Psychoanalytical, Adlerian, and Existential approaches to counseling have fundamental differences and similarities. Corey, 2017 provides the application of all these methods through videos. He engages in an interview with Stan and demonstrates how the therapy approaches can be insightful. With the psychoanalytical approach, Dr. Corey explores deep feelings by allowing us to understand what is suppressed in mind. This theory is based on the principle of attachment, resistance, and transference. A therapist can also conduct a transference, dream, as well as a word association analysis in the counseling process. Whereas Dr. Corey uses word association, Stan demonstrates transference feelings in their discussions.
The application of the Adlerian approach makes the client familiarize himself with the social context. This process helps the therapist and the client to develop a collaborative relationship throughout the session. The therapy has four main stages namely engagement, assessment, insight, insight and reorientation. All are meant to help the client reflect his/her life with the ability to adopt changes for a positive difference. Also, the therapy is always short term and goal oriented. However, it alludes to the feelings of discouraging, lack of the sense of belonging, as well as inferiority. These feelings may result in neurotic behaviors that may affect the therapy process. Dr. Corey motivates Stan by providing him an assignment. This approach brings Stan to terms with many memories even though he is being discouraged from interpreting them.
The existential approach looks on a client’s factors and characteristics such as self-determination and the free will. Also, it emphasizes the ability of a client to come up with rational decisions with the aim of maximizing the results. This approach borrows a lot from other theories such as being resilient on the past and flexibility in dealing with favorable situations. During the video, Dr. Corey assesses Stan by the use of an existential approach. This helps him to focus on his present and future conditions. By avoiding the past, Stan is oriented with realities such as death, mortality as well as individual responsibility.
From the analysis of the three theories, there are some similarities that are evident. All of them are meant to help improve client conditions. Also, the results in each video are reliant on the relationship between the therapist and the client. The existential approach borrows a lot from the others but pays less attention to symptoms. However, there is a difference in focus for each of the videos. While the psychoanalytical approach looks at the memories that harm the client, the Adlerian theory focuses on the present and future.
In the Adlerian session, the two focuses on Stan’s memory assignment. Stan is expected to report his recollection process and how the memories affected his present life. At 5.54, Corey asks Sta n to share his childhood memories. At exactly the 9th minute, Core tells Stan that some of his past memories could be affecting his current status. In this regard, Dr. Corey asks Stan that he should be willing to be in terms with some of his imperfections, at 1520. This makes Stan to be a bit critical of himself.
The existential video also shows discussions on the issues of death, self-worth and acceptance. At 1.29, Corey introduces Stan to their previous discussion. Stan elaborates the suffering of his father and the past conditions. This enables Corey to seek clarity on Stan’s overall feelings and perceptions. He tells Stan that he ought to have been in school and not for his father. Corey further encourages Stan to be determined with his career goals.
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