Unit 3

Major Counseling Theories and

Techniques
 Theory
• Theory – a model that counselors use as a
guide to hypothesize about the formation of
possible solutions to a problem
• Five requirements of a good theory:
1. Clear, easily understood, and communicable
2. Comprehensive
3. Explicit and heuristic
4. Specific in relating means to desired outcomes
5. Useful to its intended practitioners
 Importance of Theory
• Six functions of theory that help counselors in a
practical way:
1. Theory helps counselors find unity and
relatedness within the diversity of existence
2. Theory compels counselors to examine
relationships they would otherwise overlook.
3. Theory gives counselors operational guidelines
by which to work and helps them evaluate their
development as professionals
4. Theory helps counselors focus on relevant data
and tells them what to look for
5. Theory helps counselors to assist clients in
modifying their behavior
6. Theory helps counselors evaluate both old and
new approaches to the process of counseling
Psychoanalytic Theories
 Among the first type of counseling to
gain public recognition and
acceptance.
 Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939),
Viennese psychiatrist primarily
associated with psychoanalysis and
credited with the development of
classic psychoanalysis.
 Anna Freud (1895 –1982) daughter
of Sigmund Freud, elaborated the
theory with application to children and
the development of defense
mechanisms.
Psychoanalysis: View of Human Nature
 Freud’s view of human nature is considered to be dynamic,
meaning that there is an exchange of energy and transformation.
 Freud used the term catharsis to describe this release of this
energy .
 Freud saw the personality as composed of a conscious mind, a
preconscious mind and an unconscious mind.
– The conscious mind has knowledge of what is happening in
the present.
– The preconscious mind contains information from both the
unconscious and the conscious mind.
– The unconscious mind contains hidden or forgotten
memories or experiences .
 Psychoanalysis: Structure of Personality
 The id is present at birth and is part of the unconscious. The id is the
site of the pleasure principle, the tendency of an individual to move
toward pleasure and away from pain. The id does not have a sense of
right or wrong, is impulsive, and is not rational. It contains the most
basic of human instincts, drives, and genetic endowments.
 The ego is the second system to develop and it functions primarily in
the conscious mind and in the preconscious mind. It serves as a
moderator between the id and the superego, controlling wishes and
desires. The ego is the site of the reality principle, the ability to interact
with the outside world with appropriate goals and activities .
 The superego sets the ideal standards and morals for the individual.
The superego operates on the moral principle which rewards the
individual for following parental and societal dictates. Guilt is produced

