ABSTRACT
Both humanistic and behavioural stances have their attractions to someone working in student support. There are many different schools of counselling, but it may be helpful to distinguish two very broad categories: humanistic or person-centred counselling, and behavioural therapy models. Humanistic or person-centred counselling revolves around a basic judgement about the 'self-directedness' of individuals and how they deal with issues in their lives, by helping individuals to clarify their feelings in such a way as to enable them to make decisions for themselves. Behaviouristic therapies tend to be much more to do with modifying people's behaviour and rather less to do with their feelings. The appeal is to people's intellect and less to their emotions. The student-centredness, non-directional and apparently non-expert nature of Rogerian counselling is certainly very attractive to staff talking to students with difficult and inexplicable problems, and 'when in doubt, listen' is not bad advice for anyone not sure what to do.
