The purpose of this paper is to explicate my personal theory of individual counseling. The presentation describes my perspective in terms of eight conceptual/theoretical areas: personality structure, motivation, development, individual difference, illness, cure and therapeutic techniques.
It should be noted here that two scriptures serve as the biblical foundation of my approach to individual counseling. These are Romans 1:28 and Romans 12:2. Taken together, I feel these scriptures show the underlying spiritual foundation of all psychopathology (the reprobate mind) as well as the direction of cure (the renewal of the mind). In each of the issues I address in this report, these two scriptural passages are directly salient.
My approach to individual counseling is cognitive-behavioral in orientation. In terms of structure, I rely heavily on the work of George A. Kelly (1955, 1958, 1964). Kelly's view of the personality rests on the assumption that every individual is, in a sense, a scientist attempting to predict and control the world around them. In other words, all people experience events, perceive similarities and differences among these events, formulate concepts and constructs to order phenomena, and on the basis of these constructs, all people seek to anticipate future events.
Individuals, however, are unique in their use of particular constructs. Another way of understanding Kelly's view is that any given person's life is really a representation or construction of reality. People react not to "what is really out there," but rather to their interpretation of reality. In this sense, perception is interpretation.
The construct (defined as a way of construing or interpreting the world) is the key structural notion of Kelly's view. What then is the structure of the human personality? A person's personality is his or her own construct system. What ever choices I make regarding the constructs I will use to d...