when a person violates the ideal ego denying or ignoring the rules of
the superego .
 Psychoanalysis: Developmental Stages .
a. Oral stage is centered on the mouth as a source of pleasure.
b. Anal stage is centered on the anus and elimination as a source of pleasure.
c. Phallic stage is centered on the genitals and sexual identification as a source of
pleasure.
i. Oedipus Complex is described as the process whereby a boy desires his mother
and fears castration from the father, in order to create an ally of the father, the
male learns traditional male roles.
ii. Electra Complex is described a similar but less clearly resolved
in the female child with her desire for the father, competition with
the mother;; and thus, learns the traditional female roles.
d. Latency stage is a time of little sexual interest in Freud’s development view.
This stage is characterized with peer activities, academic and social learning, and
development of physical skills.
e. Genital stage begins with the onset of puberty. If the other stages have been
successfully negotiated, the young person will take an interest in and establish
sexual relationships.
 Psychoanalysis: Ego Defense Mechanisms
 Ego Defense Mechanisms were believed by Freud to protect the
individual from being overwhelmed by anxiety. He considered
them normal and operating on the unconscious level. Some of
the ones most often referred to are:
Repression is the defense mechanism whereby the ego excludes
any painful or undesirable thoughts, memories, feelings or impulses
from the conscious
Projection is the defense mechanism whereby the individual assigns
their own undesirable emotions and characteristics to another
individual
Reaction Formation is the defense mechanism whereby the
individual expresses the opposite emotion, feeling or impulse than
that which causes anxiety
Displacement a defense mechanism whereby the energy that is
generated toward a potentially dangerous or inappropriate target is
 Psychoanalysis: Ego Defense Mechanisms
Sublimation is a positive displacement is called whereby the
frustrating target is replaced with a positive target
Regression is the defense mechanism whereby returns to an
earlier stage of development.
Rationalization is the defense mechanism in which an individual
creates a sensible explanation for an illogical or unacceptable
behavior making it appear sensible or acceptable.
Denial is a mechanism whereby an individual does not
acknowledge an event or situation that may be unpleasant or
traumatic.
Identification is a defense mechanism whereby a person takes on
the qualities of another person to reduce the fear and anxiety
toward that person
 Psychoanalysis: Role of the Counselor
a. To encourage the development of transference,
giving the client a sense of safety and acceptance.
b. The client freely explores difficult material and
experiences from their past, gaining insight and
working through unresolved issues.
c. The counselor is an expert, who interprets for the
client .
Psychoanalysis: Goals of therapy
a) Helping the client bring into the conscious the
unconscious
b) Helping the client work through a developmental
stage that was not resolved or where the client
became fixated
c) Help the client adjustment to the demands of work,
intimacy, and society.
 Psychoanalysis: Techniques
 Free Association is a process where the client verbalizes any
thoughts that may without censorship, no matter how trivial the
thoughts or feeling may be to the client.
 Dream Analysis is a process where the client relates their dreams to
the counselor. The counselor interprets the obvious or manifest
content and the hidden meanings or latent content.
 Analysis of transference is a process where the client is encouraged
to attribute to counselor those issues that have caused difficulties
with significant authority figures in their lives. The counselor helps
the client to gain insight by the conflicts and feelings expressed.
 Analysis of resistance is a process where the counselor helps the
client to gain insight into what causes form the basis for a hesitation
or halting of therapy.
 Interpretation is a process where the counselor helps the client to
gain insight into past and present events .
 Behavioral Counseling
 Approach of choice for clients with problems such as
eating disorders, substance abuse, psychosexual
dysfunction, anxiety, stress, assertiveness, parenting
and social interaction.
 B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) popularized behavioral
treatment methods
 Others include:
• Ivan Pavlov
• John B. Watson
• Mary Cover Jones
• Albert Bandura
• John Krumboltz
• Niel Jacobson
• Steven Hayes
• Marsha Linehan
 Behavioral Counseling: View of Human Nature
 Behaviorists, with the exception of cognitive
behaviorists, concentrate on be observed .
 Behaviorism has a here-­and-­now focus
 A basic tenet of Behaviorism is that all behavior is
learned whether the behavior is maladaptive or
adaptive
 Behaviorists believe that adaptive behavior can be
learned to replace maladaptive behavior
 Behaviorists believe in setting up well-­defined,
measurable and observable goals in therapy
 Behaviorists reject the idea that human personality is
composed of traits
 Behavioral Counseling: View of Human Nature
• Behaviorists strive for empirical evidence to support
their use of specific techniques and to support the
usage of behavioral therapy techniques
• Respondent learning is often referred to as stimulus-
response learning in which the learner does not need to
be an active participant.
• The outcome is the conditioning of involuntary
responses.
• The unlearning of these conditioned responses is called
counterconditioning
 Behavioral Counseling: View of Human Nature
o Operant conditioning requires that the participant be actively
involved. This type of learning involves rewarding the desired
