Counseling Theories, Methods, & Techniques Flashcards
(149 cards)
Core dimensions for counselors (Carkhuff, Truax, and Mitchell)
(Page 254).
- authenticity/genuineness
- positive regard/acceptance
- accurate empathic understanding
(Page 254).
Global Scale for Rating Helper Responses
by George Gazda
(Page 254).
- A Level One Response giving no help to the client at all
- A Level Two Response being strictly superficial
- A Level Three Response facilitating growth but only minimally since the counselor’s responses are at least not distorted though only surface
- A Level Four (Gazda’s highest level) Response which entails the counselor’s going beyond reflection to underlying feelings and meanings
(Page 254).
Communicating empathy requires
- Intensely concentrating on the client’s verbal and non-verbal communication.
- Responding as an interchange with the client.
- Responding with language attuned to the client.
- Responding with a tone similar to that of the client.
- Responding readily and actively.
- Moving tentatively toward expanding the client’s understanding to higher levels.
- Concentrating on what the client is not saying.
- Judging the effectiveness of the responses by the client’s behavior.
(Page 255).
Communicating respect requires
- Suspending all critical judgments of the client.
- Speaking with warm and modulated tones, even if minimally so.
- Focusing on understanding the client.
- Providing the client adequate opportunities to self-disclose knowledge that would engender further positive regard from the counselor.
- Communicating spontaneously and genuinely.
(Page 255).
Communicating concreteness requires
- Making concrete reflections and interpretations.
- Assigning value to the client’s communications.
- Determining the necessity and appropriateness of a client’s making concrete or nonconcrete observations.
(Page 255).
Communicating genuineness and self-disclosure requires
- Minimizing the effects of the counselor’s profession, role, etc.
- Responding authentically.
- Welcoming encouraging authentic responses from the client.
- Purposefully increasing the openness and freedom within the helping relationship.
- Fully sharing experiences with the client.
- Progressively delving into difficult areas of the counselor’s own experience.
- Using the counselor’s own experience as the best guideline.
(Page 256).
Effective confrontation requires
- Concentrating on the client’s verbal and non-verbal expression.
- Questioning discrepant communication.
- Questioning discrepant behavior.
(Page 256).
Communicating immediacy requires
- Concentrating on the immediate experience with the client.
- Sometimes disregarding the content of the client’s communication in an attempt to discern what the client is really trying to say.
- Turning seemingly directionless moments to the question of immediacy.
- Purposefully applying the question of immediacy on a periodic basis.
(Page 256).
Ivey and Authier’s Microcounseling Skills
(Page 257).
Ivey and Authier’s microcounseling skills include the following (Axelson, 1999):
- Fundamental attending and self-expression skills (both verbal and nonverbal)
- Qualitative dimensions that provide the foundation for attending – Concreteness, immediacy, respect, confrontation, genuineness, and positive regard
- Microtraining skills that help lead the client
- Attending skills – closed and open questions, paraphrasing, summarizing, reflection, encouragement, etc.
- Influencing skills – interpretation, directives, expressing content, influencing summary, etc.
- Focus dimensions that pinpoint the target content – Others, the client, a topic, the counselor, direct mutual communication, cultural or environmental context
(Page 257).
Good Counselor Responses
- Attending – paying attention, eye contact, sitting forward, etc.
- Reflection – restating the emotional component of the client’s communication. Common reflection errors include:
- Reading more or less into the client’s communication than is there.
- Using inappropriate language for the client (wrong cultural reference or education level
- Beginning every response in the same manner
- Using poor timing (reflecting every statement or waiting too long to respond
- Paraphrasing – restating the content of the client’s communication
- Leading – direct or indirect encouraging to talk further
- Summarizing – distilling and expressing the theme or topic of the client’s communication.
- Clarification – clearing up ambiguities, inclusive terms, double meanings, etc.
- Support – expressing that the client has been heard or understood
- Confrontation – questioning discrepancies, conflicts, mixed messages, etc.
- Approval – agreeing with the client’s ideas, behaviors, or feelings
- Interpreting – positing meaning for implicit messages from the client’s communication
- Instructing – teaching appropriate responses for specific situations
- Information giving – providing information so the client can make decisions, consider alternatives, etc.
- Homework – assigning tasks to be done outside of sessions
- Contracting – formal or informal commitment
(Page 257).
PSYCHOANALYTIC THERAPY
Key figure
(Page 258).
Sigmund Freud
Overview of the Psychoanalytic Model
(Page 258).
A. Sigmund Freud learned the “talking cure” (his cathartic method) from Jean-Martin Charcot and Josef Breuer. He went on to theorize the personality structure of the id, ego, and superego as well as the existence of an unconscious mind which resides under or behind the conscious and preconscious minds. Thus, Freud is credited with formulating the first counseling model.
B. The psychoanalytic counselor concentrates on:
1. The client’s past history, especially early childhood events
2. The inter-relationship of the parts of the client’s personality
3. The relationship between the counselor and the client
(Page 258).
Goals of Psychoanalytic Treatment
(Page 258).
A. Bring the client’s unconscious to the conscious
B. Help the client work through repressed conflicts
C. Help the client reach intellectual awareness
D. Help the client restructure his or her basic personality
(Page 258).
Role of the Psychoanalytic Counselor
(Page 258).
A. The counselor is an anonymous expert and makes interpretations of the meaning of current behavior as the behavior relates to the past.
B. The client is encouraged to develop projections toward the counselor.
C. The counselor assists with reducing any resistances that develop as the client works with transferences.
(Page 258).
Normal Development
(Psychoanalytic)
(Page 258).
Successfully resolving and integrating the psychosexual stages of development leads to normal personality development.
(Page 258).
Development of Behavioral Disorders
(Page 259).
