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THEORY IN THE PRACTICE OF COUNSELING:Timing of Termination

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Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632
VU
Lesson 22
THEORY IN THE PRACTICE OF COUNSELING
Link to Previous Lecture (Termination Issues)
Timing of Termination
There is no one answer when termination is to take place. Questions you may wish to ask yourself
concerning termination include:
·  Have clients achieved behavioral, cognitive, or affective goals?
·  Can clients concretely show where they have made progress in what they wanted to accomplish?
·  Is the counseling relationship helpful?
Premature Termination
·  Many clients or counselors may end counseling before all goals are completed. Many clients may end
counseling before all goals are completed. This can be seen by not making appointments, resisting new
appointments, etc. It is a good idea to try and schedule a termination/review session with the client so
closure may take place. At this time a referral may be in order.
·  At times, counselors have to end counseling prematurely. Whatever the reason for the termination, a
summary session is in order and referrals are made, if appropriate, to another counselor. Note specific
behaviors or actions which brought the need for a referral. In case of a referral, specific issues need to
be addressed with the client:
o  Reason for the referral.
o  Have the names of several other counselors ready for referral.
o  May also discuss the confidentiality issue": You cannot follow up with the new counselor to see
if the client followed through (Confidentiality issue).
Follow-Up
·  At times, a follow-up may be scheduled for various reasons including evaluation, research, or checking-
in with client.
·  Follow-ups need to be scheduled so as to not take the responsibility of change away from the client.
Theory in the Practice of Counseling
·  A theory provides a structure from which to understand what we are doing and the process of doing it.
A theory is a framework on which interventions are based.
·  Why we have a theory? Does it provide a therapeutic road map or creates a sense of false certainty?
·  Arguments for and against theory: It creates structure and order. Sometime the theoretical knowledge
under that theory is not sufficient enough to conclude or generalize. For example, there is some
criticism on psychoanalytic theory about the importance of sexual and aggressive instincts in human
beings.
Theory of Counseling
As a relatively new discipline, the theory and practice of counseling has drawn insights from other
disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, sociology, and the other social sciences. These disciplines
have provided both data and comprehensive hypotheses that counselors have used to clarify the theoretical
structures underlying the whole counseling process. Generally, there are three foundations to counseling
theory:
·  Philosophical Foundations
·  Sociological Foundations
·  Psychological Foundations
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Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632
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Philosophical Foundations
·  In a healthy personality the individual has a realistic perception of himself; he knows what he wants and
how much he wants it.
·  A goal of counseling is to help individuals to reach their maximum potential, which can occur only
when they develop consistent philosophical outlooks.
·  Psychologists have often argued that philosophy has no place in the scientific study of human behavior.
However, May (1967) points out that every scientific method rests on philosophical presuppositions.
Different Philosophical Positions
Belief in the dignity and worth of the Individual:
One theme is found consistently in the literature discussing the philosophy of counseling: belief in the
dignity and worth of the individual, in the recognition of the individual's freedom in determining his own
values and goals, and in the client's right to pursue his own life-style. Philosophical positions of interest to
counselors have long historical roots. A number of beliefs have emerged from Western civilization
philosophies. These beliefs center on the concept of individualism. Its first aspect is the importance accorded
the individual. Over the past several thousand years, the idea has evolved that the individual has value in
and of himself, not just because of what the person can accomplish. This attitude provides the basis for the
idea that an individual may develop uniqueness and emphasize individuality. Thus, in Western culture a
counselor is encouraged to help the client to become more independent, more autonomous.
Arbuckle's (1975) Philosophical Model about a responsible and free individual:
A responsible and free individual is one who has narrowed the gap between attitudes and behaviors; the
literal meaning of freedom and responsibility changes as the culture changes; and a responsible individual is
one who has no need to impose himself or his ideas on others.
Blocher's grouping of relevant philosophical systems:
Blocher (1966) has proposed grouping contemporary philosophical systems into three major categories:
Essentialism:
Individual's destiny is to discover truth by distinguishing between the essential and the accidental.
Essentialistic philosophies assume that humans are the only creatures endowed with reason and that their
chief function is to use this reason in order to know the world in which they live. It therefore follows that
truth is universal and absolute, and the individual's destiny is to discover truth by distinguishing between the
essential and the accidental. It refers to a belief in the existence of fixed, unchanging absolutes of the good,
the true, and the beautiful. The search for values is essentially not personal but universal. Arbuckle (1975)
points out that belief in absolute values can pose some difficulties for counselors. He asks whether the
counselor who is firmly committed to absolutistic concepts of right and wrong, truth and error, beauty and
ugliness, can allow a client the freedom to develop values in the client's own unique way.
