Types of counseling in the practice of a practical psychologist

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Types of counseling in the practice of a practical psychologist

Гоян Ігор Миколайович - доктор психологічних наук, професор, професор кафедри соціальної психології Прикарпатського національного університету імені Василя Стефаника, м. Івано-Франківськ;

Ониськів Ірина Ярославівна - провідний спеціаліст навчально- виробничої лабораторії виховної та психолого-педагогічної роботи, асистент кафедри психології розвитку Прикарпатського національного університету імені Василя Стефаника, м. Івано-Франківськ.

The article discusses the types of counseling in the practice of a practical psychologist. Types of psychological counseling in the theory of psychological systems are analyzed. The necessity of working in the value-meaning fields of the psychologist and the client, joint solution of the task as a method of consultative practice is substantiated. It is shown that within the framework of this methodology, the process of psychological counseling is perceived as an open, connected psychological system, the poles of which are the psychologist and the client. The openness of this system is determined by the openness of the psychologist and the client and openness towards each other. The difference of this approach lies in changing the essence of the interaction between the psychologist and the client, in which the effectiveness of their interaction is a consequence of the improvement of the process of mutual understanding. The main thing for a practical psychologist who thinks in the categories of the theory ofpsychological systems should be the creation of that reality, deepening into which helps the client to rethink his misfortune and his life situation in a new way and in a certain direction. At the same time, the practical psychologist has to solve the task of the meaning and value of his own consulting activity, since the actual subject of consulting changes (from the psychology of the psyche to the psychology of the person), which leads to a new stage of professional selfdetermination, which requires the psychologist to have updated methods of professional thinking.

Key words: psychological counseling, psychologist-client interaction, counseling psychology, types of psychological counseling.

Гоян І.М., Ониськів І.Я.

У статті розглянуто види консультування у практиці практичного психолога. Аналізуються види психологічного консультування у теорії психологічних систем. Обґрунтовано необхідність роботи у ціннісно-смислових полях психолога та клієнта, спільного вирішення завдання як способу консультативної практики. Показано, що в межах даної методології процес психологічного консультування сприймається як відкрита, поєднана психологічна система, полюсами якої є психолог і клієнт. Відкритість цієї системи визначається відкритістю психолога та клієнта та відкритістю по відношенню один до одного. Відмінність цього підходу полягає у зміні сутності взаємодії психолога та клієнта, при якому ефективність їхньої взаємодії виступає наслідком покращення процесу взаєморозуміння. Головним для практичного психолога, що мислить у категоріях теорії психологічних систем, має бути створення тієї реальності, поглиблення в яку допомагає клієнту по- новому та у певному напрямку переосмислити своє неблагополуччя та свою життєву ситуацію. При цьому практичному психологу доводиться вирішувати завдання на смисл і цінність власної консультативної діяльності, оскільки змінюється власне предмет консультування (від психології психіки до психології людини), що призводить до нового етапу професійного самовизначення, який передбачає наявність у психолога оновлених прийомів професійного мислення.

Ключові слова: психологічне консультування, взаємодія психолога та клієнта, консультативна психологія, види психологічного консультування.

Formulation of the problem

Counseling psychology includes a number of areas: social and psychological counseling exists along with developmental psychological and clinical psychological counseling, counseling [2; 6; 9; 13]. Age- related psychological counseling involves psychological assistance to people regarding problems that arise during age-related development and learning, the use of patterns and psychotechnologies in the process of helping clients that activate the mechanisms of age-related development.

Clinical and psychological counseling, which is largely identified with psychotherapy, involves psychological assistance in connection with serious disorders of the functioning and development of mental functions of the individual, and in the process of helping clients uses patterns and technologies that activate recovery (rehabilitation) processes. Age-related psychological counseling and clinical- psychological counseling pay special attention to the role of biological processes and the foundations of development (biological aspects of normality and pathology).

Consulting in social work often changes focus or includes a number of aspects, considering pedagogical, psychological, legal, economic, and medical segments of clients' problems [5; 13]. Social and psychological counseling, often identified with the concept of “counseling,” focuses on the problems of a person's relationship with himself and the world, considering these relationships both as a source of problems and as a path to overcoming them. Social work counseling and socio-psychological counseling pay attention to the role of social processes and the foundations of human development (social aspects of norm and pathology).

However, on the one hand, since relationship disturbances and deformations of the socio-psychological level are noted both in the situation of age-related crises and in the situation of mental disorders, one can speak not simply of socio-psychological counseling, but of a socio-psychological approach to counseling. On the other hand, psychosomatic deformations and mental disorders also inevitably accompany socio- psychological disorders, including violations of the spiritual and moral level and violations of one's own social level. Therefore, a more socio-psychological approach to considering different types of counseling can be considered: counseling in different areas and about different types of problems can be considered as a process of building and developing relationships.

At the same time, socio-psychological counseling itself as an helping practice, a sphere of professional activity, is formed at the intersection of two other areas: medical care and psychotherapy and social work [2; 4; 6; 12]. Social and psychological counseling appears as a complex polymorphic phenomenon associated with helping different groups of clients in solving problems of their relationships with themselves and the world: intrapersonal, interpersonal, as well as intragroup and intergroup functioning, development and recovery (habilitation and rehabilitation).

