r's evaluation of the need for change may not be sufficient motivation to compel an individual to look for help. Therefore, change is needed most often when the patient believes it is needed. If an individual is suffering as the result of his or her behavior or feelings, then changing that behavior or those feelings becomes necessary.
Society's perspective on the need for change has altered dramatically in the second half of the 20th century. The kinds of problems considered appropriate for therapy have begun to shift. Edward Shorter (1997) chronicles the "tendency to seek therapy for nonillness, counselling for stress and for life's problems . . . a psychologizing rather than a medicalizing of difficulties that previously might have been considered economic, social, or moral in nature and for which the help of the minister or a good neighbor might have been sought" (p. 289). Counselling has become a recognized profession, a means of intervening in the lives of "regular, normal" citizens in order to effect changes that enhance and enrich individual lives, rather than existing as a branch of medicine to deal primarily with madness and severe psychological deviance.
Kanfer and Goldstein are concerned with kinds of changes: behavioral problems, such as substance abuse, compulsive actions, or violence; psychological discomforts, such as low self-esteem, depression, or feelings of negativity; and interpersonal problems that interfere with the individual's ability to function effectively in social situations. While many of these problems may be rooted in deeper psychological aberrations, they are not in themselves the kinds of difficulties that would once have been considered within the purview of psychological counselling.
Change is needed in these circumstances to enable the individual to become more comfortable and effective within society. Don Richard Riso (1987) describes the process: "Psychology can help us sort ou...