Essays on Contemporary Counseling Theories

The task is: “There are substantial variations in contemporary counseling theories: Psychoanalytic Therapy, Adlerian Therapy, Existential Therapy, Person-Centered Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Behavior Therapy, Cognitive- Behavioral Approaches, Reality Therapy, Feminist Therapy, Postmodern Approaches, Systemic Therapies. Describe the personal perspectives and support your choice. It is important to consider the applicability of your choice to the professional environment you expect to be working in following graduation. Which of the 11 theoretical perspectives do you expect to be least likely to apply in your work? Explain your choice.”

Personally, I prefer to use all the theories, as they all have some useful ideas in them.

I really appreciate Adlerian therapy, and I’m fond of his idea of individual psychology. Adlerian therapy concentrates on the conflict and integrations with other people, but it also focuses on teaching and encouraging the patient.

It recommends the helping professional to get the perception of the patient on his experiences. Adlerian therapy encourages the patient’s self-understanding and helps to learn to correct the wrong assumptions.

There is another counseling theory that I would like to mention here. It is one of the most used approaches – Person-Centered therapy. The major reason why I prefer it is that it is aimed to create non-judgmental environment for the patient, so he/she could comfortably feel themselves in the process of therapy. Person-centered therapy’s developer Carl Rogers claimed that patients should look for their own solutions and it’s not the therapist task to give it to them.

On the contrary, the therapist should not intervene at all; the therapist should not judge them, he/she should be attentive and empathic to the patient.

Regarding the perspective that I like less (but it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to apply it at all) I would say it is a well known Psychoanalytic therapy.

Psychoanalytic therapy can help to understand patient’s behavior through his/her childhood experiences, but I do agree with Alfred Adler’s point of view. He thought that early childhood experiences analysis that was suggested by

Sigmund Freud, is not that important. Rather the patient’s perception of childhood experiences is vital.