Humanistic approach to counseling

 The humanistic approaches to counseling
include the following:
› Existential approach – intellectually dense and
philosophical in nature
› Client-centered approach – unexpressed feelings
› Gestalt therapy – primary experience

 These three approaches are humanistic in
orientation because of its beliefs in the
power of people to heal themselves,
especially in the context of a genuine,
authentic type of relationship.
 Humanistic practitioner seeks to crreate a
relationship with clients that is warm, caring,
genuine, and engaging.

 The primacy of experience
› Humanist seeks to understand personal
experience in its essence
› Every individual is unique
› Human dexperience is irreducible
› Subjective, inner state should be honored and
respected.

 Growth orientation
› Will People have the tendency to grow and
actualize their potential.
› Increased self-awareness and acceptance will
help people in their journey toward greater
fulfillment and productivity.

 Free choice
› Rather than being deterministic, humanist
believe that people can become almost whatever
they choose.

 Being in - In order to experience pure emphaty,
you must leave your own self-centeredness and
enter into the being of another.
 Being for – when times are tough, you are the
one person they can count on for support and
encouragement.
 Being with – “ certainly means listening and
hearing the other’s feelings, thoughts,
objectives but it also means offering my own
perspectives and views” (Moustakas (1986, p.
102)

 Introduction
Existential theory:
 Focuses on exploring themes such as mortality,
meaning, freedom, responsibility, anxiety, and aloness
as this relate to a person’s current strength
 The goal of existential theray is to assist clients in heir
exploration of the existential “givens of life,” how these
are sometimes ignored or denied and how addressing
them can ultimately lead to deeper, more relfective and
meaningful existence.
 Clients are invited to reflect on life, to recognize theri
range of alternatives and to decide among them.

 Existential therapy is grounded on the assumption
that we are free and therefore responsible for our
choice and actions.
 We are the authors of our own lives, and we design
the pathway we follow.
 Basic existential premise: we are not victims of
circumstance, to a large extent, we are what we
choose to be.
 Existential movement stands for respect for the
person, for exploring new aspects f human
behavior, and for divergent methods of
understanding people.

 It helps people engage the dilemmas of
contemporary life, such as isolation,
alienation, and meaninglessness.
 It focuses on the individual’s experience of
being in the world alone and facing the
anxiety of this isolation.

ROLLO MAY
 He is one of the main proponent of humanistic
approaches to psychotherapy
 He viewed that psychotherapy should be aimed at
helping people discover the meaning of their levels and
hould be concerned with problems of being rather than
with problem solving.
 He said that the rela challenge is for people to be able
to live in a world where they are alone and where they
will eventually have to face death.

IRVIN YALOM
 He developed an existential approach to psychotherapy that
addresses four “givens of existence,” or ultimate human
concerns: freedom and responsibility, existential isolation,
meaninglessness, and death.
 He believed that these themes deal with the client’s
existence, or being-in-the-world.
 He advocates using the “here and now” of the therapeutic
relationship to explore the client’s interpersonal world.
 He believed that the therapist must be transparent, especially
regarding his or her experiences.

VICTOR FRANKL
 He believed that essence of being a human lies in
searching for meaning and purpose.
 He believed that love is the highest goal to which
human can aspire and that our salvation is through love.
We can discover this meaning through our actions and
deeds, by experiencing a value (love, achievements
through work) and by suffering.
 He developed his own theory and practice of
psychotherapy, which emphasized the concepts of
freedom, responsibility, meaning, and search for values.

Basic dimensions of human condition according to
the existential approach:
Proposition 1: The Capacity for Self-Awareness
 Freedom, choice, and responsibility constitute the
foundation of self-awareness. The greater the
awareness, the greater our possibilities for
freedom. According to Corey (2013) increasing self-
awareness is the main goal of counseling that
includes awareness of alternatives, motivations,
factors influencing the person, and personal goals.

We increase our capacity to live fully as we expand our
awareness in the following areas:
 We are finite and do not have unlimited time to do what
we want in life.
 We have the potential to take action or not to act;
inaction is a decision.
 As we increase our awareness of the choices available
to us, we also increase our sense of responsibility for
the consequences of these choices.
 We are basically alone, yet we have an opportunity to
relate to other beings.

Proposition 2: Freedom and Responsibility
 A characteristic existential theme is that people
are free to choose among alternatives and
therefore lay a large role in shaping their own
destiny. Freedom implies that we are
responsible for our lives, for our actions, and for
our failures to take action. While existential
guilt is being aware of having evaded a
commitment, or having not to choose.

