Abstract on the topic “Types of psychological counseling.”

In the frantic pace of modern life, a person is faced with a huge number of problems, some of which are psychologically difficult for him to overcome on his own. The existential approach in modern psychology gives a person the opportunity to comprehend and accept his life values ​​and ideals.

Psychological assistance provided by a professional psychologist is designed to help anxious clients find internal resources for resolving conflicts and developing effective behavior algorithms. In recent years, turning to psychologists for psychological advice has become one of the symbols of taking care of yourself, your psychological health and personal effectiveness.

What is psychological counseling

Psychological counseling is the work of a person with a professional psychologist to resolve certain problems and conflicts. An important difference between counseling and psychotherapy is that a counseling psychologist works exclusively with mentally healthy people.

The objectives of psychological counseling are to help the client:

• evaluate your behavior patterns and identify low-effective ones among them;
• develop effective mechanisms for making complex decisions;
• understand complicated life situations;
• find harmony in your personal life and profession.

During a psychological consultation, a person turns to his internal resources in order to understand and analyze experiences and events that could cause increased anxiety and failure. By revealing the true causes of difficulties, clients learn to resist them and overcome obstacles on the path to the desired achievements.

The most important condition for psychological counseling is following the basic rules of psychological work with patients. They are based on several postulates:

• anonymity;
• goodwill;
• acceptance of client values ​​and norms;
• lack of ready-made schemes for resolving problems and conflicts.

Psychoanalysis: help bring the unconscious into awareness

Psychoanalysis was developed by Sigmund Freud. The leading task is to recognize and study, together with the client, unconscious, unconscious, in particular, traumatic experiences that were the result of a person’s perception of what happened to him earlier. Psychoanalysts have studied human psychosexual development.

Psychoanalysts, working with a client, transfer the unconscious into the realm of awareness. As in the case of Gestalt therapy, psychoanalysis is aimed at in-depth study of the personality, making it possible to study and analyze its motivation, reasons for behavior, characteristics of reactions and other aspects.

Those clients who are prone to analysis, immersion in the construction of theories, and putting forward hypotheses will find in the psychoanalyst’s office the opportunity to immerse themselves in themselves, including through these tools.

Types of psychological counseling

Psychological counseling of patients can be divided into several types depending on its purpose:

• individual personal counseling. The psychologist and the patient work through internal states, causes of anxiety, problems in relationships with other people, life goals and priorities. This area can also include age-related psychological counseling, which is based on understanding the mental processes of people of different ages;
• family psychological counseling. This type includes not only psychological counseling of spouses, but also consultations of single-parent families, spouses during a divorce, and premarital relations for women and men. The field of family psychology also includes issues related to children and their upbringing in the bosom of the family. Social and psychological counseling of the family is closely related to the direction;
• professional and organizational consulting. It is carried out for the purpose of professional orientation of students, development of behavioral models in the profession, team of employed people. This type is often in demand among managers who need psychological help and support in social work;
• psychological counseling for addictions. The goal is to work through the true causes of various types of addictions and bring the client to a new level of attitude towards them;
• psychocorrection as a type of assistance in building new psychological models of behavior and adaptation in society. The functions of psychological counseling and psychological correction are currently quite close.

Often, when working, a psychologist has to go beyond the boundaries of his specialty. For example, the specifics of psychological counseling of parents require a specialist to have deep knowledge in the field of child and family psychology, pedagogy and education.

According to the forms of organization and time period of psychological work, the following types can be distinguished:

• short-term psychological counseling. Required to solve and work through a specific issue that causes increased anxiety in the patient and requires the intervention of a specialist. Once the issue is closed, the need for counseling no longer arises;
• remote consultation. Possible thanks to modern technology. The videoconference format is preferable to build closer audio-visual contact between the psychologist and the patient;
• emergency psychological consultation. It is necessary to resolve acute conflict situations and eliminate suicidal thoughts. In this case, the psychologist’s goal is to relieve acute tension from the patient, find internal resources in him to overcome the crisis, and make sure that the person’s condition is stabilized.

Leading areas of consulting

In the literature on psychological counseling, descriptions of several leading areas are usually given:

Psychoanalytic

— the essence of a person is determined by his sexual energy and early childhood experiences. The personality structure is made up of three components: id (it), ego (me) and super ego (moral attitudes). Man is ruled by aggressive and sexual impulses. Pathology arises due to conflicts repressed in childhood. Normal development is based on the timely alternation of stages of sexual development.

