2007'den Bugüne 92,260 Tavsiye, 28,210 Uzman ve 19,973 Bilimsel Makale
Site İçi Arama
Yeni Tavsiye Ekleyin!



Exıstentıalısm Vs. Person-Centred Therapy
MAKALE #17631 © Yazan Psk.Burçin KOYUNCU | Yayın Aralık 2016 | 19,518 Okuyucu
Psychotherapy and counseling are communications between therapist and client or clients in order to help clients with their problem leading to have disorders of thinking, emotional suffering or problems of behavior (Sharf, 2004). According to Boeree (2002) as a definition psychotherapy is the term for any technique that attempts to help people who are suffering from a psychological disorder. It includes both the various "talk therapies" and the more physiological approaches, including the use of psychoactive medicines. These different theoretical approaches have been developed through research and the practice in area of psychotherapy .Still, there are a number of recognized approaches with new ones developed all the time. Most new approaches add a small amount that is truly new while expanding on existing approaches or combining elements of several approaches. Most approaches therefore have considerable overlap in theory and practice (Sharf, 2004). Person-centred and existential psychotherapy are two important types of theoretical approaches. Existential therapy is an approach that examines some of the major issues in our existence such as the meaning of life, loneliness, mortality, and the challenge of free will while person-centered therapy involves allowing the patient, who he prefers to call the client, to be in control of their own therapy.(Boerre,2002). Despite of the weaknesses, existential and person-centred approaches offers straightforward ways for beneficial therapeutic practice. So considering the characteristics of person-centred and existential approaches in this essay the aim is comparing these two different approaches to counseling, and to highlight some important similarities and differences between them.

Existentialism is a philosophical approach to understanding human existence and experiences. Soren Kierkegaard can be accepted as grandfather of existentialism. It is based on the assumption that individuals are free and responsible for their own choices and actions. The main focus is on exploring the challenges and paradoxes of human existence, rather than psychopathology. Central themes of existential thought include the reliability of our everyday views of ourselves and other people, the relation between objective facts and subjective experience, the significance of the temporality and mortality of life, the basic nature of relationships between people, and the role of society in the structure of the individual. (Webber, 2009) Like all theories, problems arise when there are too many attempts for definition. The common thread is unifying theme of understanding human existence. Why do we exist? How profound is our existence? What makes us exist? However most of them would agree that the fundamental constructs of humanity that encapsulates existential. Existential therapy looks into the freedom of making one’s choices. A therapist’s job is to guide the client into understanding his individual uniqueness which is shaped from infancy (Corey , 2008) and the life paths he chooses . Then this uniqueness is utilized as a tool to help the client to focus on his present and future. The therapist will also make him be clearly aware that he is free of his own destiny, and is responsible for the choices he makes under no constraints to pursue any possibilities he wants for his future. This technique of therapy teaches the client to be conscious of his life and his surrounding and to understand that no one other than himself is responsible for the decisions (Corey, 2008)

On the other hand, the precursor of person-centered therapy was Carl Rogers. His viewpoint was centered in liberal humanism, thus as a result includes naturalism and places man at the center of the universe. Furthermore, humanistic psychotherapies postulate that all human beings have absolute freedom of action. Rogers assumed all human beings have an innate instinct to search for ‘self-actualization’ and as result it did not impose any controls whatever; our free will guided us towards our own happiness as well as collective accord. (Cooper,2003). During a therapy session, the focus is on the whole person. The main goal is establishing the relationship with the client in which the person can gradually encourage to face the anxiety and confusion which is arised from challenges in self-concept. In this way client can move beyond the confusion and gradually to experience the freedom to choose a way of being which is more close to his deepest feelings and values. Knowledge is a vital component of the therapy session as well as empathy, more willingly than a through analysis of family history. By promoting self-confidence, recognizing our own feelings, the individual ultimately will achieve self-acceptance in addition to self-actualization. The counselors training under this particular philosophy is implementing empathy, genuineness and an unconditional positive regard. (Cooper,2003)
Considering all these information, what links the existential and person-centred approaches closely together, and also distinguishes them from most other approaches to counseling, is their phenomenological orientation. This orientation is based on the idea that everyone lives in a different subjective experiential ‘reality’. Therefore in order to help the client the counsellor must be able to “enter the client’s experiential world and listen to the phenomena of that world without the presuppositions that distort understanding” (Deurzen, 2002). Regarding to the phenomenological orientation the idea is that it is the client, and not the therapist who dictates the direction of therapy, that only the client can be the real “expert” in his subjective world, although this idea occupies certainly a more central place in person-centred than in existential theory. So both approaches believe in clients’ ability to make better sense of their lives and find their own ‘right’ directions, only the existential theory considers it is necessary to use somewhat more active and confronting approach (Deurzen, 2002).

The other similarity is that both approaches place significant emphasis on the internalization of the individual’s locus of evaluation in achieving authenticity. Although existential thought does not use the actual term ‘locus of evaluation’ van Deurzen (2002) suggests that the fundamental objective of the approach enable people to rediscover their own values, beliefs and their life’s purpose.

Although there seems a further difference in terms of the nature of self-awareness, both existential and person-centred approaches emphasize the therapist’s self-awareness about assumptions and judgments. The existential message is something “the two of us, you and me, we are involved in the same undertaking, coming to grips with the vagaries of life and meaning and death, although today we will focus entirely on your undertaking and not mine” and the person-centred message is something, “the two of us, you and me, we are involved in very different undertakings, and what matters is just that I will be here with you to understand and accept you and to reflect congruently on your undertaking and not mine”. (Malhauzer,2009)
One of the difference between existential therapy and person-centred therapy is that Rogers sets out an over-arching view of personality development and of the creation and maintenance of psychological disturbance which informs essentially all of person-centred practice. (Malhauzer,2009) Existential counselling, by contrast, avoids over-arching theories of personality that creates one of the difference between the approaches.

