Module 9: Psychological counseling
9.1. The essence and concept of psychological counseling

Psychological counseling as a profession is a relatively new field of psychological practice that has emerged from psychotherapy. This profession was created in response to the needs of people who do not have clinical disorders, but are looking for psychological help. Therefore, in psychological counseling, we primarily encounter people who are experiencing difficulties in everyday life. The range of problems is truly wide: difficulties at work (dissatisfaction with work, conflicts with colleagues and managers, the possibility of dismissal), unsettled personal life and family troubles, poor school performance, lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, painful fluctuations in decision-making, difficulties in establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships, etc. on the other hand, psychological counseling, as a young field of psychological practice, does not yet have strictly defined boundaries, and a wide variety of problems fall into its field of view.

Some ambiguity of the subject of psychological counseling is reflected in the variety of definitions. Thus, the licensing commission of the Association of Employees and Managers of the United States, which issues permits for private practice, offers the following definition:: "Counseling is a set of procedures designed to help a person solve problems and make decisions about their professional career, marriage, family, personal development, and interpersonal relationships." N. Burks and V. Steffire (1979) proposed a somewhat broader definition of counseling: "Consulting is the professional relationship of a qualified consultant to a client, which is usually presented as a person — to-person relationship, although sometimes more than two people participate in it. The purpose of counseling is to help clients understand what is happening in their living space and achieve their goals in a meaningful way, based on informed choices when solving emotional and interpersonal problems."

There are many similar definitions, and they all includeseveral main points:

·        Counseling helps a person choose and act on their own discretion.

·        Counseling helps you learn new behaviors.

·        Counseling promotes personal development.

Counseling focuses on the client's responsibility, i.e. it recognizes that an independent, responsible individual is able to make independent decisions in appropriate circumstances, and the consultant creates conditions that encourage strong-willed behavior of the client.

The core of counseling is the "consultative interaction" between the client and the consultant, based on the philosophy of "client-centered" therapy.

The founder of client-centered therapy, the famous American psychotherapist S. Rogers, identified three main principles of this direction:

·        each individual has an absolute value and deserves respect as such;

·        each person is able to be responsible for himself;

·        each individual has the right to choose values and goals, to make independent decisions.

Thus, the definitions of psychological counseling cover the core attitudes of the consultant towards the person in general and the client in particular. The consultant accepts the client as a unique, autonomous individual, who is recognized and respected for the right of free choice, self-determination, and the right to live his own life. It is all the more important to recognize that any suggestion or pressure prevents the client from taking responsibility for themselves and solving their problems correctly.

Goals of psychological counseling

The question of determining the goals of counseling is not simple, since it depends on the needs of clients seeking psychological help, and the theoretical orientation of the consultant himself. However, before getting acquainted with the variety of goals of counseling, we will formulate, following George and Cristiani (1990), several universal goals that are more or less mentioned by theorists of different schools:

Promote behavioral change so that the client can live more productively and experience life satisfaction, despite some unavoidable social constraints.

Develop coping skills when faced with new life circumstances and requirements.

Ensure effective adoption of vital decisions. There are many things that can be learned during counseling: independent actions, allocating time and energy, assessing the consequences of risk, exploring the value field in which decision-making takes place, evaluating your personality traits, overcoming emotional stress, understanding the impact of attitudes on decision-making, etc.

Develop the ability to establish and maintain interpersonal relationships. Communication with people takes up a significant part of their lives and causes difficulties for many due to their low level of self-esteem or insufficient social skills. Whether it's adult family conflicts or children's relationship problems, clients should improve their quality of life by learning to build better interpersonal relationships.

Facilitate the realization and enhancement of the individual's potential. According to Blocher (1966), in counseling, it is necessary to strive for maximum freedom of the client (taking into account natural social restrictions), as well as to develop the client's ability to control their environment and their own reactions provoked by the environment.

Despite some common goals of psychological counseling, the main psychological schools still differ significantly in their understanding:

Psychoanalytic direction
Goal: To bring to consciousness the material repressed in the unconscious; to help the client to reproduce the early experience and analyze the repressed conflicts; to reconstruct the basic personality

Adlerian direction
Goal: Transform the client's life goals; help them form socially significant goals and correct erroneous motivation by gaining a sense of equality with other people

Rational-emotional therapy (A. Ellis)
Goal: To eliminate the "self-destructive" approach of the client to life and help form a tolerant and rational approach; to teach the use of the scientific method in solving behavioral and emotional problems

Client-centered therapy (C. Rogers)
Goal: To create a favorable counseling climate suitable for self-exploration and recognition of factors that hinder personal growth; to encourage client openness to experience, self-confidence, and spontaneity

Existential therapy
Aims: To help the client understand their freedom and their own capabilities; to encourage them to take responsibility for what happens to them; to identify factors that block freedom

So does it still make sense to talk about some universal goals of counseling, when we can help the client in the pursuit of freedom, and in overcoming emotional stress, and in learning adaptive behavior, and in finding full-fledged self-expression? A possible answer to the question is: the goals of psychological counseling are a continuum, with general, global, and long — term goals at one end, and specific, specific, and short — term goals at the other. The goals of counseling are not necessarily in conflict — it's just that schools focused on personality reconstruction emphasize long-term goals, while schools focused on behavior change attach more importance to specific goals.

The goals of the consultant and the client ultimately touch, although each consultant has in mind his own system of general goals corresponding to his theoretical orientation, and each client has his own individual goals that led him to the specialist. Very often, the formulation and reformulation of goals occur during the consultation process when the consultant interacts with the client. The implementation of the consultant's goals depends on the client's needs and expectations. To successfully combine your overall goals and the client's specific goals, you need to ask the client questions from the very beginning: "What do you expect from our communication?" Clients, as a rule, have only the most general idea of what a consultation is and what to expect from a consultant. When the client does not have any information about consulting, they are not able to properly formulate goals. If we inform the client about the length of conversations and generally what usually happens during consultation meetings, it is easier for them to understand the possibilities and limitations of consulting. Most clients come to psychological counseling, hoping that the consultant will immediately provide some help. In this situation, the consultant should remember the main goal of consulting — to help the client understand that he himself is the person who must decide, act, change, and update his abilities.