THEORETICAL COMPARISON ON COUNSELING by Tony Astro

Psychodynamic Approach is to tap into unconscious feelings that are causing the difficulty or disorder of the patient. It is a protracted and responsibility of the therapist to undertake analysis about 4 times a week in a long time. The importance of easing the pain and focus on current situation is the goal of the counselor for the patient.

Adlerian Approach, unlike Psychodynamic Approach has a social component that involves our family including birth order where the theory is the oldest children tend to be power seeking and organized and youngest may become dependent on others. The Adlerian theory is a cognitive, goal oriented process that is interested in a person’s beliefs and perceptions, as well as the effects that person’s behavior has on others (Capuzzi, 2003).


Both approaches seek to further the development of personality and express the impulses. Psychodynamic help the patient to become more fully aware of his inner conflict through his subconscious and history while Adlerian is into development of the superiority of a person from inferiority complex.


It is vital that counselors must define the abnormal behavior and then present a description of the most common disorders through psychopathology. According to Hobson, there are new lines of evidence to suggest that psychodynamic approaches, including those of Freud and Klein that hypothesize mental representations of internal figures who are experienced in different ways, may have importance for understanding personality disorder (Hobson. 2000). Engaging in self-diagnosis without the view of psychopathology or using resources like Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) may not detect the actual cause and effect of patient’s abnormalities.

In order to recognize a patient’s problem’s the counselor must understand the dynamics and culture of his or her family. Depending on personality disorder, community and school, as a unit must be factored in. According to Irvin Yalom (1995), therapeutic experience is divided into eleven factors as follows:
1. Instillation of hope
2. Universality
3. Imparting information
4. Altruism
5. Corrective recapitulation of the primary family group
6. Development of socializing techniques
7. Imitative behavior
8. Interpersonal learning
9. Group cohesiveness
10. Catharsis
11. Existential factors

Every group of the individual patient has some information that will bring light to the therapy. Group therapy can also aid other participants through offering of words of comfort with the same situation.

References:
Capuzzi, D. & Gross, D.R. (2003). Counseling and Psychotherapy: Theories and Inerventions (3rd Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Hobson, P (2000). Psychodynamics and developmental psychopathology, Psychiatry, Volume 4, Issue 5, Pages 21-24. Retrieved on January 18, 2009 from http://www.psychiatryjournal.co.uk/article/S1476-1793(06)70118-5/abstract

Yalom, I (1995). Theory and practice of group psychotherapy, (4th ed.). New York: Basic Books

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