Proposition 3: Striving for Identity and Relationship
to Others
The courage to be. According to May in 1975 (as cited
in Corey, 2013) courage entails the will to move forward
in spite of anxiety-producing situation such as facing our
death.
The experience of aloneness. The sense of isolation
comes when we recognize that we cannot depend on
nyone else for our own confirmation; that is, we alone
must give a sense of meaning to life, and we alone must
decide how we will live

 The experience of relatedness. Humans
depend on relationships with others and they
want to be significant in another’s world and
they want to feel that another’s presence is
important in our wold.
 Struggling with our Identity. The therapist
challenges the client to begin examining the
ways in which they have lost touch with their
identity expecially by letting others design their
lives for them.

Proposition 4: The Search for Meaning
 One of human’s distinct charactersitic is the struggle for
a sense of significance and purpose in life. This therapy
can provide a conceptual framework for helping clients
challenge the meaning of their lives and it can be done
through asking the following questions to the client: “Do
youl ike the direction of your life?” “Are you pleased with
what you are now and what you are becoming?” If you
are confused about who you are nd what you want for
yourelf, what are you doing to get some clarity?”

 The problem of discarding old values. Clients may
dicardtraditional (imposed) values without creating
other, suitable ones to replace. They seek new
guidelines and values that are appropriate for the newly
discovered facets of themselves.
 Meaninglessness. When the client perceives that the
world they live in is meaningles. They may wonder if it is
still worth it to continue struggling or even living. They
may ask “is there any point t owhat I do now, since I will
eventually die?” Meaninglessness in life can lead to
emptiness and hallowness or a condition tat Frankl calls
the existential vacuum.

 Creating new Meaning. Logotherapy is
designed t ohelp clients find meaning in life
wherein the role of the therapist is not to tell
the client what their particular meaning in life
should be but to point out that they can
create meaning even in suffering.

Proposition 5: Anxiety as a Condition Living
 Existential Anxiety. It is the unavoidable result of being confronted
with the “givens of existence” ─death, freedom, choice, isolation,
and meaninglessness.. It arises as we recognize the reality of our
mortality , our confrontation with pain and suffering, our need to
struggle for survival and our basis of fallibility. It is also experienced
as we become increasingly aware of our freedom and the
consequences of accepting or rejecting that freedom.
 Normal Anxiety. It is an approprite response t oan event being
faced and does not have to be repressed and can be used as a
motivation to change.
 Neurotic Anxiety. In contrast with the normal anxiety it is about
concrete things that is out of proportion to the situation and typically
our of awareness, it can also unmobilize the person.

Proposition 6: Awarenes of Death and
nonbeing
 In existentialism death is viewed as a basic
human condition that gives significance to
living. It should not be considered as threat
rather it must provide the motivation for us to
appreciate what we have at present.

 The central goal of the existential therapy is increased awareness,
this will allow the client dicover the alternative possiblities existing,
where none were recognized before. At the end of the therapy the
client is expected to realize that they can make changes in their
way of living in the world.
 Role of the Therapist
 To aasist clients inseeing the ways in which they consist their
awareness and the cost of each constriction.
 He/she can hold up a mirror, so to speak, so that clients can
gradually engage in self-confrontation the way they live.
 He/she should aim toward removing roadblocks to meaningful living
and helping clients assume responsiblity for their condition.
 To assist people in facing life with courage, hope, and willingness to
find meaning in life.

Clients are encouraged to assume responsibility for
how they are currently choosing to be in their world.
They must be active inthe therapeutic process
because during the sessions they must decide what
fears, guilt feelings, and anxieties they will explore.
Through the therapeutic process clients become
aware of what they are now, they are better and
able to decide what kind of future they want. They
can also explore alternatives for making their
visions real.

Therapeutic techniques and Procedure
 The therapist may incorporate many
techniques from other models to understand
the subjective world of the client.

 It helps clients realize the importance of
responsibility, awareness, freedom and
potential;
 It hopes that during the course of counseling,
clients will take more responsibility for their lives
than they have previously taken;
 The aim of therapy is that the patient
experience his existence as real and that this
existence gives meaning to his life;

 Through this process, the client is freed from
being an observer of events and becomes a
shaper of meningful personal activity;
 Existential counselors make use of
confrontation. Clients are confronted with the
idea that everyone is responsible for his/her
own life;
 Existential counselors do not make use of
psychological tests, nor do they make
diagnoses.

