Identify Two Other Counselling Approaches in Use in the Uk Apart from the Humanistic Approach and Explain Their Key Features. Compare Each One with the Humanistic Approach and Consider Issues Suitable for Use of Each of the Three Approaches

Theory Essay:

Identify two other counselling approaches in use in the UK apart from the Humanistic approach and explain their key features. Compare each one with the humanistic approach and consider issues suitable for use of each of the three approaches.

In this essay I will look at three schools of counselling: Humanistic Person Centred Counselling, Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I will examine the historical and philosophical base for each one, how each theory views psychological distress and how professionals trained in each method work with clients to develop positive mental change. I will compare each form of counselling before reflecting on issues suitable for each approach.

Person Centred Therapy was first developed by an American Psychologist named Carl Rogers in the 1940’s. Carl Rogers was born in 1902. He first studied Agriculture at Wisconsin University and studied Clinical Psychology at Columbia University. During this period Psychiatry was based on the medical model of Freudian Psychoanalysis, which Rogers began to reject due to its premise that mental healing came through the knowledge of trained professional rather than the individual being counselled. Through his work Rogers began to formulate his own ideas regarding the reasons for and the treatment of Psychological distress. In 1940 he became professor of Psychology at Ohio University and it was here his students challenged him to put forward his own ideas on Psychotherapy and as a response to this he published his ideas in the book “Counselling and Psychotherapy”. Rogers drew on the philosophical ideas of Phenomenology and the Humanist Psychological theories of Maslow for his theory. Phenomenology aims to understand an individual’s place in the world through the idea of subjectivity and that ‘knowledge comes from the perceptual field of the individual’ (Sanders et al, 2009, p 94). Maslow believed all humans are motivated by and have the drive to reach their full...