand on.”
o “I feel like I have a hole in my soul.”
o “I need to be prepared in case someone blasts me.”
o “I felt ripped to shreds after you confronted me last week.”
o “After this session, I feel as though I’ve been put through a meat
grinder.”
o “I am at sea”

Beneath the metaphor may lie a suppressed internal dialogue that represents
critical unfinished business or reactions to a present interaction. For example, to
the client who says she feels that she has been put through a meat grinder, the
therapist could ask: “What is your experience of being ground meat?” or “Who is
doing the grinding?”.

Techniques in Gestalt Therapy

1. Reversal Exercise 8. Empty Chair Technique
2. Rehearsal Exercise
3. Exaggeration Exercise
4. Internal Dialogue
5. Confrontation
6. Staying with the Feeling
7. Dream Work