Description of Counselling Psychology

One of the main approaches to counselling psychology is the psychodynamic approach, which was derived from the classical psychoanalytic tradition. This approach has its origin in the work of Freud (1896), where the primary concept is to make the unconscious of an individual conscious. Freud believed that the talking cure, as the central to psychoanalysis and theoretical models which derived from it, is as effective as hypnosis in helping patients to locate the cause of their problems (Thomas, 1991). Theoretical models of counselling are based on the idea that clients need to talk through their problems in order to make sense of them. Freud (1909) described it as the process of encouraging patients to say entirely what they liked, no matter how unacceptable they may appear to be, as it was believed that all that occurred to them would be relevant and revealing. A critique for this approach would be that it is too deterministic as it is based on assumptions that what we think, feel and do is too determined by unconscious motivation. According to Busch and Milrod (2010), there is little empirical evidence to support the effectiveness of psychoanalysis by its nature as there were resistance among clinicians who have held a general mistrust of the research methods available. Also according to Hough (2006), this approach is adaptable for use with many different clients to a certain extent, as those who are extremely anxious or are not committed to the personal and emotional involvement would be unlikely to benefit from this approach due to the main focus being relied on the client expressing their feelings and thoughts.

According to (), different types of communication skills are central to the psychodynamic approach. One of the main ...

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