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1
 COUN6104: PHILOSOPHY AND THEORIES OF COUNSELLING

Welcome

Level 600, (1st Year) Core

Credit point value: 6
Delivery modes: Blended

Master of Counselling and Psychotherapy

Adapted by: Lorna Andriamora

COUN6104
This unit is designed to provide students with a thorough grounding
in major paradigms associated with counselling and psychotherapy.

Students critically analyse the underlying structure of different

therapeutic practices. They begin the process to identify specific
counselling and psychotherapy approaches that resonate with their
own developing framework of practice.

2
 OVERVIEW Week Topic Assessment

OF WEEKLY 1.
Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy theories and
practice, including common factors approach

SESSIONS 2. Introduction to theories and treatment planning

Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Counselling and

3.
Psychotherapy

4. Alderian Individual Counselling

5. Person-Centred Counselling and Psychotherapy

Assessment 1 due
6 Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy

7 Break week

8 Gestalt Therapy

9 Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy

Assessment 2
10 Systemic Family Counselling and Therapy.

11 Solution-Focused Approaches

Introduction to Theoretical Integration

12

Introduction to Theory Informed Case

13
Conceptualisation

TEXTBOOK
Gehart, D. (2017). Theory and treatment planning in counseling and psychotherapy. Cengage

3
 BLENDED DELIVERY
1. Lecture Wednesday 6pm (Week 1, 3, 5, 8, 10,12)
Lecture recording will be made available

2. Tutorial- Please check yours (Week 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12)

3. Drop-in Sessions (Week 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13)

4. Two days Interactive Workshop: 4th & 5th March 2022

ASSESSMENTS
A1: Annotated bibliography (Due on Week 6)
* Annotate 10 sources
* Summary and evaluation
* 250 words for each

A2: Essay (Due on Week 10)

 Write an essay
 Will be discussed on due time

4
 WEEK 1
INTRODUCTION TO COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
THEORIES AND PRACTICE, INCLUDING COMMON
FACTORS APPROACH

WEEK 1
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Discuss the importance of culturally competent helping when
practicing counseling and psychotherapy
• Understand how the theories identified have different conceptual
orientations
• Differentiate between each contemporary counseling model
• Examined the discourse—Common Factor Theory, evidence-based
practice (EBP), empirically supported treatments (ESTs)

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5
 COUNSELLING AND/OR PSYCHOTHERAPY

Counseling and psychotherapy are generally used interchangeably in

textbooks. In fact, most counseling and psychotherapy texts do not make a
distinction between these words.

(Neukrug, 2017)

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COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Despite this lack of distinction, a differentiation between counselling

and psychotherapy is often made by the average person, frequently
made by students, and commonly made by professors.

Acknowledging this common usage distinction, one can represent

these differences by placing counselling and psychotherapy on
opposite ends of a continuum when looking at a number of attributes
typically associated with therapy

(Neukrug, 2017)

12

6
 ARGUMENTS FOR DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS FOR COUNSELING AND
PSYCHOTHERAPY

Counseling Psychotherapy

• For normal individuals • For disturbed individuals

• Educational and vocational • Personal
• Done in schools and • Done in hospital
guidance clinics • Done by psychiatrists
• Done by counselors

Are these valid distinctions?

Is there overlap between these concepts?

(Sharf, 2016)

13

COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

(Neukrug, 2017)

14

7
 COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
Psychotherapy Counselling
 therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted  highly trained to someone who uses counselling
between a trained professional and a client. skills (listening, reflecting back what you say, or
 mostly psychological in nature clarifying

 aimed at increasing an individual’s sense of his  a process of integration which facilitates

or her own well-being meaningful understanding of self and
environment resulting in the establishment
 therapeutic techniques employed to improve and/or classification of goals and values for
psychological functioning and promote future behaviour
adjustment to life
 a process in which clients learn to make better
 Practiced by clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, decisions and formulate new ways of behaving,
counsellors, marriage and family therapists, feeling and thinking
social workers, mental health counsellors,
occupational therapists and psychiatric nurses.  subspecialties are: school counselling, marriage
and family counselling and career counselling.
 has roots in Freudian psychodynamics

15

COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Psychotherapy Counselling

 emphasises on insight.  lays more emphases on change

 more in-depth interventions.  generally giving advice
 a greater focus on improving problems with a  deals mainly with basic life problems that most
person's underlying thoughts, beliefs or people experience
emotions
 deals with personal, social, vocational, and
 focuses more on adjustment and psychological educational concerns
problems.
 a long-term relationship, to range from 20 -40
 tends to be short-term ranging from 8-12 sessions over a period of 6 months to 2 years.
sessions over several months
 is provided in both in-patient and out-patient
 is most often provided in an out-patient setting setting.

