Theories of counselling and psychotherapy

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Theories of Counselling and
Psychotherapy
Theories of counselling and psychotherapy
generally tells on how counsellors and
therapist
Perceive/think this about clients,
Nature of problems and
Counselling process.
They are approaches counsellors use to
solve peoples problems.

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Psychoanalysis Theory
This theory was propounded by Sigmund
Freud (1856-1939).
 Freud lived in Australia and he was trained
as a medical doctor specialized in
neurology.
 He started treating people with neural
disorders.
 Latter he expatiated in counselling as he
believed that sex drives as the cause of
diseases.

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An introduction
 Freudian theory became the foundation of
all other theories of counselling and
psychotherapy which came latter.
 Some of these therapeutic approaches
extended others modified psychoanalytic
concepts and procedures while others
emerged as the reaction against it.
 Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is a model
of personality development, a
philosophy of human nature and a
method of psychotherapy.

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Theoretical Assumptions
• Human behaviours are determined by
unconscious forces of which people are .
unaware of,
• Sex drives are the principle determinants of
human behaviour. To them most behaviours
are determined or controlled by sex
• Adults behaviour is greatly determined by the
their childhood development
• Problems in human arises in intrapsychic
(energy that flow within the person) conflict

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Cont…
Freud believe that our is behaviour
determined by;
• irrational forces,
• unconscious motivations,
• biological and
• instinctual drives as these evolve through
key psychosexual stages the first six years
of life.

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Cont…
• Psychoanalysis teaches that a person’s
behaviour is far more complex than had been
imaged.
• It also teaches that one may through insights
free oneself from the oppression of past
experiences, as the unconscious becomes, blind
habit is replaced by choice.
In his view sexual and aggressive drives are
powerful determinants of why people acts the
way they do.

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Human Personality Development
According to psychoanalytic view the
personality consists of three systems.
 The Id, Ego and Super Ego,
 These are psychological structures and
should not be thought of as manifestation
kind that operates the personality

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The Id
 This is the original system of personality at birth
a person is all id.
 It is unconscious instinctual part of human
personality and it is a primitive and selfish part
that demand immediate gratification.
 It works towards increasing pleasure and reduce
pain/tension. It has no contact to reality
 As child grows and experiences some changes
and challenges that make him/her to have reality

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The Ego
 The Ego operate under the principle of reality as it
has the contact with the external world of reality.
 It is the executive that governs, control and
regulates the personality as it makes personal
rational decision.
 The Ego also mediates between the instinct and
the surrounding environment.
 Controls the action also selects some features
from the environment and decided where to
respond to
 It does realistic and logical thinking and
formulates plans of action for satisfying needs, by
checking the blind impulses of the Id and super
Ego

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The Super Ego
 This is the moral branch of personality.
 It represents the internalized traditional values
the of the society and the main concern being
whether the action is good or bad, right or
wrong.
 It represents the ideal rather than the real, and
strives not for pleasure but for perfection.
 These are therefore, rewards and punishment
that bring about moral conscious and judgement

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NOW
 When the Ego cannot control anxiety by rational
and direct methods, it relies on unrealistic
methods namely defensive mechanism. The
Ego defensive mechanisms help the individual
cope with anxiety and prevent the Ego from
being overwhelmed.
 These methods have adaptive value if they do
not become a style of life to avoid facing reality.
 They usually either deny or distort reality and
they operate on an unconscious level.

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The Defensive Mechanisms
Repression: - it is a means of defence
through which threatening or painful
thoughts and feelings are excluded from
awareness.
 It is an involuntary removal of something
from conscious.

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Defensive Mech cont..
Denial: - it is the way of distorting what the
individual think, feels or perceive in a
traumatic situation.
 It consists of defending against anxiety by
“closing one’s eyes” to the existence of
threatening the reality.
 People blind themselves to realities that
would be too painful to accept.

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Cont..
Projection: - this consists attributing to
others one’s own unacceptable desires
and impulses.
 Immoral, aggressive, or other impulses
are seen as being possessed by other
people but not me.

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Cont..
Displacement: - this is a way of discharging
impulses shifting from a threatening object
to a safer target.
• It involves directing energy towards
another object or person when the original
objector person is inaccessible

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Sometimes this is done as
Displacement

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Cont…
Rationalization: - this involves explaining
away failures or losses.
• Thus it helps to justify specific
behaviours and it aid in softening the
blow connected with disappointment.
For instance one fail an interview and say I
did not like that post any way

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Cont…
Sublimation: - this involves redirecting
sexual and aggressive energy into
creative behaviours that are socially
acceptable and sometimes even
admirable.

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Cont…
• Regression: - this involves reverting to a form of
behaviour that they have out grown.
• It is regression to the earlier stage/phase of
development; the demands are not so great
• e.g. children who are frightened in school may
indulge in infantile behaviour such as weeping,
excessive dependence thumb sucking, hiding or
clinging to the teacher.

