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Psychodynamic Counselling: A Brief History Of Psychodynamic Therapy

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Introduction
What is counselling? Therapy comes in many forms, from behavioural therapies, to psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapies to humanistic therapies. Each of these will be discussed in the summary of ‘What is counselling? The promise and the problem of talking therapies. – Feltham (1995)’. Many opinions and different theorists will be debated in psychology, the history of counselling, it’s many different theories and researchers that have contributed to the improvement pf psychology and our understanding.

Psychoanalysis and its variants
• According to Freud (as cited in Feltham, 1995) psychoanalysis is an ever maturing and growing area. Human beings have unquestionable urges that are assessed when a person is an infant.
• Id, …show more content…

(Feltham, 1995)
• Psychodynamic therapy is seen as the higher-class of the therapies. It isn’t available to the ‘common’ people, to the man in the street. Critics say that this type of therapy isn’t successful or useful. (Feltham, 1995)
• According to Feltham (1995) psychodynamic therapy is seen as a structure bordering on religion not a cure for the psychological illness’ we face.
• Next we focus on psychoanalytic therapy, a form of therapy or counselling with a face to face session. Only two people in a session together. Psychoanalytic Therapy is a therapy that focuses on the unconscious and the need to understand it. (Feltham, 1995)
• The psychoanalytic relationship between the counsellor and client is important. The analyst will analyse the unconscious information they are picking up and break it down for us to understand. We can use this form of therapy in any situation. (Feltham, 1995)

Humanistic Therapies
• This movement began in the 1940’s, but never really came to light until the 1960’s and 1970’s. This movement became popular in American as well as Britain. (Feltham, …show more content…

(Feltham, 1995)
• Person-Centred therapy is seen as a mild form of therapy. It inspires clients to relapse into the early, distressed circumstances of both the body and the mind. We can identify those circumstances by the theatrical shouting, crying etc. It’s not sufficient to relieve all these emotions and leave it. It has to be a continuous journey of self-actualisation and realisation. (Feltham, 1995)
• According to Feltham (1995) Person-centred is a broadly educated training course. The essential environments used for training for this therapy, and many others, are empathy and genuineness which was first supported by Carl Rogers.
• Person-centred is focused on what the client knows what he/she needs in order to develop and no one can tell them otherwise. This therapy has an appearance of genuineness and effortlessness. (Feltham, 1995)
• According to Rowan (as cited in Feltham, 1995) claims that this therapy will certainly lead to transpersonal psychology, therapy and theory. The growth and positive changes achieved in humanistic therapy will lead to the spiritual

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