Progressivism
Such systems begin not with the assumptions of universal truths but with specific and particular
experiences. The question "What is true?" is less important than "What will work?" The present and the
future are stressed, rather than the past. A fact is valued for its usefulness, not its universality. As a result,
values have no existence in themselves. Values are individual to the observer, and truth is dynamic in a
world that is always changing. Certainly such a view describes the philosophy that underlies behaviorism.
The behavioral approach is primarily pragmatic; that which works is good; that which does not is discarded.
Since an action is evaluated purely in terms of its consequences, no absolutes exist.
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Existentialism
Existentialism is concerned with human longing and with seeking for importance within the individual's
self. The existential philosophies emphasize the view of reality most meaningful to individuals--own
existence. In a sense, it represents an approach that is empathic response by the counselor, as the counselor
attempts to reconstruct the personal meaning structure of the client.
To analyze human behavior in philosophical terms is to ask serious questions about what a person values,
whether he or she should value it, whether this value fits in with a pattern of values, whether the values of
something hampers or assists other important values. Philosophical questions are directly involved when an
individual faces a problem whether personal, vocational, or interpersonal. "What vocation should I choose
that will satisfy my values and meet my needs?" demands an answer to the same philosophical questions as a
question such as, "what can I do to make my life more meaningful?"
Sociological Foundations
Sociology is basically a study of social group behavior. A basic premise of sociology is that people's behavior
is largely determined by their social interactions, their relationships as individuals and as group members.
Following is the description of these influences:
·
Influence of social organizations on Individuals:
o  Sociologists have examined what impact the social structure has on the individual and how
the individual adapts to these social controls. Merton (1957) suggests that individuals can
cope through five general means: conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, or rebellion.
·
Socialization processes:
o  This process transmits values and purposes of the group to the individual, teaching the
individual how to fit into the pattern of that social organization. Socialization does not
typically deal with the uniqueness of individuals; rather, it focuses on those aspects of an
individual's development that concern the adaptations and adjustments to the culture or
society. In effect, the socialization processes work primarily to further the goals of the
group rather than to further the development of the individual. Because the counselor's
primary commitment is to individual growth and development rather than to the
facilitation of group ends, the counselor is particularly concerned with those socialization
processes that help the individual develop identity, self-awareness, values, and goals. But
counselor does not ask for resisting the social organization just to have a balanced
approach.
·
Development of social/cultural values:
o  Effective counselors should be able to understand how an individual's culture influences
his value structure and how conflicts between individual and cultural values influence
development. Values and gender roles have changed in modern day society. At fault is
what sociologists call a cultural lag; that is, habits and beliefs from previous times conflict
with the cultural patterns brought about by new technology.
Psychological Foundations: Social Psychology
·  Behavior is a product of the perceptual field of the individual at the moment of action. Contemporary
social psychology has been greatly concerned with perceptual processes in human beings. For example,
when an individual views a situation as threatening, he or she acts as if that situation were indeed
threatening.
·
The counselor must understand the nature of the individual's perceptual experiences. Therefore, the
person will behave defensively or aggressively, depending on what he sees as the best reaction to the
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perceived threat. One example of how perceptual theory has affected counseling is the "directive state"
theory. This theory suggests that the direction of perceptual experience is influenced by such factors as
sex, attitudes, values, needs, and similar intervening variables. Other studies have shown that a number
of factors operate to make us organize stimuli in a particular way. Some factors are intrinsic to the
stimulus object or situation--for example, the nearness of various elements to each other or their
physical likeness, the inclusiveness of one perceptual pattern as opposed to another, the tendency to see
a complete object (closure), and the context, or part-whole relationships, of the situation. The way we
perceive things is also influenced by personal factors--our tendency to create and maintain a stable
structure, our particular past experience, our organic condition, and our needs and values. Social and
cultural factors encourage us to develop certain perceptions and discourage us from developing others.
Likewise, our deep-rooted, basic classifications of experience strongly influence our perceptions, as do
our previous successes or failures.
Psychological Foundations: Learning Principles
·  The behavioral theories tend to emphasize the idea that learning is essentially a mechanical matter.
