Forgot to say in the last entry how completely disorganised I got while J was away and I went to visit with my mum. Consequently I was well behind with preparation and reading for the essay. Had a minor meltdown tizzy and tried to wangle an extension. This would not have been a good thing as every essay is marked down upon late delivery so I bit the bullet, wrote the damn thing and submitted it electronically before midnight on the 22nd. Glad that I did, obviously a howling deadline is what I need. A cool 68%, I thank you and some good critique as to how I could improve. I have posted it for the moderately interested but to summarise, I think humanistic counselling is the one for me. (There, saved you the bother of reading it...)
Discuss a model of counselling covered in the course. Discuss why that model appeals to you.
I shall discuss the humanistic model of counselling as established by Carl Rogers. I shall also discuss the reasons for its appeal to me in terms of my own future counselling practice and compare it to the psychodynamic approach used by a therapist to me when I undertook a course of therapy in 2005. I hope to draw on my own observations with reference to my learning journal as well as insights gained from class discussion with fellow students, as it seems to me that self-awareness is key to any model of counselling that appeals to me. I shall also explore and discuss the six core conditions of humanistic or person-centred counseling to discover what resonates within me as a person.
The following hypothesis by Carl Rogers (1989, p. xiv) is key to the understanding of humanistic counselling, in my view:
‘All individuals have within themselves the ability to guide their own lives in a manner that is both personally satisfying and socially constructive. In a particular type of helping relationship, we free the individuals to find their inner wisdom and confidence, and they will make increasingly healthier and more constructive choices’
I find the optimism and humanism in this hypothesis very cheering. Not only is it not about ‘curing’ unhappiness, as though unhappiness, depression and breakdown were exclusively medical in context and treatment, but it is also about trusting human beings to make choices for themselves, to look within the self in a considered and exploratory fashion and to take the first steps towards beneficial inner change.
The six conditions necessary for client/person-centered or humanistic counselling were established by Carl Rogers in 1956. He believed these conditions were essential for therapeutic change. The helper makes psychological contact with the client, the client is vulnerable or anxious, the helper is congruent or genuine, the helper experiences non-judgemental warmth and acceptance towards the client, the helper experiences empathy and finally, the client receives the empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence of the helper. Crucially, Rogers proposed these core conditions as central to the helper’s personality. That is to say they are not ‘skills’ or ‘techniques’ but are attitudes or principles at the very core of the helper’s being.
When the helper first makes psychological contact with the client, it is not in the role of ‘expert’ but more as an equal, a fellow ‘being’. This appeals to me precisely because it seems a less prescriptive approach than the psychodynamic model. The helper does not present themselves as some kind of expert. The client may well enter into the relationship knowing nothing of the different models of counselling beyond the usual Freudian-inspired clichés in common currency (I know I certainly did!) They may be expect to be ‘analysed’ and to be told what to do but within the humanistic model it is the beginning of a journey, which will enable the client to understand and resolve within themselves the issues that trouble them. At this initial contact, it would be natural to assume that the client does indeed feel vulnerable and anxious. Why else would they be there? If a client felt they were there at the suggestion or persuasion of a third party, this core condition could not be met. An individual must be motivated by their own feelings, not that of others. A gateway into the client’s feelings can be created by the helper’s congruence and warmth, instilling an atmosphere of trust and confidence in the helper.
I like the fact that this form of counselling is a two way street, in that there is a process taking place within the helper: that of non-judgemental warmth and acceptance leading perhaps to other states of being. Rogers (1989, p137) writes movingly of this:
‘When I am at my best, as a group facilitator or a therapist, I discover another characteristic. I find that when I am closest to my inner, intuitive self, when I am somehow in touch with the unknown in me, when perhaps I am in a slightly altered state of consciousness in the relationship, then whatever I do seems to be full of healing’
I think it is part of the reward of counselling that the helper may also gain self-awareness and knowledge through the counselling relationship that co-exists with the resolution of the issues that the client brings. There seems to be a humility in this that refutes the prescriptive or interpretative approach to helping. I also like the framework of the final core condition. If the client is successfully receiving the unconditional positive regard and the warmth then the journey can begin! Above all, these conditions contain the client in a relationship in which the client’s safety as a vulnerable and anxious individual can be established from the outset. It is as though the feelings of unconditional acceptance and warmth are possible within these specified frameworks and the transcendent insight can be achieved, thus freeing up the client’s way of seeing themselves. Rogers (1989, p.137) wrote, ‘our relationship transcends itself and becomes a part of something larger. Profound growth and healing and energy are present’. This is very compelling! Rogers does not mention God in the traditional or accepted sense yet there lies in his theorising and experiences a deeply spiritual aspect that is very powerful and appealing to my secular spirit.