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8
 SIMILARITIES
 The kinds of issues that draw people to use counselling and psychotherapy are often very similar and the

aims of both are also very similar.

 Both can be seen as attempt to allow the patient/ client build up resources to live in more healthy,

meaningful and satisfying ways, and to develop self-awareness.

 In both counselling and Psychotherapy, a high degree of respect for the autonomy of the client is a basic

principle.

 both counselling and psychotherapy require the therapist to have highly developed skills.

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COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Client-related factors also influence positive outcomes, which

include:

* personal resources
* readiness for change
* psychological resources
* access to social supports

(Beutler, et al., 2016; Laska & Wampold, 2014).

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9
 COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
Some of the theories that we will discuss lean more toward counselling, while
others lean heavily toward psychotherapy.

For example, solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) tends to lean toward the side
of counselling. in fact, many SFBT therapists would argue that psychotherapy is
not needed by most clients.

In contrast, psychoanalysis is heavily oriented toward the psychotherapy end of

the continuum. Psychoanalysts would argue that real healing can only occur with
psychotherapy. Many of the theories, on the other hand, could easily fit on either
end of the continuum

(Neukrug, 2017)

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WHY DO WE NEED THEORIES?

Theory offers us a framework from which to work by providing us with a
comprehensive system of conceptualizing our clients’ problems, applying
techniques, and predicting client change.
Having a theory tells the world that we are not haphazard in the way in which
we apply knowledge, because to “function without theory is to operate without
placing events in some order and thus to function meaninglessly”.
In addition, theories are heuristic; that is, they are researchable and testable
and ultimately allow us to discard those aspects shown to be ineffective and
build on those aspects that seem to work best.

(Hansen, Rossberg, & Cramer, 1994; Neukrug, 2017)

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10
 theories as narrative possibilities to be used in the service of
helping clients.
The fundamental task of education in the helping professions, then,
is familiarize students with healing narratives and associated rituals,
so that students can learn various ways to transform the life stories
of their clients, which have generated suffering, into hopeful,
optimistic narratives that promote growth and healing (Hansen,
2006a).

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THEORIES

(Neukrug, 2017)

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11
 QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT A THEORY
OF PSYCHOTHERAPY AND COUNSELING

Is it precise?

Is it clear?

Is it comprehensive?

Can it be tested through research?

How useful is it?

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COUNSELLING MODELS

(Corey, 2016)

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 (Corey, 2016)

25

THE PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACHES

Psychoanalytic therapy is based largely on insight, unconscious

motivation, and reconstruction of the personality.

 The psychoanalytic model appears first because it has had a major

influence on all of the formal systems of psychotherapy.

Some of the therapeutic models are extensions of psychoanalysis,

others are modifications of analytic concepts and procedures, and still
others emerged as a reaction against psychoanalysis.
Many theories of psychotherapy have borrowed and integrated
principles and techniques from psychoanalytic approaches.
(Corey, 2016)

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13
 THE PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACHES

Adlerian therapy differs from psychoanalytic theory in many

respects, but it can broadly be considered an analytic perspective.

Adlerians focus on meaning, goals, purposeful behaviour,

conscious action, belonging, and social interest.

Although Adlerian theory accounts for present behaviour by

studying childhood experiences, it does not focus on unconscious
dynamics.
(Corey, 2016)

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THE EXPERIENTIAL AND RELATIONSHIP-ORIENTED THERAPIES

–The existential approach
Stresses a concern for what it means to be fully human. It suggests
certain themes that are part of the human condition, such as freedom
and responsibility, anxiety, guilt, awareness of being finite, creating
meaning in the world, and shaping one’s future by making active
choices.

This approach is not a unified school of therapy with a clear theory

and a systematic set of techniques. rather, it is a philosophy of
counselling that stresses the divergent methods of understanding the
subjective world of the person

(Corey, 2016)

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14
 THE EXPERIENTIAL AND RELATIONSHIP-ORIENTED THERAPIES

–The person-centred approach

Is rooted in a humanistic philosophy, places emphasis on the basic

attitudes of the therapist. It maintains that the quality of the client–
therapist relationship is the prime determinant of the outcomes of the
therapeutic process.

Philosophically, this approach assumes that clients have the capacity

for self-direction without active intervention and direction on the
therapist’s part.

29

THE EXPERIENTIAL AND RELATIONSHIP-ORIENTED THERAPIES

–The Gestalt therapy

Offers a range of experiments to help clients gain awareness

of what they are experiencing in the here and now—that is,
the present.