The classic direction of psychoanalytic counseling is Freudian. Most often, this method is used in a consultant's office. The most common methods: the method of free associations, interpretation of dreams, interpretation of sedums, slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, forgetting. The method is applied integratively (combined). The method is based on the assumption that the unconscious is always looking for a way out. The consultant encourages you to relax and say whatever comes to mind. The main condition is to restrain censorship. Those. do not filter out unimportant thoughts that are not relevant in the client’s opinion. In this way, the unconscious enters consciousness and becomes available for interpretation by the consultant.

Adlerian -

emphasizes the positive nature of man. It is based on the fact that a person forms his own lifestyle, his own destiny at an early age. Behavior is motivated by the desire to achieve goals and interests in accordance with the formed life attitude. Life difficulties are to blame for the formation of an unfavorable lifestyle.

Adlerian counseling methods are:

* confrontation - the consultant questions the client's reasoning based on his own logic. In this way, the consultant gets the client to examine his logic and change it and his behavior;

* asking a “question” - The consultant asks: “What would change if you felt good?”;

* providing support - the consultant tells the client that he believes that change is possible and thereby provides support;

* action “as if” - the client invites the client to act as if he is who he wants to be;

* “spitting in the client’s soup” - the consultant criticizes some of the client’s behavior and thus destroys the attractiveness of a certain type of behavior;

*changing the conditions of the task - the consultant encourages the client to set short-term achievable goals and move on to long-term goals over time.

Behavior therapy (behavioral) - (

based on behavioral theory). According to it, man is a product of the environment and at the same time its creator. Behavior is formed through the learning process. Good behavior is taught through reinforcement and imitation. Problems arise as a result of poor training.

Common behavioral methods are:

· use of positive or negative reinforcements. In order for behavior to develop or die out, all its manifestations must be reinforced.

Specific behavioral methods are:

· behavioral rehearsal - the approved behavior is repeated until it begins to be performed as the client wants;

· environmental planning - the client creates an environment around himself that promotes certain behaviors or limits them;

· systematic desensitization - helps to overcome anxiety. The client is asked to describe the situation causing anxiety. Then they are asked to evaluate this situation and arrange events and circumstances starting with those that do not cause any interest, and ending with those that are the most unpleasant. Then, to help the client eliminate anxiety, the counselor teaches him to relax physically and psychologically. After which he again offers to evaluate the situation. The main idea of ​​the method is that the client cannot simultaneously experience anxiety and be relaxed;

· Assertiveness (self-confidence) training - the goal is to teach a person to express his thoughts and feelings, and not experience unnecessary anxiety.

Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) -

a person is born with a tendency towards rational thinking and paralogical thinking at the same time. All life's problems arise from erroneous beliefs. Normal behavior is based on rational thinking and timely correction of decisions made.

RETP has two main methods:

· training - the client is taught the connection between thoughts and emotions and behavior. Emotions and feelings are seen as consequences of thoughts. The client is taught to deal with irrational thoughts.

· rational discussion - the client must prove the logic of his reaction. The purpose of the discussion is to teach the client the difference between rational and irrational thoughts. Imaginative discussion, on the contrary, is based on the client’s ability not to logic, but to imagination. The thoughts that come to the client when he imagines a situation that upsets him are corrected.

Client-centered therapy (C. Rogers) -

The positive nature of man and his innate desire for self-realization are emphasized. Problems arise when some feelings are displaced from the field of consciousness and the assessment of experience is distorted. The basis of mental health is the correspondence of the ideal self to the real self, achieved through the realization of the potential of one’s own personality, and the desire for self-knowledge and self-confidence.

Client-centered therapy (client-centered therapy) uses methods that are difficult to describe without losing the main idea. K. Rogers himself wrote that personal growth occurs as a result of awareness of one’s relationship with other people. Therefore, I focused not on methods, techniques and techniques, but on the conditions leading to personal growth during relationships in the counseling process.

· two people are in psychological contact;

· the client is in a state of incongruence (congruence is a state of harmony between the actually experienced “I” and the concept of the ideal “I”);

· the consultant is congruent or integrated into the relationship;

· the consultant experiences an unconditional friendly attitude towards the client;

· the consultant experiences an empathic understanding of the client’s worldview and tries to communicate his understanding to the client;

· the client receives at least a minimal message about the consultant’s understanding and, of course, friendly attitude.

Existential therapy

— The main attention is paid to a person’s ability to understand his inner world, choose his destiny and existential anxiety as the main motivating factor. Normal personality development is based on the uniqueness of each individual.

