THEORY IN THE PRACTICE OF COUNSELING:Timing of Termination

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Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632

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

Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632

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.

Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632

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

Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632

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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