30

15
 ACTION-ORIENTED APPROACHES

The Cognitive behavioural approaches

They emphasize translating insights into behavioural action.
These approaches include choice theory/reality therapy, behaviour therapy, rational emotive behaviour
therapy, and cognitive therapy.
 Reality therapy focuses on clients’ current behaviour and stresses developing clear plans for new
behaviours. Like reality therapy, behaviour therapy puts a premium on doing and on taking steps to
make concrete changes.
 A current trend in behaviour therapy is toward paying increased attention to cognitive factors as an
important determinant of behaviour.
 Rational emotive behaviour therapy and cognitive therapy highlight the necessity of learning how to
challenge inaccurate beliefs and automatic thoughts that lead to behavioural problems.

These cognitive behavioural approaches are used to help people modify their inaccurate and self-
defeating assumptions and to develop new patterns of acting.

31

SYSTEM APPROACHES

Feminist therapy and family therapy are systems approaches,

but they also share postmodern notions.

The systems orientation stresses the importance of

understanding individuals in the context of the surroundings
that influence their development.
To bring about individual change, it is essential to pay
attention to how the individual’s personality has been affected
by his or her gender-role socialization, culture, family, and
other systems.

32

16
 POSTMODERN APPROACHES

–Include social constructionism, solution-focused brief therapy, and

narrative therapy.

–These newer approaches challenge the basic assumptions of most of

the traditional approaches by assuming that there is no single truth
and that reality is socially constructed through human interaction.
Both the postmodern and the systemic theories focus on how
people produce their own lives in the context of systems,
interactions, social conditioning, and discourse.

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RESEARCH AND EVIDENCE BASE

34

17
 COMMON FACTORS (ACROSS THEORIES) RESEARCH

- Effectiveness of counseling depends on key

elements found in all theories

>Client Factors (40%)

>Counseling Relationship (30%)
>Theory-Specific Factors: Techniques (15%)
>Hope and Expectancy (15%)

- Diversity and the Common Factors

35

The CF Approach
– The CF approach (Frank & Frank, 1993; Wampold, 2001) conceptualizes
psychotherapy as a socially constructed and mediated healing practice. The CF
model focuses on factors that are necessary and sufficient for change:

(a)an emotionally charged bond between the therapist and patient,

(b)a confiding healing setting in which therapy takes place,
(c) a therapist who provides a psychologically derived and culturally embedded
explanation for emotional distress,
(d)an explanation that is adaptive (i.e., provides viable and believable options for
overcoming specific difficulties) and is accepted by the patient, and
(e)a set of procedures or rituals engaged by the patient and therapist that leads
the patient to enact something that is positive, helpful, or adaptive.

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18
 THE EST APPROACH

–The EST approach proposes that psychotherapeutic treatments

contain specific techniques that are purported to remediate
identifiable deficits that form the diathesis of a given mental
disorder.

–ESTs also contain a variety of components common to all

psychotherapies, such as “the therapeutic alliance, the induction of
positive expectancy of change, and remoralisation

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EVIDENCE-BASED TREATMENTS

–EST places primacy on different theories of change, a CF approach

states that the adoption of a credible theory is only one aspect of
many necessary common factors that contribute to behaviour change.

–EST predicts that some treatments will be more effective than other
treatments, which is the logical opposite of CF, which states that all
bona fide treatments are equally efficacious

38

19
 Is One Treatment More Effective Than Another Across All
Disorders?

39

CHOOSING A THEORY

 Competency and Research

Finding the “one and only” vs. “playing the field”

 Before You Choose:

Examine research on the role of theory in counselling

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20
 CONCLUSION

In Week 1 we took an adventure. We Discussed the

importance of culturally competent helping when
practicing counselling and psychotherapy. We
peaked our curiosity with the discovery of how the
theories identified have different conceptual
orientations. We then differentiated between each
contemporary counseling model. To conclude with a
critical exploration of the discourse—Common Factor
Theory, evidence-based practice (EBP), empirically
supported treatments (ESTs).

41

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271–285. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.61.4.271

• American Psychological Association (APA). (2013). Recognition of Psychotherapy Effectiveness. Psychotherapy, 50, 102–109. doi:10.1037/a0030276

• American Psychological Association, & American Psychological Association. (2016). Publication manual of the american psychological association (Sixth). American
Psychological Association.

• Baker, T. B., McFall, R. M., & Shoham, V. (2008). Current status and future prospects of clinical psychology: Toward a scientifically principled approach to mental and
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• Barlow, D. H. (2008). Clinical handbook of psychological disorders: A step-by-step treatment manual (4th ed.). Guilford Press.

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