Within the framework of the existential approach, free choice of work methods is allowed. The methods used in this direction are always individualized and can be borrowed from any theory and practice of counseling. The methodological basis is the consultant's ability to be open and honest towards the client and new experiences. The method of confrontation is often used when the client is forced to accept the idea of ​​responsibility for his life.

But it is necessary to remember that none of the counseling schools reflects all possible situations of interaction between the client and the consultant, so you should not focus only on their recommendations. Therefore, any consultation session must be carried out according to the following scheme:

1. Research the problem - contact is established with the client and trust is achieved.

2. Two-Dimensional Problem Definition - The consultant strives to accurately characterize the client's problems. Refinement continues until the client and consultant reach the same vision.

3. Identification of alternatives - alternatives for solving the problem are identified and discussed. Alternatives must be found that the customer can use directly.

4. Planning - critical assessment of the selected solution alternatives. The counselor helps the client figure out which alternatives are appropriate and realistic in terms of previous experience and current willingness to change.

5. Activity—preliminary implementation of a plan for solving problems.

6. Evaluation and feedback - the level of goal achievement is assessed.

However, the actual consulting process is much more extensive and often does not obey even this algorithm.

The personality of the consultant and the requirements for him

Professional counseling can be provided by psychologists, social workers, teachers or doctors who have undergone special training.

Counseling is a negotiation between a psychologist or psychotherapist and a client(s) in his/her language in order to optimize his/her functioning. As a result, the final effect and result of the consultant’s work depends on the advisory contact.

Based on this, the question arises - who is this consultant, on whom the treatment process largely depends, what should he be like as a person and what are the requirements for him?

Eidemiller said the following about counseling psychology: “Counseling is a multimodal spiritual practice that combines religion, medicine, psychotherapy in general in particular, pedagogy, psychology, ethics and politics. Politics and counseling are close in that they can influence people. Without this quality there cannot be an effective politician and consultant.”

Many attempts have been made to establish what an ideal consulting psychologist is, but a clear answer to this question has not yet been found. Usually, both specialists and non-professionals use the everyday concepts of “open”, “attentive”, “flexible”, “tolerant”, and on the contrary, there should be no “authoritarianism”, “closedness”, “intolerance” in it.

In one of his 1954 studies, Hobbes found that a successful consultant perceives others as capable of solving their own problems.

and accept responsibility as choosing to identify with people rather than objects.

So one can “what is a possible personality model for an effective consultant?” It can be assumed that it must contain the following qualities:

Authenticity is the core quality of a successful consultant. This is the ability to be oneself both in immediate reactions and in holistic behavior. People's difficulties largely lie in their inability to distribute energy. They spend a lot of energy playing possible roles rather than solving specific problems. If the consultant does not have authenticity, he will distance himself from his personal reactions and feelings, such counseling will be superficial, sterile, and the effect of its use will be questionable.

Openness to your own experience is not about being frank with other people, but about being sincere about your own feelings. Life in society teaches us to discard our feelings, especially negative ones. For example: we tell the child, don’t cry, you’re big; you are a man. And we say the same thing to an adult: calm down, don’t be nervous. This pressure forces strong negative feelings (sadness, irritability, anger) to be repressed. A good consultant should accept all feelings, including negative ones. This is the only way to fully control your behavior, since repressed feelings make effective control difficult over time. A consultant can help a client only when he shows tolerance for the diversity of both his own and others’ emotional reactions.

Development of self-knowledge - deep self-knowledge gives the opportunity to make choices in life; limited, on the contrary, narrows the choice. The better a consultant knows himself, the better he will understand clients, and on the contrary, the better he begins to understand clients, the deeper he will understand himself. The answer to the question of how to help another person lies in the consultant’s self-esteem, the adequacy of his attitude to his own abilities and to life in general.

Strength of personality and identity - the consultant must know who he is, who he wants to become, and what he expects from life and what is important to him in life. He questions life, answers the questions that life asks him and constantly reconsiders his values.

Tolerance of uncertainty - Many people feel uncomfortable in situations that lack clarity and certainty. But since one of the prerequisites for the formation of personality is a person’s “farewell” to the familiar, known from one’s own experience, and entering “unfamiliar territory,” a consultant absolutely needs self-confidence in situations of uncertainty. Essentially, counseling represents such uncertainty. After all, you don’t know who will contact you and what problem they will have. You need to be confident in the adequacy of your feelings and the correctness of your intuition, and then the process of providing assistance will be significantly easier.