behavior or punishing the undesired behavior until the person
learns to discriminate the desired behavior that elicits the
reward.
o Operant conditioning differs from respondent conditioning in
that operant conditioning is the conditioning of voluntary
responses through rewards or reinforces
o Social modeling is the process where new behavior is learned
from watching other people and events without experiencing
the consequences from the behavior or engaging in the behavior
Behavioral Counseling: Role of the Counselor
• Roles of the behavioral counselor are varies and
include being a consultant, a reinforcer, and a
facilitator
• The counselor is active and may supervise other
people in the client’s environment to achieve the
goals of therapy
• Counselors using social learning may model the
desired behavior, while respondent and operant
conditioning counselors are more directive and
prescriptive in their approach to the therapy goals
• Use of tests and diagnosis varied greatly among
behavioral counselors
 Behavioral Counseling: Goals
 The goal of behaviorists counselors like other theories is to
improve the life of the client through better adjustments to life
and to achieve personal goals professionally and personally .
 Four steps in developing therapeutic goals are:
 Define problem concretely specifying when, where, how and
with whom the problem exists.
 Take a developmental history of the problem eliciting
conditions surrounding the beginning of the problem and
what solutions the client has tried in the past.
 Establish specific sub goals in small incremental steps toward
the final goal.
 Determine the best behavioral method to be used help the
client change.
 Behavioral Counseling: Techniques
General Behavioral Techniques:
Reinforces – events that follow a behavior and increase
the probability of the behavior repeating
Schedules of reinforcement –
• Fixed-­ratio means that the reinforce is delivered after a
set number of responses.
• Fixed-­interval means that the reinforce is delivered after
a set time lapses.
• Variable-­ratio means that the reinforce is delivered after
varying numbers of responses.
• A variable-­interval means that the reinforce is delivered
at varying time intervals.
Behavioral Counseling: Techniques
General Behavioral Techniques:
•Shaping – behavior learned gradually in steps through
successive approximation
•Generalization – display of behaviors outside where
they were originally learned
•Maintenance – being consistent in performing the
actions desired without depending on anyone else for
support
• Self-monitoring – clients modify their own
behaviors
• Self-observation – clients notice their particular
behaviors
• Self-recording – records behaviors noted in self-
observation
 Behavioral Counseling: Techniques, continued
Specific Behavioral Techniques:
 Assertiveness training – counselor teaches client
about assertiveness and self-expression
 Contingency contracts – spell out behaviors to be
performed, changed, or stopped, the rewards to each
goal and conditions to each reward
 Implosion and flooding – both involve desensitizing
the client to a situation by imagining the anxiety-
producing scene
 Time-out – client is separated from positive
reinforcement
 Overcorrecting – client restores the environment to
its natural state and then makes it better than normal
 Covert sensitization – undesired behavior is
eliminated by associating it with unpleasantness
Humanistic Theories
 Person-centered counseling
 Founded by Carl Rogers (1902-
1987) and described in his book
Counseling and Psychotherapy
(1942)
 View of Human Nature
 Rogers viewed human nature as basically good.
 He believed that if given the appropriate environment of
acceptance, warmth and empathy, the individual would
move toward self-­actualization.
 Self-­actualization is the motivation that makes the individual
move toward growth, meaning, and purpose.
 Person-­centered is considered a phenomenological
psychology whereby the individual’s perception of reality is
accepted as reality for the individual.
 Person-­centered is often referred to as a self theory, because
of Rogers’s emphasis on the self being an result of the
person’s life experiences and the person’s awareness of
comparisons to others as the same or different
 View of Human Nature continued
 Rogers believed that most people were provided
conditional acceptance as children, which lead them to
behave in ways that would assure their acceptance.
 However, in their need for acceptance, the individual
often behaved in ways that were incongruent with the
real self.
 Thus, the greater this incongruence between the real
self and the ideal self, the
greater isolated and maladjusted the person became.
 Person-Centered Counseling: Role of the counselor
 The counselor sets up a environment where the client is
safe to explore any aspect of the self. The counselor's
job is to facilitate the exploration through a special
relationship of unconditional positive regard, empathy
and warmth
 The person-­centered counselor uses psychological testing
on a limited basis.
 The use of diagnostic categories is discouraged as
incompatible with the philosophical view of the
individual as unique.
 Diagnosis places the counselor in a position of authority
and imposes a treatment plan.
 Person-Centered Counseling Goals
 To develop a counselor-client relationship where the
client feels in control.
– Assists client in learning how to cope with
situations.
– Helps client become a fully functioning person who
has no need to apply defense mechanisms to
everyday experiences.
• Client becomes more and more willing to change and grow.
• Becomes more open to experience, more trusting of self-perception,
and engaged in self-exploration and evaluations
• Greater acceptance of self and others.
• Better decision maker in here and now.
 Person-Centered Counseling Goals

