William Glasser developed reality therapy/choice theory which emphasizes that individuals are responsible for their behaviors and have choices. The theory focuses on helping clients meet their core needs through better behavior choices and assuming responsibility. The therapeutic process involves exploring a client's wants, the direction of their current behaviors, evaluating behaviors, and developing plans and commitments to change behaviors. Reality therapy has been applied to individual, group and family counseling, especially with behavioral issues. A limitation is it may not address deeper emotional issues or the role of environment in shaping behaviors.

1. Reality Therapy/ Choice
Therapy

2. William Glasser and Robert Wubbolding
Concepts:
 Emphasized that individuals are responsible for what they
do.
 All people have choices about what they are doing.
 1996 Glasser had revised this theory and renamed it choice
therapy
 Concerned with the phenomenological world of the client.

3. • Stresses the subjective way in which clients perceive and
react to their world from an internal locus of evaluation.
• Behavior is viewed as our best attempt to get what we want
• Behavior is purposeful; it is designed to close the gap
between what we want and what we perceive we are getting.
• Our behaviors come from the inside and thus we choose
our own destiny.

4. Philosophy and Basic Assumptions
 Grounded on the basic premises of choice theory, which
asserts that we self-determining beings.
 Because we choose our total behavior, we are responsible
for how we are acting, thinking, feeling and our
physiological states.
 A major premise of choice theory is that all behavior is
aimed at satisfying the needs for survival, love and
belonging, power, freedom and fun.

5. Philosophy and Basic Assumptions (cont.)
 Acting and thinking are chosen behaviors, which should be
the focus of therapy. When we change our acting and
thinking, we also indirectly influence how we are feeling as
well as our physiological state.
 Choice theory explains how we attempt to control the world
around us and teaches us ways to satisfy our wants and
needs more effectively.

6. Key Concepts
Main idea:
 The behavior is our attempt to control our perceptions of
the external world so they fit our internal and need-
satisfying world.
 Total behavior includes four inseparable but distinct
components of acting, thinking, feeling and the physiology
that accompanies all our actions.

7. Key Concepts (cont.)
 We develop an inner “mental picture album” (or quality
world) of wants, which contains precise images of how we
would best like to fulfill our needs.
 A core principle of reality therapy/choice theory is that no
matter how dire the circumstances, people always have a
choice.
 The emphasis of reality therapy is on assuming personal
responsibility and on dealing with the present.

8. Therapeutic Goals
Overall goal:
 To help people find better ways to meet their needs for
survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.
 Changes in behavior should result in the satisfaction of
basic needs.
 Personal growth improvement, enhanced lifestyle and
better decision making.

9. Therapeutic Goals (cont.)
 Help clients gain the psychological strength to accept
personal responsibility for their lives and assist them in
learning ways to regain control of their lives and to live
more effectively.
 Clients are challenged to examine what they are doing,
thinking and feeling to figure out there is a better way for
them to function.

10. Therapeutic Relationship
The practice of reality therapy can best be conceptualized as
the cycle of counseling, which consists of two major
components:
1. The counseling environment and
2. Specific procedures that lead to change in behavior.

11. Therapeutic Relationship (cont.)
These procedures are based on the assumption that: human
beings are motivated to change
1. when they determine that their current behavior is not
getting them what they want and
2. when they believe they can choose other behaviors that
will get them closer to what they want.

12. Therapeutic Process
W= wants: exploring wants, needs and perceptions.
D= direction and doing: focusing on what clients are doing
and the direction that this is taking them.
E= evaluation: challenging clients to make an evaluation of
their total behavior.
P= planning and commitment: assisting clients in
formulating realistic plans and making a commitment to
carry them out.

13. Applications
o Youthful offenders in detention facilities,
o People with a variety of behavioral problems,
o Can be applied to individual counseling, marital and
family counseling and group counseling.
o It has found wide application in military clinics that treat
alcohol and drug abusers.
o Social work, crisis intervention, institutional
management and community development.

14. Limitations
Reality therapy does not give enough emphasis to
feelings, the unconscious, the therapeutic value of
dreams, the place of transference in therapy, the
effect of early childhood trauma and the power of
the past to influence one’s present personality.

15. Limitations
There is a tendency for this approach to play the
crucial role of one’s social and cultural
environment in shaping behavior. It may foster a
treatment that is symptom oriented and
discourage an exploration of deeper emotional
issues.