Another thing is that while the person-centred approach focuses on the development of the ‘self’ under more or less hospitable conditions, correlating with the relative availability of positive regard, the existential approach focuses on the individual’s relationships.
One of the most notable difference centers on time. Although Rogers refers to the client’s “increasing use of all his organic equipment to sense, as accurately as possible, the existential situation within and without” (Rogers, 1961) there is little temporality about his view of full functioning. Emphasizing the importance of experience at the moment, the temporal context characteristic of the existential approach has no place in Rogers’s explanation of full functioning.

The relationship between these two approaches to counseling becomes more complex in terms of practical application. Because both theory are different in terms of that existential therapists are required to be expert and capable of profound and wide-range of understanding of what being human means. However this notion of being ‘wisdom’ is not proper to person-centred therapists. Because according to person-centred therapists existential approach appears to demand the therapist be ‘wise’, only that the therapist must be capable of facilitating the client’s own exploration of what matters to him. (Malhauzer,2009). The wisdom seems to be that if the therapist just does a good job of being congruent, and if the therapist is herself accepting and empathic and relatively free of psychological disturbance, then it won’t really matter so much what she actually says. That is the idea of the therapy in person-centred approach. So much attention is on congruence, as one of Rogers’s core conditions, but very little is on what is actually said when being congruent.

Moreover, Deurzen(2002) emphasizes “life, the world and oneself” as a reminder that for the existential approach, disturbance may not be just about impaired openness to current experience it may be about existence, meaning and temporality. The existential counselor acknowledges that someone might be relatively free of the kinds of distortions, denials, conditions of worth and other hallmarks of disturbance which populate person-centred theory and yet still experience existential theory. (Legg, 1998)

Actually the general view is that although existentialism assess critically rationalizing the patients’ experience, its aim is to degree that thinking, analyzing and self-awareness are ‘rational’ behaviors. The main shortcoming of person-centered therapy is its core view that is based on a humanistic standpoint.

To conclusion, existential therapy and person-centred therapy have similarities as much as differences in lots of points. As it is said earlier most approaches therefore have considerable overlap in theory and practice as it is seen between existential and person-centred theory. This similarity intense in phenomenological orientation; emphasize of individual’s locus of evaluation in achieving authenticity; self-awareness about assumptions and judgements. The differences are especially exists in over-arching theories of personality, matters focusing on the self vs. relationships, time, therapist’s need of to be wisdom, the notions that seems important to remind the patient. However according to Deurzen (2002) none of these differences or opposites have to be contradictory. They form two sides of the same coin. Energy flows from the positive pole to the negative one and power is generated. Creative living is about allowing the current between poles. So this contradicts creates the tension and the tension between them is the very substance of life.
Yazan
Bu makaleden alıntı yapmak için alıntı yapılan yazıya aşağıdaki ibare eklenmelidir:
"Exıstentıalısm Vs. Person-Centred Therapy" başlıklı makalenin tüm hakları yazarı Psk.Burçin KOYUNCU'e aittir ve makale, yazarı tarafından TavsiyeEdiyorum.com (http://www.tavsiyeediyorum.com) kütüphanesinde yayınlanmıştır.
Bu ibare eklenmek şartıyla, makaleden Fikir ve Sanat Eserleri Kanununa uygun kısa alıntılar yapılabilir, ancak Psk.Burçin KOYUNCU'nun izni olmaksızın makalenin tamamı başka bir mecraya kopyalanamaz veya başka yerde yayınlanamaz.
     3 Beğeni    
Facebook'ta paylaş Twitter'da paylaş Linkin'de paylaş Pinterest'de paylaş Epostayla Paylaş
Makale Kütüphanemizden
İlgili Makaleler Psk.Burçin KOYUNCU'nun Yazıları
TavsiyeEdiyorum.com Bilimsel Makaleler Kütüphanemizdeki 19,973 uzman makalesi arasında 'Exıstentıalısm Vs. Person-Centred Therapy' başlığıyla benzeşen toplam 10 makaleden bu yazıyla en ilgili görülenleri yukarıda listelenmiştir.
Sitemizde yer alan döküman ve yazılar uzman üyelerimiz tarafından hazırlanmış ve pek çoğu bilimsel düzeyde yapılmış çalışmalar olduğundan güvenilir mahiyette eserlerdir. Bununla birlikte TavsiyeEdiyorum.com sitesi ve çalışma sahipleri, yazıların içerdiği bilgilerin güvenilirliği veya güncelliği konusunda hukuki bir güvence vermezler. Sitemizde yayınlanan yazılar bilgi amaçlı kaleme alınmış ve profesyonellere yönelik olarak hazırlanmıştır. Site ziyaretçilerimizin o meslekle ilgili bir uzmanla görüşmeden, yazı içindeki bilgileri kendi başlarına kullanmamaları gerekmektedir. Yazıların telif hakkı tamamen yazarlarına aittir, eserler sahiplerinin muvaffakatı olmadan hiçbir suretle çoğaltılamaz, başka bir yerde kullanılamaz, kopyala yapıştır yöntemiyle başka mecralara aktarılamaz. Sitemizde yer alan herhangi bir yazı başkasına ait telif haklarını ihlal ediyor, intihal içeriyor veya yazarın mensubu bulunduğu mesleğin meslek için etik kurallarına aykırılıklar taşıyorsa, yazının kaldırılabilmesi için site yönetimimize bilgi verilmelidir.


08:04
Top