·  Field theories emphasize on perception eventually forced the behaviorists to stop speaking as if the
stimuli were purely objective and therefore equivalent for everyone.
·  Cognitive theorists conceptualize learning as an active restructuring of perceptions and concepts, not as
passive responses to stimuli.
Eclectic Approaches
·  Refer to developing systematic blends of therapy by drawing ideas, concepts, and practices from a
variety of sources. Each of these theories focus on a relatively specific aspect of human personality, e.g.,
behavior, philosophy of human existence, individual perception, etc.
·
Has the advantage of taking the best feature of the various theories, while avoiding the disadvantages
found in the theories. Eclectic approaches, by their very nature, are holistic.
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Table of Contents:
  1. INTRODUCTION:Counseling Journals, Definitions of Counseling
  2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND COUNSELING & PSYCHOTHERAPY
  3. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 1900-1909:Frank Parson, Psychopathic Hospitals
  4. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:Recent Trends in Counseling
  5. GOALS & ACTIVITIES GOALS OF COUNSELING:Facilitating Behavior Change
  6. ETHICAL & LEGAL ISSUES IN COUNSELING:Development of Codes
  7. ETHICAL & LEGAL ISSUES IN COUNSELING:Keeping Relationships Professional
  8. EFFECTIVE COUNSELOR:Personal Characteristics Model
  9. EFFECTIVE COUNSELOR:Humanism, People Orientation, Intellectual Curiosity
  10. EFFECTIVE COUNSELOR:Cultural Bias in Theory and Practice, Stress and Burnout
  11. COUNSELING SKILLS:Microskills, Body Language & Movement, Paralinguistics
  12. COUNSELING SKILLS COUNSELOR’S NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION:Use of Space
  13. COUNSELING SKILLS HINTS TO MAINTAIN CONGRUENCE:
  14. LISTENING & UNDERSTANDING SKILLS:Barriers to an Accepting Attitude
  15. LISTENING & UNDERSTANDING SKILLS:Suggestive Questions,
  16. LISTENING & UNDERSTANDING SKILLS:Tips for Paraphrasing, Summarizing Skills
  17. INFLUENCING SKILLS:Basic Listening Sequence (BLS), Interpretation/ Reframing
  18. FOCUSING & CHALLENGING SKILLS:Focused and Selective Attention, Family focus
  19. COUNSELING PROCESS:Link to the Previous Lecture
  20. COUNSELING PROCESS:The Initial Session, Counselor-initiated, Advice Giving
  21. COUNSELING PROCESS:Transference & Counter-transference
  22. THEORY IN THE PRACTICE OF COUNSELING:Timing of Termination
  23. PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACHES TO COUNSELING:View of Human Nature
  24. CLASSICAL PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH:Psychic Determination, Anxiety
  25. NEO-FREUDIANS:Strengths, Weaknesses, NEO-FREUDIANS, Family Constellation
  26. NEO-FREUDIANS:Task setting, Composition of Personality, The Shadow
  27. NEO-FREUDIANS:Ten Neurotic Needs, Modes of Experiencing
  28. CLIENT-CENTERED APPROACH:Background of his approach, Techniques
  29. GESTALT THERAPY:Fritz Perls, Causes of Human Difficulties
  30. GESTALT THERAPY:Role of the Counselor, Assessment
  31. EXISTENTIAL THERAPY:Rollo May, Role of Counselor, Logotherapy
  32. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO COUNSELING:Stress-Inoculation Therapy
  33. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO COUNSELING:Role of the Counselor
  34. TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS:Eric Berne, The child ego state, Transactional Analysis
  35. BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES:Respondent Learning, Social Learning Theory
  36. BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES:Use of reinforcers, Maintenance, Extinction
  37. REALITY THERAPY:Role of the Counselor, Strengths, Limitations
  38. GROUPS IN COUNSELING:Major benefits, Traditional & Historical Groups
  39. GROUPS IN COUNSELING:Humanistic Groups, Gestalt Groups
  40. MARRIAGE & FAMILY COUNSELING:Systems Theory, Postwar changes
  41. MARRIAGE & FAMILY COUNSELING:Concepts Related to Circular Causality
  42. CAREER COUNSELING:Situational Approaches, Decision Theory
  43. COMMUNITY COUNSELING & CONSULTING:Community Counseling
  44. DIAGNOSIS & ASSESSMENT:Assessment Techniques, Observation
  45. FINAL OVERVIEW:Ethical issues, Influencing skills, Counseling Approaches