Accepting Personal Responsibility - Since many situations in counseling occur under the control of the counselor, the counselor must take responsibility for his or her actions in those situations. Understanding your responsibility allows you to freely and consciously make a choice at any time during counseling - agree with the client’s arguments or engage in productive confrontation.

Depth of relationships with other people - The consultant is obliged to evaluate people - their feelings, views, peculiar personality traits, but do this without judgment and labels.

Setting realistic goals - Usually, success encourages you to set big goals for yourself, and failure, on the contrary, encourages you to lower the bar of aspirations. An effective consultant must understand the limitations of his capabilities. First of all, it is important not to forget that any consultant, regardless of professional training, is not omnipotent. No consultant can solve the problems of all clients. The consultant must give up the unrealistic desire to become perfect and realistically assess his capabilities.

Empathy is the ability to see the world through the eyes of another person and experience it the way that person experiences it. This is one of the most important traits of a good consultant.

Listening is a mutual process. The method allows us to reveal not only the content of the problem, but also its structure.

Observation - the consultant must be able to see people, their fears, tensions, and experiences. This ability allows you to capture the slightest manifestations of character. However, an assessment of the client's personality can only be made after all available facts have been collected.

Consultant's value system

The consultant must clearly know his values, without hiding them from the client and not avoid value discussions at advisory meetings, since many problems are hidden precisely in the clients’ value conflicts or in their lack of understanding of their own value system. However, this does not mean that a consultant should impose his values ​​on clients. The consultant must know what impact his values ​​have on the course of counseling and whether they interfere with the identification of the client’s true values.

And in the end, it should be noted that the consultant must be a mature, self-sufficient person with developed moral qualities. After all, a consultant is not responsible for the final results of his work with a client. The client decides for himself whether to use the recommendations or not. In other types of psychological assistance, the psychologist is responsible for the results of his work, because directly deals with the correction of the client’s psyche and behavior and puts his conclusions into practice. A consulting psychologist is responsible only to his conscience for the results and quality of assistance. However, even counseling psychologists have a number of rules that they have no right to violate. This:

A friendly and non-judgmental attitude towards the client - during the appointment the client should feel calm and comfortable. The consultant should provide psychological support, not judge, but try to understand the client.

Orientation to the client’s norms and values ​​- during work, the psychologist should focus not on generally accepted norms and rules, but on those that the client is the bearer of.

Prohibition of giving advice - it is impossible to give guaranteed advice to another.

Each person's life is unique and cannot be covered by no matter how much experience the consultant has. In addition, by giving advice, the consultant takes full responsibility for the further development of events and limits the development of the client’s personality.

Anonymity - any information communicated by the client to the psychologist cannot be transferred to anyone without his consent. The exception is cases specified in the legislation of many countries around the world, when the consultant learns of an immediate danger to someone’s life. But the client is warned about these exceptions in advance.

Separation of personal and professional relationships - the establishment of a personal relationship between a consultant and a client leads to the fact that they, as close people, begin to satisfy certain needs and desires of each other and the consultant can no longer maintain an objective and detached position necessary for effective problem resolution client.

Involvement of the client in the counseling process - to receive greater benefit from the consultation, the client should feel as included in the conversation as possible. To do this, the psychologist must ensure that the development of the conversation is logical and understandable and that the client is interested in listening to what the consultant is saying.

Methods of psychological counseling

The basic set of psychological counseling methods lies in the fundamental principles of psychological diagnostics. Among them:

• conversation. Makes it possible to collect data about the patient’s internal state by directing the conversation with him in the right direction. In a conversation format, it is easier to establish trusting relationships, invite the client to dialogue and find out the true reasons for his condition;
• interview. The direction of work is close to conversation, but represents a more structured and thoughtful communication with the patient. Through leading questions, the consultant gets to the core of the problem. The initial interview with the patient is a fundamental point in the entire consultation process;
• active listening. It implies the psychologist’s participation in the patient’s monologue by approving his words, leading questions, and clarifications. This is a form of work that allows you to create an atmosphere of empathy and promotes the patient’s disclosure to the consultant;
• empathy. This is the reflection and acceptance by the consultant of the client’s feelings and experiences, empathy with him;
• observation. The work of a psychologist is to constantly analyze the patient’s words and non-verbal actions and systematize the data obtained. By observing the client, the psychologist draws conclusions about the sincerity of his words, true experiences and deep-seated problems.

In addition to the above types and methods, there are also other psychological counseling techniques used in various schools or certain situations. For example, this is working with resistance in psychological counseling. The patient’s resistance to changes in consciousness and reluctance to return to unpleasant memories create a so-called “protective barrier” that the psychologist must recognize and help the client overcome.