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Cont…
• Identification: - it involves people
identify themselves with successful
causes, organizations or people in the
hope that they will be perceived as
worthwhile.
• In most cases this happens to people
who are inferior.

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Last
Compensation: - this consists of masking
perceived weaknesses or developing
certain traits to make up for limitations.
• For instance children who receive less
positive attention and recognition may
develop behaviours designed at least get
negative attention.
• People who feel intellectual inferior may
direct their attention to building their
bodies

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Is this also a Defensive
Mechanism? If yes which one?

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Which Defence Mechanism will you
use in this Situation?

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Contribution
• Freud’s contributions are his concept of
unconscious and of the level of conscious,
which are keys to understanding
behaviour and problems of personality.
The unconscious can not be studied
directly, it is inferred from behaviour
through:-

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Ways of Studying Unconscious
Dream analysis: - these are symbolic
representation of the unconscious needs,
wishes, and conflicts.
• Freud sees dreams as royal road to the
unconscious one’s unconscious wishes
needs and fears are expressed.

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Cont…
Free Association:- This involve saying
whatever comes to mind, regardless of
how painful, silly, trivial, illogical or
irrelevant it may be.
• Clients flow with any feelings or thought by
reporting them immediately without
censorship.

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Cont…
Slip of the Tongue: - Most of the time what
is expressed is what is going on in the
brain.
 There are times it comes that what is
going on in the brain and what you what to
express in conflicts.

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Argument
Freud argues that conscious is a thin slice of
the total mind and
 The unconscious store up all experiences,
memories and repressed materials.
 Needs and motivation are inaccessible
that is, out of awareness, are also outside
the sphere of conscious control.

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Stages of Personality
Development
Human development consists of five
personality development stages
These stages are:
Oral stage: This stage starts from birth to
end of first year. It is characterized by
sucking the mother breast satisfies the
infant’s need for food and pleasure.

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Oral stage cont..
At this stage the mouth and lips are sensitive
erogenous zones, whereas
 Sucking produces erotic pleasure.
 Deprivation of oral gratification during infancy is
assumed to lead to problem in adulthood such
as mockery, hostility, aggression, gossip and
making bitting comments to others, mistrust, fear
of reaching out to others, rejection of affection,
fear of loving and trusting, low self esteem,
isolation and withdraw and inability to form or
maintain intense relationship.

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The Anal Stage:-
The stage begins at 1-3 years. At this stage
children learn to be independent, personal
power and autonomy.
 The anal zone comes to be of major
significance area for pleasure. If child feel
going to the toilet there is tension in
him/her.
• By going there she/he release that tension

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Anal stage cont…
 Here there is toilet training. the external
environment forces to teach you do what you
do
 If your parents control you too much you will
be strict, smart, arranged and organized.
 If your parents leave you, you became rough
and dirty.

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The Phallic Stage
This stage last from 3- 6 years.
• Children satisfactions come from
touching their genital areas.
• Much interest in sex differences,
according to Freudian theory both boys
and girls experience sexual longing and
conflicts which they repress.

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Phallic Stage Cont..
• A boy craves the attention of their mother,
feels antagonistic towards his father and
develops fears commonly known as
Oedipus complex and they develop the
castration anxiety.
• Girls develop sexual feelings to her father
(Electra complex) and hate her mother
because of missing the penis (penis envy)

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The Latency Stage
The stage begin at 6-12 years.
 At this stage socialization is the major
activity and children direct their attention
to the large world.
 Sexual drives are sublimated to some
extent to activities in schools such as
hobbies, sports friendship of the same
sex.

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The Genital Stage
This start at the age of 12-18 the adolescent
period.
 Children now form intimate relationship,
 become free from parental influence,
and
 develop the capacity to interest in others

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Note that
Sometimes some people experience
Fixation where a person reach at a
particular stage and remain there, fail to
move to the next stage.
While others may experience,
Regression a person instead of going
forward stage she/he develop backward
stage.

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The Goal of the Counsellor in
Psychoanalytic Theory
1. To make the unconscious – conscious
so that we can deal with it in the realistic
manner
2. To strengthen the Ego. The client to
deal with his/her problem in a realistic
manner

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Counsellors Function and Roles
1. To help the client to acquire the freedom to do
whatever they wishes
2. To assist the client to establish self awareness
so that he can deal with the anxiety effectively.
3. Establish work relationship with the client
listen well what the client is saying. having the
3rd ear be able to see
 Gaps
 Detect contradiction
 Analyse the dream
4. To reduce defensive mechanism. we can not
eliminate rather reduce the defences

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To Develop 3rd Ear Need the
Following Techniques
• In Free association the ability to listen
whatever is said by the client and make
connection with the client present problem
• Interpretation. Consists of the analyst pointing
out explaining and even teaching the client the
meaning of behaviour that is manifested in
dream free association and slip of the tongue
• Dream analysis: analyse the dream itself
• how to resolve the conflicts or resistance to
help the person

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Rules of Making Interpretation
• The interpretation should be when the
phenomenon to be interpreted is close to
the conscious awareness
• Interpretation should start at the surface
and go deeper as far as the client is able
to go.
• It is best to point out a resistance of
defences before interpreting the emotional
or conflict that lies beneath it.