 Gestalt Therapy is an existential, phenomenological, and
process-based approach created on the premise that
individuals must be understood in the context oftheri ongoing
relationship with the environment.
 . It is phenomenological because it focuses onthe client’s
perception of reality and existential because it is grounded in
the notion that people are always in the process of
becoming, remaking, and rediscovering themselves.
 It focuses on the process than on content, the here and now,
the what and how, and the I/Thou of relating. Gestalt
therapists assume that individuals have the capacity to self-
regulate when they are aware of what is happening in and
around them.

Holism. All of nature is seen s a unified and coherent
whole, and the whole is different from the sum of its
parts. Gestalt therapists are interested inthe whole
person, theyp lace no sepurior value on a particular
aspect of the individual.
• This therapy attends to client’s thoughts, ffelings,
behaviors, body, memories, and dreams.
• Emphasis may be on a figure (those aspects of the
individual’s experience that are most salient at any
moment) or the ground (those aspects of the client’s
presentation that are often out of his or her
awreness.)

 Field Theory. Asserts that the organism must be
seen in its environment or in its context as part
of the constantly changing field. Gestalt
therapist pay attention to and explore what is
occuring at the boundary between the person
and the environment.
 The Figure-formation Process. It tracks how
some aspect of the environmental field emrges
from the background and becomes the focal
point of the individuals attention and interest.

 Organismic Self-Regulation. A process by which
equilibrium is dissturbed by the emergence of a
need, a snesation, or an interest. What emerges on
the therapeutic work is associated with what is of
interest or what the client needs to pursue a sense
of equilibrium or change. Gestalt therapists direct
the client’s awareness to the figures that emerge
from the background during a therapy session and
use the figure-formation process as a guide for the
focus of therapeutic work.

The Now
 The Gestalt approach puts emphasis on
learning to appreciate and fully experience the
present moment. Phenomenological inquiry
involves paying attention to what is occuring
now.
 To help the client make contact with the present
moment, therapists ask “what” and “how”
questions, but rarely ask “why” questions.

Unfinished Business
 These are the figures that emerge from the
background but are not completed and resolved
that can be manifested in unexpressed feelings
such as resentment rage, hatred, pain, anxiety,
grief, guilt, and abandonment.
 Gestalt therapy gives attention to these
unexpressed feelings because they tend to
result in some physical sensation or problems.

Contact and resistances to contact
 Aiming for change and growth, contact is necessary
in gestalt therapy. It is made by seeing, hering,
smelling, touching, and moving. Effective contact
means interacting with the nature an other people
without losing onne’s sense of individuality.
Meanwhile, resistance are developed as a means
of coping with life situations, they possess positive
qualities as well as problematic ones, and many
contemporary.

 Energy and blocks to energy
 In Gestalt therapy special attention is given to where the
enrgy is located, how it is used, and how it can be
blocked. Blocked energy is another form of defensive
behavior. It can be manifested by tension in some part
of the body, by posture, by keeping one;s body tight and
closed, by nto breathing deeply, by looking away from
people when speaking to avoid contact, by choking off
sensations by numbing feelings, and by speaking with
restricted voice.
 Clients can be encouuraged to delve fully into tension
states. Fow instance, by allowing to exaggerate their
tight mouth and shaking legs.

 Gestalt therapists view clients as the experts
on their own experience and encourage
them to attend to their sensory awareness in
the present moment.
 context of I/thou dialoge in a here and now
framework
 They also pay attention to the client’s body
language.

 . Therapist may ask the client, “What do your
eyes say?”
 If your hands could speak at this moment, what
would they say?” “can you carry on a
conversation between your right and left hand?”
 counsleor also places emphasis on the
relationshpi between language patterns and
personality believing that client’s speech
patterns are often an expression of theri
feelings, thoughts, and attitudes.

 “It” talk. Whenthe client say “it” instead of “I” they are
using depersonalizing language. The counselor may
ask them t osubstitute personal pronouns for impersonal
ones so that they will assume an increased sense of
responsibility.
Example: “It is difficult to make friends” to “I have
trouble maknig friends”
 “You”talk. Global and impersonal language tends to
keep the person hidden. The therapist often points out
generalized uses of “you” and asks the client to
substitute “I” when this is what is meant.