• The person-­centered theory are directly

concerned with the individual.
• The counselor facilitates the client toward :
 Realistic self-­perception
 Greater confidence and self-­direction
 Sense of positive worth
 Greater maturity, social skill, and adaptive
behavior
 Better stress coping
 More fully functioning in all aspects of their
lives.
 Person-Centered Counseling: Techniques
 Three necessary conditions of counseling
• Empathy
• Unconditional positive regard (acceptance)
• Congruence (genuineness, openness)
o The quality of the counseling relationship is
much more important than techniques
o Motivational Interviewing:– grew out of person-
centered approach; helps ambivalent clients assess
their thoughts and feelings as they begin making
changes
 Cognitive Therapy

 Founded by Aaron Beck (1921 - ), and daughter

Judith Beck continues work with CT today.
View of Human Nature:
• Perception and experience are active processes that
involve inspective and introspective data
• How a person views a situation is evident in
his/her thoughts and visual images
• Dysfunctional behavior is caused by dysfunctional
thinking; if beliefs change, behaviors change.
Cognitive Therapy - Role of the Counselor

– The counselor is active and works with the client

to make covert thoughts more covert.
– Automatic thoughts are examined.
 Cognitive Therapy - Goal
• Help clients examine and modify unexamined and
negative thoughts.
• Counselors focus on excessive cognitive distortions,
such
 All-or-nothing thinking
 Negative prediction
 Overgeneralization
 Labeling of oneself
 Self-criticism
 Personalizations
• Counselors work with clients on overcoming their lack
of motivation linked with client’s view of problems
 Cognitive Therapy, continued
•Techniques:
• Challenge how clients process information
• Counter mistaken belief systems
• Encourage self-monitoring exercises to stop
negative “automatic thoughts”
• Improve communication skills
• Increase positive self-statements and exercises
• Encourage doing homework, including disputing
irrational thoughts
 Eclectic Approach
• Eclectic therapy is an approach that draws on
multiple theoretical orientations and
techniques.
• It is a flexible and multifaceted approach to
therapy that allows the therapist to use the
most effective methods available to address
each individual client's needs.
• It is also sometimes referred to as multi-modal
or integrative therapy.
 Cont…
• The eclectic approach in counseling involves
therapists drawing from various theoretical
orientations and techniques to tailor
treatment plans to individual client needs,
rather than adhering to a single method.
 Cont…
• It is a flexible and multifaceted approach to
therapy.
• Eclectic therapists prioritize flexibility and
recognize that each client is unique, requiring a
customized approach.
• They utilize techniques and strategies from
different therapeutic modalities, such as
cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT),
psychodynamic therapy, humanistic therapy, and
others, to address specific client needs.
 Cont…
• The selection of techniques is based on what
works best for the client, rather than adhering
rigidly to a specific theory or approach.
• An eclectic therapist might use mindfulness
techniques from one approach, imagery from
another, and motivational interviewing from a
third, all within the same session, to address a
client's specific needs.
 Cont…
• This approach can lead to more effective and
personalized treatment outcomes, as it allows
therapists to adapt to the client's evolving
needs and challenges.
• Eclectic therapy is sometimes referred to as
multi-modal or integrative therapy.
 Strength and Weakness of eclectic approach

Strengths:
• Flexibility and Personalization: The eclectic
approach allows counselors to tailor interventions to
the unique needs and circumstances of each client,
drawing from different therapeutic modalities.
• Enhanced Engagement: By using a variety of
techniques, the approach can keep clients engaged
and motivated as they explore different approaches
and strategies.
• Holistic Care: Eclectic counselors can address
various aspects of a client's well-being, including
emotional, behavioral, and cognitive issues,
promoting overall growth.
 Cont…
• Adaptability: The approach can adapt to
changing client needs and therapeutic
goals as the client progresses.
• Client-Centered: It prioritizes the client's
experience and subjective worldview,
fostering a trusting and empathetic
therapeutic relationship.
• Pragmatism: Therapists select
techniques based on their utility for the
client, rather than their theoretical origins,
promoting a practical approach.
 Cont…
Weaknesses:
• Complexity and Integration: Combining
different approaches can be complex, requiring
significant training and skill from the counselor
to effectively integrate them.
• Lack of Rigor: Some might argue that the lack
of focus on a single theoretical framework can
lead to a lack of rigor or consistency in
treatment.
• Potential for Inconsistency: If a counselor is
not skilled in integrating different approaches,
the therapy might become inconsistent and
confusing for the client.
 Cont…
• Not Ideal for All Conditions: Certain
conditions may respond best to specific,
structured therapies, and an eclectic approach
might not be the most effective choice in those
cases.
• Therapist Training: Eclectic therapists need a
solid understanding of various theories and
techniques, which requires extensive training
and experience.
• Insurance Coverage: Some insurance
companies may not cover all techniques used in
an eclectic approach, potentially limiting access
to care.