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Psychoanalytic
• Advantages of Psychoanalytic Theory
• It made a great foundation of other theories of
counselling and psychotherapy
• it made us aware of childhood importance to
adulthood personality
• Disadvantage of the Psychoanalytic Theory
• It needs a trained person
• It takes time to help a person
• It helps problems which have happened earlier
while clients are interested in problems
happened recently

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Existential Theory
• The theory was developed by Viktor
Frankl and Rollo May.
• Existential therapy can be described as a
philosophy and an approach that
influences a counsellor therapeutic
practice.

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Existential view
• The existential approach rejects the
deterministic view of human nature
propounded by psychoanalysis and
radical behaviourism.
• Psychoanalysis sees human freedom as
restricted by unconscious forces, irrational
drives and past experiences behaviourist
sees freedom as restricted to social
cultural conditioning.

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Cont…
• Existential therapist acknowledge some of these
facts but emphasizes that our freedom to
choose what to make of our circumstances.
• This approach is grounded on the assumption
that we are free and therefore responsible for
our choices and actions.
• The assumption is we are not the victim of
circumstances, because to large extent we are
what we choose to be.

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Basic Philosophy Outline of this
Approach
• Human being existence depends on the number of
choices they have.
• A major aim of the therapy is to encourage clients to
reflect on their life, to recognize their range of
alternatives and to decide among them.
• external forces makes it hard for people to make choices
e.g. going to town or lecture
• it is difficult to make choices
• sometimes the choices are ambiguous
• making number of choices is also making a choice
therefore you can not avoid making choices

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The Theory Propositions
1. Human beings have got the capacity of awareness,
especially self awareness being aware of yourself
affect you psychologically.
the self awareness makes us to make choices which are
present
 when you are aware of yourself it increases the number of
making choices as you establish goals
 motivated
1. Human beings have got freedom and responsibility
regarding making choices. We are free to do what we
want to do while Freud says we are controlled by
unconscious.

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Propositions Cont…
3. Strive for identity and relationship with
others the relationship affects our well
being.
4. the search for meaning of life the
questions to ask ourself such as
• who I am
• why I am here
• what do I what in my life
• what gives may life purpose
• where is the source of meaning in life

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Cont..
5. Anxiety is the condition for living.
(anxiety means fear and missing
something)
Questions to ask Clients
• Do you like direction of your life
• Are you pleased on what you are doing
or what you are going to become in
future
• if you are confused what are going to do

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Counsellors Function and Role
1. To understand the subject world of the client in
order for him/her come to new understanding
and options.
 In most cases counsellors using this approach deal
with people who have restricted existence (limited
awareness of them and are often vague about the
nature of their problem).
1. the focus is on the clients present life situation
not on helping clients recover a personal past

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Cont…
3. To employ various methods of
counselling not only from different clients
but also with the same client at different
phases of the therapeutic process.
• They also make use of free association,
or cognitive restructuring may also
insight from other orientation.

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Cont…
4. To establish reflective relationship counsellors
believe that their basic attitude towards client
and their own personal characteristics of
honesty, integrity, and courage are what they
can offer.
• This is what Buber 1970 conceptualized as
the I/thou relationship (strong relationship)
without this the counsellor can smile or nod in
absent and this will affect the counselling if
noticed by the client.

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The Counselling Techniques and
Procedures
The counsellors using this approach are required
to be creative from session to session and from
individual to individual because the individuals
are different and sessions are also different.
However, counselling can be done in three
phases.
1. Help the client to identify and clarify the
assumptions about the world because most of
the problems are caused by misconception, so
show them clear what happen.

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Cont..
2. Help the client to fully examine the
source and authority of the present
values. Develop deeper insights and
structuring of values and attitudes people
need to change their attitude and values
in order to be helped.
3) To help the client to put into action what
he has learned from the session use
inner to change his values and attitude

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Contribution of the Theory
1. It emphasizes that human quality on
counselling that people have freedom to
change for their own actions.
– This aspect lessens dehumanization of
psychotherapy by making it mechanical
process.
1. It has also recognized people’s freedom to
and responsibility to redesign his/her life by
choosing with awareness

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Limitation of the Theory
• it does not have systematic approaches in
counselling
• It focuses on individualistic life and it
ignores the contribution of other people in
one’s life.

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The end of today's Lecture
Which part interested you most?
WHY?
Which part was so boring?
HOW?