 Questions. Questions have a tendency to keep the quetioner
hidden, safe and unknown. The counselro often asks clients to
change their questions to statements.
 Language that denies power. Some clients have a tendency to
deny their personal power by adding qualifiers or disclaimers to
their statements.
Example: maybe, perhaps, sort of, I guess, possibly, I suppose
 Listening to client’s metaphors. The threpists gets rich clues to
client’s internal struggles by tuning to their metaphors.
Example: It’s hard for me to spill my guts in here
At times I feel that i don’t have a leg to stand on
I feel like I have a hole in my soul

 Listening for Language that uncovers a story. Clients
often use language that is elusive yet gives significant
clues to a stroy that illustrates thei life struggles.
Polsters belived that storytelling is not always a form of
resistance instead it can be the heart ofthe therapeutic
process.

Roger’s basic assumptions:
 People are essentially trustworthy
 They have a vast potential for understanding
themselves and resolving their own problems
without direct intervention on the therapist’s part
 They are capable of self-directed growth if they
are involved in a specific kind of therapeutic
relationship

View of Human Nature
 Carl Rogers trusts the clients that they have the
ability to move forward in a constructive manner
if conditions fostering growth are present. He
believed that people are trustworthy,
resourceful, capable of self-understanding and
self-direction, able to make constructive
changes and able to live effective and
productive lives.

 He maintained that three therapist attributes
create a growthh-promoting climate in which
individuals can move forward and become
what they are capable of becoming:
1) congruence (genuineness or realness),
2) unconditional positive regard (acceptance and
caring),
3) accurate emphatic understanding (an ability to
deeply grasp the subjective world of another
person.)

 the individual has an inherent capacity to move away
from maladjustment and toward psychological health
and growth. Here, the therapist places the primary
responsibility on the client. The person-centered
approach
 In the person-centered approach rejects the role od the
therapist as the authority who knows best and of the
passive client who merely follows the beliefs of the
therapist.
 This therapy is rooted in the client;s capacity for
awareness and self-directed change in attitudes and
behavior.

 This approach emphasizes how the client act in their
world with others, how they move forward in a
constructive directions and how they can successfylly
deal with obstacles (both from within themselves and
outside of themselves) that are blocking their growth.
 It promotes self-awareness and self-reflection, clients
learn to exercise choice.
 Humanistic therapists emphasize a discovery-oriented
approach in which clients are th experts on their own
inner experience.

CONGRUENCE AND INCONGRUENCE
 A state of congruence exists when a person’s
symbolized experiences reflect all of the actual
experiences of the organism. When one
symbolized experiences do not represent all of
the actual experiences, or if they are denied or
distorted, there is a lack of correspondence
between the self as perceived and thereal self.
 In such situation, there is incongruence and
possible maladjustment.

ACTUALIZATION
 Actualizing tendency according to Brodley (1999, as
cited in Corey, 2013) is a directional process of striving
toward realization, fulfillment, autonomy, and self-
determination. According to Van Kalmthout in 1995 (as
cited in Engler, 2012) this actualizing tendency is part of
universal life force; it follows lines laid down by genetics
and may also be influenced by temperament. The
process of actualization is neither automatic nor
effortless; it involves struggle and even pain.

THE SELF
 The self-concept is a portion of the phenomenal field
that has gradually become differentiated. It is composed
of those conscious perceptions nd values of “me” or “I,”
some of which are a result of the important others. It is
an object of perception. It is the person as she or he
perceives herself or himself. Thus, we have distinction
between the organism or real self in the process of
actualization , and the self as perceived , or object. The
“self” that aretaken over from other people rather than
the actual experiences of the organism.

DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY
 Positive regard refers to being loved and
accepted for who one is. In an ideal situation,
positive regard is unconditional. It is given freely
to children for who they are regard regardless of
what they do.
 Unconditional positive regard is not
contingent on any specific behaviors.
Conditional positive regard is given only under
certain circumstances.

 . Positive self-regard follows automatically if one has
perceived unconditional positive regard. Children who
are accpeted for who they are come to view themselves
favorably and with accpetance.
ACCURATE EMPHATIC UNDERSTANDING
 Implies that the therapist will sense client’s feelings as if
they were his or her own without becoming lost in those
feelings. A way for therapists to hear the meanings
expressed by their clients that often lie at the edge of
theri awareness.

Humanistic approach to counseling

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