Psychotherapy

This research examines customs and practices of psychotherapy from the point of view of existential/humanistic psychotherapy theory. The research will set forth an analysis of a case study of a therapeutic session and then discuss that case study in connection with how it is possible to tell whether a person has grown or become more actualized in the way that humanistic/existential counseling theory anticipates.

What the case study of Michelle in therapy demonstrates about the practice of humanistic psychology above all is that the humanistic/existential psychotherapist is obliged to be alert to the vicissitudes of unfolding experience and client consciousness. As the case study shows, the client moves from subject to subject: her insecurities about returning to school as a mature student in a context of a potentially unsupportive spouse, her hints of regret about her marriage partner and he knowledge of what she perceives as a mother who is disappointed with her own life. She references Horney's despised image when she refers to her sense of no life accomplishment and to the idealized image when she cites her professional ambitions (Bugental, 1978, pp. 9, 11). The therapist is presented as being observant of Michelle's hesitant body language and reluctance to give herself permission to make an important life change. When the therapist finally does respond, she immediately zeroes in on the issue that turns out to be at the core of Michelle's apparent indecision and anxiety:

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le at the point of the case-study report. She plainly says that she is "unsure if I should take steps forward or remain the same in many areas of my life" (Case Study, p. 3). That is consistent, too, with Bugental's reference to the process of inward searching, "when a person describes the immediate inner experience of a life concern as fully as possible and with an expectancy of discovery" (1978, p. 52). One difference between existential and humanistic therapeutic approaches per se is that the former refers to patients and the latter to clients. Bugental prefers the latter term, and in that he follows Rogers, who appears to have first suggested the term. One thing these approaches share is a concern to be aware of and to a reasonable extent honor the fact of client anxiety. Bugental uses the phrase "taking the client seriously" (p. 60). The existential assumption, meanwhile, is that at least part of the client's conflict is unconscious and that the client has adopted "maladaptive defense mechanisms" to cope with it. The role of the therapist is to help the client identify the destructiveness of these coping strategies and to "develop other ways of coping with primary anxiety" (May & Yalom, p. 289). The humanistic approach is to

Category: Psychology - P