A. Personality flaws result from the failure to successfully resolve conflicts at an earlier stage of ego development.
B. Anxiety occurs when basic conflicts are repressed.
(Page 259).
Freud’s Structure of Personality
(Page 260).
ID – is the original system of personality and the primary source of psychic energy and the seat of instincts. It is the seat of the libido and is ruled by the pleasure principle. The id has no sense of time, never matures, and is chaotic.
EGO – functions to contact the real world. It balances (similar to the fulcrum of a see-saw) between the impulses of the Id and the Superego’s controls. SUPEREGO – is the moral branch of the personality. It represents the ideal rather than the real and strives for perfection. It represents the traditional values and the ideals of society. It rewards through feelings of pride and self-love; it punishes through feelings of guilt and inferiority. Freud believed that successfully resolving the Oedipus complex gives rise to the superego.
(Page 260).
four primary phases which all pertain to transference
(Psychoanalytical)
(Page 260).
- opening 3. working through 2. developing 4. resolving
(Page 260).
Catharsis/Abreaction
(Psychoanalytical)
(Page 260).
purging of emotions and feelings by giving them expression.
(Page 260).
Parapraxis (Freudian slips)
(Page 260).
an action in which one’s conscious intention is not fully carried out, as in the mislaying of objects, slips of the tongue and pen, etc.
(Page 260).
Countertransference
(Page 260).
The counselor substitutes the client for the original object of the counselor’s own repressed impulses (counselor’s being extremely angry with or sexually attracted to a client).
(Page 260).
Criticisms of the Psychoanalytic Model
(Page 261).
- The functions of the id, ego, and superego cannot be empirically tested.
- Not suitable in the common counseling setting.
- Not suitable for many minority, ethnic, or cultural groups.
- Not suitable for solving specific problems of lower socioeconomic individuals.
- Social, cultural, and interpersonal influences are largely ignored.
- Regressive and reconstructive therapy requires ego strength that is not always present.
- The training time for counselors is lengthy, often considered impractical.
- Classic psychoanalysis positions the client on a couch performing free association with an unseen analyst. This expensive process requires several sessions a week for several years.
(Page 261).
EGO DEFENSE MECHANISMS
(Page 263).
- Displacement – means displacing or directing emotion onto a person/object other than the one that originally aroused the emotion. Example: A meek employee, who is continually ridiculed by her boss, builds up tremendous resentment but verbally attacks family members instead of her boss, who might fire her.
- Rationalization – is justifying behavior to oneself and to others with well thought-out and socially acceptable but fictitious reasons for certain behaviors. This is not just lying; it’s a matter of habit and intensity. Example: A high school student explains away her failing of an algebra exam by saying, “I really don’t see why I have to take this course. I don’t need it to graduate and that teacher just sits there and doesn’t explain anything.”
- Compensation – means attempting to overcome the anxiety associated with a feeling of inferiority in one area by concentrating on another where the person can excel. This may be healthy and constructive; it may be avoidance. Example: A woman who cannot bear children becoming overly attached to pets.
- Projection – entails attributing to another person feelings and ideas that are unacceptable so the other person seems to have these feelings and ideas. Example: Feeling like a coward in handling a situation but blaming the outcome on the cowardice of the other person.
- Reaction Formation – involves exaggerating and openly displaying a trait that is the opposite of the tendencies that we do not want to recognize (traits that have been repressed). Example: People who are zealots about smut but really have hidden desires.
- Denial – means failing or refusing to acknowledge or to recognize and deal with reality because of strong inner needs. Example: Ignoring the symptoms of a heart attack; wearing copper bracelets.
- Repression – is an unconscious process of blocking urges, forbidden or dangerous desires, or traumatic experiences from consciousness. The most basic defense mechanism according to Freud. (Suppression is a conscious process.) Example: A police officer who witnesses the violent death of a fellow officer may press the incident out of consciousness because it symbolizes his own mortality.
- Identification – is the attempt to overcome feelings of inferiority by taking on the characteristics of someone important to oneself. Example: A student who takes on characteristics/attributes of his/her mother, father, favorite teacher, or coach.
- Substitution – involves achieving alternate goals and gratifications in order to mask feelings of frustration and anxiety. Example: Young girls who miss their father shacking up with older men.
- Fantasy – involves retreating in one’s mind to a comfortable (maybe ideal) setting. While one of the most useful defense mechanisms, it can become addictive and substitute for honest effort.
- Regression – consists of reverting to a pattern of feeling, thinking or behavior appropriate to an earlier stage of development. Example: A competent and capable adult acting very childish when sick in an attempt to have those around them provide greater care.
- Sublimation – is the redirecting of unacceptable impulses into socially and culturally acceptable channels. Example: Ones need for approval leading to an interest in theatre productions.
- Introjection – is the taking in, absorbing or incorporating into oneself the standards and values of another person. Example: The abused child who becomes an abusive parent.
- Undoing – occurs when a person acts inappropriately thus producing anxiety; then the person acts in an opposite way so as to reverse or negate the original behavior thus extinguishing the original anxiety. Example: A child yells at the dinner table and then offers to help with the dishes.
- Emotional Insulation – is protecting oneself from hurt by withdrawing into passivity. Example: “Looking for a new job will bring rejection so I’ll just go with the flow and see what happens.”
- Isolation – is separating the emotion from an experience so as to deal dispassionately with an otherwise emotionally overwhelming topic. Example: Making funeral arrangements instead of grieving.
(Page 264).
ADLERIAN THERAPY OR INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY
Key figure
(Page 265).
Alfred Adler
Others: Rudolf Dreikurs was a student of Adler who eventually brought the child guidance center concept to the U.S. He initiated group therapy into private practice. Donald Dinkmeyer, Sr. is a current Adlerian proponent.
(Page 265).