Theories & Approaches to Counselling

Week 2: Psychodynamic Approaches to Counselling

There are four factors that account for the process of change within an individual:
15% treatment
15% Placebo effect
40% Personality i.e. resources, agency (personal impetus), previous experiences, environmental factors, family, culture
30% therapeutic relationship
Therapist should be neutral with client and provide them with the ‘tools’ for them to make an inner change
Transferrance
Counter-transferrance – unresolved issues attributed to the client

Psychodynamic Model
Psychodynamic is a systemized study and theory of psychological forces that underlie human behaviour, emphasizing the interplay between the unconscious and conscious motivation and the functions
This model is largely based on Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. Freud believed that the mind is made up of three parts; the conscious, subconscious and unconscious, altogether forming the “mental iceberg”
The psychodynamic model is interested in how childhood relationships and experiences affect future mental health
According to psychoanalysis, a personality is formed by the age of 6

Introduction
The term psychodynamic refers to a wide group of theories that emphasizing the overriding influences, drives and forces and the importance of developmental experience in shaping personality
Instinct of drive: strong internal forces known as instincts motivate the human behaviour. They are also called drives. There are two major types of instincts
1. Life instincts: it forces to libido. Seeking pleasure behaviour, satisfying the basic needs e.g. friendship, love etc.
2. Death instincts: refers to Thanatos unconscious desire to die, aggressiveness, and self-destruction
Most recent psychodynamic theory places greater emphasis on conscious experience and its interaction with the unconscious, in addition to the role that social factors play in development. The psychodynamic model is more concerned with the unconscious forces determining behaviour
Subconscious mind filters information between the unconscious and conscious mind

Assumptions of the Psychodynamic Model
The essence of the psychodynamic model is that:
The most significant forces shaping human behaviour operate at the unconscious level
People are not aware of the critical motivations or their most important conflicts and frustrations.
Humans use defensive mechanisms, e.g. in the form of dissociation in order to protect themselves. Therefore inner torments/conflicts are withheld and repressed within the unconscious mind.

Freud and Psychodynamic Model
The psychodynamic approach was largely the result of the work of Sigmund Freud, who developed the theory and technique of psychoanalysis
Freud was a brilliant young Viennese physician who at first specialised in neurology and received an appointment as lecturer on nervous disease at the University of Vienna
He was impressed by their use of hypnosis with hysterical patients and came way convinced that powerful mental processes could remain hidden from consciousness
He directed the patients under from hypnosis to talk freely about their problems and about what bothered them. Under these circumstances the patient usually displayed considerable emotions and on awakening from the hypnotic state felt considerably relieved
Because of the emotional releases involved this model was called the Cathartic (???)
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Freud learned that a patients dream could be a source of significant emotional material and contain clues to the underlying causes of a disturbance
Transference, is a process by which a patient respond to the therapist as if the therapist were a significant person in the patient’s life

Topography of the Mind

1. Conscious* – consists of those mental events and activities of which the organism is immediately aware. The law of lofic governs conscious mental thoughts
2. Pre conscious – the intermediate state, separating the contents of the conscious and the unconscious. The contents