This is another way in which my own humanism seems to tie in with a humanistic approach to counselling. That is to say a humanistic approach may transcend difference in religious or spiritual terms, it might create a bridge of understanding over the gulf of difference, mindful of the difference over which it reaches in the client -helper relationship, as it were. A colleague on the course had a very interesting insight into this. We were speaking of the deep empathic bond between helper and client, which must be present as a core condition. We discussed the possible danger of this in that the helper might somehow become lost in the experience of empathy with their client, so powerfully do they see their own feelings and experiences mirrored in those of the client. We pondered how much the client might expect a certain ‘professional’ distance from the helper to aid clarity and enquiry. We concluded that the process of self-reflection so vital in any counselling process would contribute to self-awareness and therefore guard against potentially unhelpful attitudinal shifts in which the helper could become less congruent or genuine.
With regard to unconditional positive regard and non-judgemental attitudes, I have wondered in my own learning journal how one might counsel someone like Josef Fritzl. I concluded that it was possible within a well-delineated framework. That is to say, he is already imprisoned, he has admitted to the crimes of which he stood accused. Another part of the framework perhaps is that he must now find a way of being during his last years, which helps to resolve the issues he carries within himself. Is it possible therefore for his helper to transcend the widespread public opprobrium of his crimes in order to facilitate therapeutic change untainted by a judgemental attitude? There is something in the very real challenge of that task that I find appealing though I feel that the degree of experience on the part of the helper would have to be extensive. Rogers (1989, p.138) proposed that:
‘When the person-centred way of being is lived in psychotherapy, it leads to a process of self-exploration and self-discovery in the client and eventually to constructive changes in personality and behavior. As the therapist lives these conditions in the relationship, he or she becomes a companion to the client in this journey toward the core of self.’
I like the fact that as a helper, one ‘lives’ the conditions of humanistic counseling. They are not skills or a kind of professional ‘act’. It is also implicit in the above quotation that the client’s journey may also be reflected in the helper’s own progress toward a better way of being that is very heartening and liberating.
In 2005, following marital difficulties I approached the Tavistock Centre to engage in a course of psychotherapy. Whilst extremely helpful to me at the time (I had no knowledge of other forms of therapy or counseling), I find, looking back, that my therapist was perhaps a little prescriptive in her interpretation of my situation. For example, she said during one session that I must have felt it was very unfair that my son had been left disabled following a serious childhood illness. I reacted with puzzlement to this. ‘Bad things happen to people all the time’, I replied, ‘as a family we are by no means unique’. She persisted in her analysis by trying to get me to dwell on this unfairness but it was a point of resistance between us, which to this day, I still ponder. I am still relatively new to my understanding of the humanistic counselling model but if I was myself counselling another parent in similar circumstances, I can imagine myself asking the parent if they felt it was unfair that their child had been so affected. I can remember thinking along similar lines when we watched a counselling video in which the helper kept telling her client how she ‘must’ feet. I can remember the same feelings of puzzlement returning to me (not to say annoyance!) I felt then (and I still do) that a form of questioning, paraphrasing and clarification are more appropriate to the process. Having learnt more about psychotherapy, I now feel that my therapist was perhaps projecting her own feelings about what it would be like to have a child with disabilities onto me. It would be difficult to say for sure however because although she knew lots about me, I knew almost nothing about her so it is perhaps unfair of me to assume that.
As the human body can ‘repair’ itself physiologically (given the right conditions), is it not also possible that the human being can ‘repair’ itself psychologically given the set of core conditions as established by Rogers? Healing can happen if the conditions are all present physiologically: that is to say, the body will be well providing there are no underlying problems such as medical conditions that work against the self-healing properties of the human physiological organism. Is it possible that the six core conditions of humanistic counselling can enhance the human capacity for psychological self-healing? Even writing that, I see it is hard to escape medical terminology but as the physical and mental selves are inextricably intertwined so must notions of self-help and helping; the dynamic of the client-helper relationship is reflected in the complex intertwining of mind and body.
In conclusion then, I am drawn to the model of humanistic or client-centred counselling because it is a set of attitudes and principles that one holds at the core of the self. It contains within it the capacity for transcendent moments of insight that can lead to therapeutic change. It is not so much interpretive or analytical as a reflective process for both client and helper in that the helper may mirror, amplify and clarify the feelings of the client to set them on the path to beneficial therapeutic change.
REFERENCES:
Rogers, Carl (1989), ‘introduction’, in H. Kirschenbaum and V. Henderson (editors) The Carl Rogers Reader, New York: Houghton Mifflin. p. xiv
Rogers, Carl (1989), ‘A Client-centred/Person-centred Approach to Therapy’, in H. Kirschenbaum and V. Henderson (editors) The Carl Rogers Reader, New York: Houghton Mifflin. p. 137
Rogers, Carl (1989), ‘A Client-centred/Person-centred Approach to Therapy’, in H. Kirschenbaum and V. Henderson (editors) The Carl Rogers Reader, New York: Houghton Mifflin. p. 137
Rogers, Carl (1989), ‘A Client-centred/Person-centred Approach to Therapy’, in H. Kirschenbaum and V. Henderson (editors) The Carl Rogers Reader, New York: Houghton Mifflin. p. 138
READING
Sanders, Pete (2002), First steps in Counselling: A Students’ Companion For Basic Introductory Courses, third edition, Ross-on-Wye, PCCS books.
