Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Counselling Services
My approach is a spectrum approach to psychological counselling.
Ken Wilber (1982, The Spectrum of Consciousness, Wheaton, Il: The Theosophical Publishing House) provides a model which is helpful in directing a coherent multimodal approach to psychotherapeutic treatment. He outlines an understanding of consciousness in which there are different levels of awareness each potentially productive of a certain type of alienation from oneself.
He contends that each of the major but differing schools of psychotherapy is simply addressing a different level of consciousness. Hence, he maintains that a true synthesis of therapies is one that can allow approaches leading to integrations which target the whole person.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
There are direct methods to focus on blocking unwanted behaviours or promoting wanted behaviours. Behavioural therapy uses experimentally validated principles of learning to overcome unwanted habits.
Counter-conditioning uses the reciprocal inhibition principle in which responses are encouraged such as relaxation which diminish anxiety in the presence of anxiety provoking situations. Various relaxation techniques may be taught including breathing techniques, muscle relaxation, and autogenic relaxation based on a yoga nidra understanding of the value of shifting attention. Meditation is another relaxation technique with multiple approaches that can provide benefit. These desensitising procedures can be used to treat feared events of various kinds. Phobias and many anxiety disorders can be treated in this way.
Positive conditioning uses rewards of various types to to reward wanted behaviour. For example, coaching assertiveness training techniques with consequent praise for positive outcomes. This can help treat low confidence and low self esteem. By contrast, extinction techniques may weaken a habit by disallowing a usual reward to unwanted behaviour, for example in the treatment of tics by deliberate overuse causing fatigue.
The thoughts and cognitions surrounding an individuals' experience can also be targeted. The aim is to eliminate illogical or irrational thinking styles which directly lead to unwanted feelings and behaviours. This is a major component of treating depression. It is not so much what happens to a person which determines outcome but the way in which those events are interpreted or framed.
Hypnosis / Hypnotherapy
Hypnosis is a type of relaxing or entrancing technique which uses suggestion to present a wanted idea for uncritical acceptance.
Different individuals may have differing degrees of suggestibility which can determine outcome. Hypnosis is generally used as an adjunct therapy. If used at all, it is to accompany the overall counselling process. It can be used to help treat low self esteem or low self confidence as well as to eliminate unwanted habits such as smoking, nail biting, and losing weight as well as many other applications.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic Therapy rests on the premise that people develop relational and attachment patterns in child hood that repeat in the present. Sometimes those patterns can be dysfunctional.
Transference analysis seeks to examine these patterns by looking at them as they develop in the psychotherapeutic relationship and that may relate to past experiences. Counselling approaches by contrast tend to focus on the here and now.
Transactional Analysis
Transactional Analysis is a user friendly therapy that includes an understanding of personality based on an ego-state model. This links the structures of personality to behaviour and to the re-playing of childhood strategies in adult life.
This approach can be used to understand personal and business relationships and may be used in psychotherapy, counselling, communications training as well as management training and organisational analysis. Redecision counselling and self-re-parenting strategies are very important components of transactional analysis.
The Basic Transactional Analysis Concepts which underlie TA therapy include:
- We are all OK. We all have a basic lovable core and a desire for positive growth.
- All of our many facets have a positive value for us in some way.
- Positive stroking (or reinforcement) increases (feelings of ) OKness.
- We are all responsible for the way we think,feel, and act.
- Our beliefs and behaviour are results of decisions we have made at critical times in our growth. Any decision can be re-decided.
- All emotional difficulties are curable.
- The patient is a fully involved partner in the healing process.
- change is most likely to occur when the therapist and the client are both fully invested in a clear ,healthy contract for the behavioural change sought.
- The ultimate goal is internal awareness and harmony,spontaneity and authentic, open intimate communication with others.
(Taken from M. White and J.White...Talking TA.. WPATA Publications..revised 1998.)
Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt Therapy is a counselling approach that focuses on current experience rather than ruminations about the past or future. Hence, the focus is on awareness and action. Hence, change becomes possible by no longer denying or disowning parts of oneself.
The emphasis on increased awareness is intended to confront the person with full responsibility for all his behaviour, to increase authentic self expression and relating, and to minimise self deceptive, evasive and self frustrating behaviour. (J.Greenwald, The Handbook of Gestalt Therapy, Aronson, new york, 1978 p.267).
The 'I-Thou and Here and Now' precepts summarise this style of 'presence' in therapy between therapist and client in contrast to a more clinical 'detached' style.
Jungian Analysis
Jungian Analysis regards psychotherapy as work that facilitates the individuation process. The process is directed by the unconscious mainly expressed in dream images which can be used in a variety of ways.
Jung believed that the unconscious compensation as revealed in these images could effectively correct the one-sideness of the conscious mind if understood and integrated. Individuation can be seen as coming to 'selfhood'. This is a holistic notion in which there is recognition of an autonomous centre in the psyche which is goal directed towards a sense of personal completeness, connectedness, harmony and self respect.
Examination of the myths and motifs that may be revealed in dreams can lead to trans-personal or archetypal insights.
Relationship / Marital / Couples Counselling and Family Therapy
Couples counselling and family therapy focuses on communication patterns, negotiation and problem solving based on mutual respect and commitment to honour agreements.
Overall clients lead the process by describing their current interest, concern or experience. Approaches are used which seem to fit what is required with an integrated and developmental focus. Hence, psychological therapy and counselling are specifically tailored to maximise positive outcomes for each individual.
Most symptoms and problems accessible to counselling can be treated by different but complementary elements of the above methods. Sometimes prescribed medication treatment is a necessary partner in the overall process for maximum benefit.
An example of my spectrum approach to counselling and psychotherapy can be found in the published paper 'Individuation in a Voyeur Recidivist' which may be found in the Publications section of this website.
