Comparing Counseling Theories

Comparing and Contrasting Counseling Theories
Therapists have been using various methods and techniques developed in order to improve the quality of therapy for individuals seeking professional assistance. Two of these include existential and person-centered therapies. Both of these therapies have different approaches but the ultimate goal of each approach is to treat and help find a cure for an individual’s personal issue. Person-centered and existential therapies both emphasize understanding human experience and focus on the client rather than the symptom. Psychological issues are viewed as a result of an inhibited ability to make meaningful, authentic, and independent choices about how to live one’s life. Thus, these interventions are intended
Rollo May and Viktor Frankl are the two key individuals responsible for the development of existential therapy. Both believed that there is a meaning to all things in life. Frankl (1963) personally experienced the truths uttered by existential writers and philosophers who believed that we have the ability to choose in every situation. Frankl learned from personal experience that everything could be taken from a person except one thing: “the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” (Frankl, 1963, p.
The major themes used in person-centered therapy include acceptance and growth, whereas in existential therapy they are client responsibility and freedom. The person-centered approach views human nature as essentially good and trustworthy, with an inherent potential to maintain healthy, meaningful relationships and to make choices that benefit us and others. It specifically focuses on helping individuals free themselves to help them live a fuller life. It also focuses on the present conscious rather than the unconscious and the past. The therapist’s role is to emphasize growth and self-actualization and provide clients with empathy, acceptance and genuine care about the client as a valuable person to help facilitate the individual to change. The therapist is not the expert in this case; instead, the therapist follows the client’s lead (Watson et al., 2011). The therapist provides a supportive therapeutic environment in which the client is the agent of change and healing so that the client can discover their own personal solutions within themselves. Person-centered therapists do not find conventional assessment and diagnosis to be practical because these procedures encourage an external and expert perspective on the client (Bohart & Watson, 2011). The clients own self-assessment matters more than the counselor’s assessment of the client. From a person-centered