When providing psychological counseling to couples, a psychologist can work with two patients at once, or by inviting them separately. This makes it possible to work out some of the nuances in the relationship that each spouse would not like to bring to the attention of the other.

Conditions for the effectiveness of consultations with a psychologist

Psychological counseling is successful only when several factors are combined:

• The client is motivated to make positive changes in life and work on consciousness and behavior. The consultation is conducted by a psychologist, but the results depend on whether the person himself wants to influence his life, since during consultations the specialist only helps to come to conclusions, but does not do the work for the client.
• The process and stages of psychological counseling are selected individually, taking into account the personality characteristics of the person applying and his problem situation. It is impossible to advise everyone using the same scheme. A professional always shows flexibility in the selection of certain techniques and their options in order to convey to a person the essence of his internal problems.
• The client attends all necessary sessions scheduled by the consultant. In addition to the fact that during psychological counseling a person comes to the conclusion that changes are necessary, he needs to learn to behave in a certain way and consolidate the achieved result. Many clients give up visiting a psychologist and, as a result, cannot resolve the situation, because after some changes others occur, for which the person is also not ready. As a result, the problem returns again without finding an adequate solution.
• During consultations, a mutual trusting relationship is established between the client and the professional. This is important, because otherwise the consultant will not be able to obtain reliable information or influence the person needed for productive work.
• The consultant is not focused on temporary effects. Even if a strategy for solving a certain situation has been developed jointly with the client, the person, having overcome the problem, may at any moment encounter a new problem. Therefore, it is important that the professional does not direct all his attention to temporary relief of the situation, but works on the underlying cause of the current situation - the lack of necessary forms of behavior or the presence of an internal unresolved conflict.

Thus, the effectiveness of psychological counseling depends not only on the personality and professionalism of the consultant, but also (to a greater extent) on the work that a person does on himself. If you are looking for a professional, we recommend contacting psychologist Nikita Valerievich Baturin, who has been helping to get rid of various anxiety disorders for many years.

Procedure and cost

The stages of psychological counseling in most cases fit into the following scheme:

• acquaintance, establishing contact, beginning to clarify the situation;
• conversation or active listening, forming hypotheses about the root of the problem;
• influencing the patient to resolve the problem;
• completion of consultation, conclusions.

At the “Standard Expert” psychological counseling center, consultations are conducted by professional psychologists with extensive experience in this field. The cost of one consultation is 4 thousand rubles when working individually or 5 thousand rubles when working with a family of up to three people.

We also provide forensic psychological consultations for the court with the provision of an official report. The cost of this service is slightly higher than a regular consultation due to the need to comply with strict standards of examination.

Online video consultation

The format is almost as good as meeting in person.

Modern communication conditions allow you to communicate without interference. Not only individual therapy, but also family counseling can take place online.

Of course, the downside is that the client is not on the consultant’s premises. This complicates the process of immersion in consultation, in the work of the soul. On the other hand, it is faster to overcome the fear of consulting, because there will be no unfamiliar office. And you don’t need to waste time getting to a consultant. Especially if you are in different cities.

This, by the way, allows you not to limit yourself in choosing a specialist.

Audio consultation online

Unexpectedly for me, this consultation option is in demand. Despite the fact that the consultant cannot see the interlocutor, he hears the voice and can detect changes in the emotional background. When asked for this type of consultation, I ask the client to use speakerphone. This is necessary so as not to feel constrained in your movements while holding the tube near your ear.

Just like a video meeting or an in-person meeting, this option is limited in time. In my personal rating, this option is in second to last place.

Written one-time consultation via chat

This version of written consultation differs from the previous one in that both the client and the consultant are near the communication device at the same time. A “live” conversation takes place, as much as possible through a computer, smartphone or tablet.

Such a conversation should be strictly limited in duration, like a personal, video or audio meeting. It requires concentration from both the client and the specialist. The involvement of both in the consultation process is high enough for an exchange of energy to occur, although not to the same extent as during a personal meeting.

An absolute plus of chat consultations is that they are not tied to place and time. You just need to agree on what time you will be online. Your appearance, surroundings, furnishings do not matter. In the modern world, people are so accustomed to “white noise” that chat consultations are successful even without the privacy of a psychotherapist’s office.

At the same time, it cannot be denied that the “presence effect” of a psychotherapist nearby is lacking in this communication format. Perhaps ways will soon be invented to create at least a holographic image of a consultant, but this is only a fantastic idea.