Personal Theory of Counseling

Personal Theory of Counseling Assignment

The primary purpose of this assignment is to provide the student with an initial opportunity to develop his/her own approach to therapeutic work with others. The process of developing a personal theory of counseling and/or helping is a slowly evolving one that involves study, supervised experiences, and a thoughtful choice of approaches that fit the student personally and the clientele with whom he/she works. It is hoped that this effort of developing a theoretical approach will be the first of such efforts.

Instructions: There are five parts of this assignment for a total of 100 points. Your responses for each part can be drawn from personal experiences, past work experiences, past and /or presents coursework, and, of course, any or all of the theories studied in this course. Please attempt to limit your work to 10 double-spaced-typed pages. Remember to observe writing standards.

Five Parts of the Assignment:

Part 1: Basic Principles, Beliefs and Values –in regard to human beings/all life, interactions

Part 2: Shaping influences- those life experiences, events, individuals, readings, etc. that have influenced your current theoretical approach— the context that has had an impact on you and your thinking.

Part 3: Theory of personality- your idea about the reasons people do/behave as they do; what do you think shapes/affects human behavior and individuals’ responses to life situations and circumstances? — How do people end up with ‘problems in living’ and require support from others?

Part 4: Theory of therapeutic/helping process-consider the following: core conditions, goals of therapy, the assessment process, techniques (What techniques have you tried or would like to try based on both the reading and previous coursework? What ‘techniques’ have you developed on your own? What have you observed others do that you might like to do?)

Part 5: Gender and cultural considerations- How does your theory “fit” with both gender issues and cultural and ethnic diversity? What are its strengths? Limitations?

With others— the principles or basic framework upon which your theory is based