Compare and Contrast How the Psychodynamic and Person-Centred Approaches to Counselling Understand the Person, and How These Two Approaches Explain Psychological Distress Experienced by Individuals. in Part 2 Reflect
Compare and contrast how the psychodynamic and person-centred approaches to counselling understand the person, and how these two approaches explain psychological distress experienced by individuals. In Part 2 reflect on and write about which of the two approaches appeals most to you and why?
A comparison of psychodynamic approach and people centred approaches to counselling
The psychodynamic approach was developed by Sigmund Freud. Its aim was to bring to awareness the inner emotional world of the client in order to improve their capacity to relate to others and to value themselves as they really are.
Freud believed that our thoughts and behaviour are influenced by unconscious mental processes like fears and desires formed in early childhood, that were almost always sexual. Freud likened the mind to an iceberg, the tip above the water is likened with conscious experiences and the much larger part below the water likened to the unconscious. The conscious in Freud’s theory stores impulses and inaccessible memories that affect our thoughts and behaviour. He also believed that the unconscious revealed itself, he discovered this through Dream analysis, unravelling the secrets of the unconscious to analyze the hidden message of a dream, Free association, talking about anything that comes to mind and not worrying about what people will think and Parapraxia, slips of the tongue.
Freud believed that the personality was made up of three parts. The id, is the most primitive part seeks immediate gratification and works on the pleasure principle. The ego, operates on the reality principle which will find a realistic solution to the demands of the id. The third part is the superego which monitors the id and the ego combining morality and your conscience. (Freud,1947as cited in McLeod,2008,pp94) He also discovered that when a person is anxious as a result of the id demanding that the ego doesn’t agree with, it uses methods to stop unconscious anxiety from...