ABSTRACT
As a summary of the Growth Counseling model, let me now compare the main thrusts of this approach with those of traditional psychoanalytically and insight-oriented psychotherapies. I will state the characteristics of each orientation in their extreme forms to make the contrasts clearer than they are in actual practice. It is important to emphasize the fact that many traditional therapies include significant growth emphases and insights. There are, of course, many variations in both theory and practice among traditional therapies that are not recognized in the generalizations about these approaches in the column on the left. https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table"> Traditional Therapies Growth Counseling/Therapy Based on the pathology model. Based on the growth model. The primary goal is to repair personality pathology to enable the person to cope effectively with life. The primary goal is facilitating the maximum development of potentials through the life cycle. Focus mainly on problems, weaknesses, failures, conflicts, and pathology, especially as these are related to unconscious processes and repression. Focuses primary attention on strengths, assets, and potentialities; and views failures, trappedness, “sickness” in the wider context of wholeness. Define health as the absence of gross pathology or maladaptive behavior, and the ability of the ego to cope with inner and outer reality. Defines health as the increasing use of one’s potentialities, the presence of a high degree of unfolding wholeness (in addition to the absence of major pathology). View personal and relationship problems as caused by such factors as childhood trauma, neurotic processes, and blocked psychosexual development. Views personal and relationship problems as symptoms of unlived life, diminished use of one’s potentialities, blocked growth, and faulty learning. Pathological symptoms diminish as people grow. Understand people as pushed to change by the pain of the “pathology” of fixated development in the past. Understands people as also pulled to change by their need to grow and their hope for a more fulfilled life in the future. View people as determined, to a greater or lesser degree, by their past experiences and relationships. Views people as capable, to an appreciable degree, of intentionally changing obsolete or destructive feelings and behavior from the past, and of developing a more constructive life in the present and future. Focus change efforts primarily within the psyche of individuals or, at the most, within their relationships. Focuses change efforts in all 7 of the interdependent dimensions of a person’s life and relationships and on the wider social systems that diminish or enable growth in one’s community and culture. Focus primary therapeutic attention on the unconscious aspects of the psyche. Focuses on all levels of the psyche, conscious and unconscious. Aim primarily at achieving insight and thus changing destructive attitudes, feelings, and self-concepts with the assumption that behavioral change will follow. Aims at direct change of growth-diminishing attitudes, feelings, and self-concepts on the one hand, and growth-diminishing behavior patterns on the other. Tend to see new developmental stages primarily in terms of new problems to be solved, complicated by unresolved problems from the past. Also sees each development stage as a new set of problems and possibilities for growth. See crises mainly as traumas, problems, or stress periods (which revive old unresolved problems) with which persons must cope. Also sees crises as challenges that confront us with both the need and the opportunity to develop new strengths and learn new skills for living constructively. Have tended to remain strongly male-oriented and to define growth in “male” ways that restrict wholeness for both women and men. Seeks to utilize insights from male but also from the feminist psychologists and therapists to facilitate androgynous wholeness in women and men. Have tended to see spiritual and ethical growth as either irrelevant to or as derived from emotional and interpersonal growth. Sees spiritual and ethical growth as central, enabling dynamics in all areas of a person’s growth. The process usually involves longer-term depth analysis of the psychological factors from the past seen as causing the fixation of development and the present problems. The process of therapy involves working in many dimensions of a person’s life, using a variety of action-oriented, shorter-term, integrative methods focusing on the present and future as well as on the past. The counselor-therapist tends to be seen as an “expert” authority-figure on the hierarchical doctor-patient model. The counselor-therapist is seen as a skilled guide and coach for one’s growth journey, a person who also needs to continue growing. Mutual growth work among peers is encouraged. Focus mainly on helping those who have major problems in living and relating. Focuses on facilitating growth in both those whose development is severely diminished and in those who wish to increase their already appreciable effectiveness in living.