Analysis of the latest research and publications. Clients in the context of socio-psychological counseling, in contrast to clinical psychological counseling and psychotherapy, are considered not as patients suffering from dysfunctions of mental processes (activities) or even organic causes of their disorders, in need of the help of a psychotherapist, but as clients seeking correct more or less pronounced, conscious, extensive and deep problems of socio-psychological functioning and development that manifest themselves in the relationship of individual and group subjects to themselves and/or to the subjects around them, the world as a whole (internal or external to the individual or group levels). In this way, clients can strive to reduce dissonance or distortion, restore harmony, and develop themselves and their relationships with the world, realizing themselves and enabling others to realize themselves.

As for clinical-psychological counseling and medical - psychotherapeutic - assistance, which is the historical source of socio-psychological and other types of counseling, it should be noted that there is an increasing isolation and, at the same time, a tendency towards expansion of the socio-psychological approach into the theory and practice of clinical, psychiatric and psychotherapeutic interaction, as well as the expansion of social work into the theory and practice of medicine in general, the formation of social and medical work, in which, as in social and pedagogical work, the leading point is psychological counseling (short-term or long-term) [4; 6; 12]. Carrying out its own tasks, socio-psychological counseling allows one to overcome the truncated diagnosis and assistance (treatment) in medical psychotherapy and psychiatry, which is characterized by clinical reductionism - ignoring the socio- psychological factors of disorders [1; 11].

How important is it to take into account the socio-psychological aspects of helping people who demonstrate certain signs of mental and psychosomatic illnesses, disorders, as well as socio-psychological difficulties (including general or partial socio-psychological incompetence) in relationships with society, people, themselves, say the modern concepts of psychosomatics, “antipsychiatry” and healing, which contrast the “objective” approach to a person, his limitations and mistakes with a transformative dialogue. This significantly expands the range of problems and clients who can be helped, changes the context itself, semantic accents, and consideration of client problems.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the types of psychological counseling in the practice of a practical psychologist.

Presentation of the main material and research results

Social- psychological counseling is thus characterized by a broad orientation both to the groups of problems and clients being helped, and to the paradigms of care and the epistemological foundations that underlie them. Consideration of various problems and work with a wide variety of client groups involves going beyond the situation of individual life activity, considering it in a broad social context. From a socio- psychological point of view, difficult situations that become causes of client suffering include intrapersonal, interpersonal and intergroup socio-psychological conflicts and disorders arising in connection with a number of problems [2; 14]:

- macrosocial crisis stress situations associated with disasters, terrorist attacks, wars, stimulating the emergence of transcendental disorders such as “survivor's guilt”, “Stockholm syndrome”, post-traumatic stress disorders;

- social violence, a person's encounter with private and state crime, activating violations associated with experiences of social cannibalism, defenselessness and lack of control, experience of slavery and victimization;

- problems and conflicts of religious, moral and intercultural relations, activating violations associated with experiences of alienation, aggression, injustice, racial, national and religious discrimination;

- deviant behavior, crime and delinquency, activating an existential crisis and disorders associated with experiences of aggressive dissatisfaction with oneself, the world, the desire to take revenge on the world and people, “get everything from life”;

- terminal diseases and related conditions (coma, isolation, etc.), experiencing the loss of loved ones, activating disturbances in understanding oneself and the world, the work of compensation or recovery mechanisms (for reversible) and grief (for irreversible) losses;

- disability, chronic psychosomatic and mental illnesses, alcoholism and drug addiction, activating disorders of intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning, contributing to various kinds of developmental distortions, including involutional psychopathy, etc., posing the task of searching for productive defenses and strategies for coping with illnesses, research into needs and transformation of desires;

- socio-economic need and poverty, unemployment and professional maladaptation, activating experiences associated with deprivation of access to the realization of one's own resources, conscious or unconscious refusal of connections with society and professional relationships, including the phenomena of “downshifting”, creation of simulacra, marginalization;

- loneliness of children, adults, the elderly, their homelessness, lack of family or problems of family relationships, divorces, etc., activating feelings about the impossibility of confirmation and separation associated with a lack of intimacy and isolation, the inability to understand, help and changes in oneself and significant (close) others, encouraging the search and revision of the internal foundations of life;

- problems of crises of age, personal and spiritual development, “existential frustration”, inter-age interaction, “ageism”, interaction of groups that differ in spiritual and moral orientations;

- professional counseling, including academic counseling and counseling in various professional contexts, for example, political, managerial, etc., regarding the choice of profession, training, functioning and development in the organization and outside it, violations of the interaction of professionals with the organization, clients;

- problems of organizational and management plan, coaching innovations and anti-crisis, development programs, support of career and personnel management processes in the organization, etc.

The problems faced by clients can be characterized as problems associated primarily with disturbances and difficulties in understanding social situations, oneself or the people around them in intimate-personal, business and other types of relationships, localized at value-role, semantic and directly interactive levels of life. [3].

This is also true for clinical and psychological counseling, the main groups of problems of which are centered around the following points: mental and somatic underdevelopment, mental and somatic dysfunctions, mental and somatic disorders and diseases. All these moments are accompanied, lead and/or are initiated, as noted, by problems of the socio-psychological level. As a result, different types of counseling contain more similarities than differences: we can talk about social-psychological, clinical-psychological or personal-psychological views on counseling, about the identification by practitioners and theorists of different aspects of counseling. However, the counseling itself is the same.

The purpose of counseling is to help clients understand what is happening in their life space and meaningfully achieve their goals based on conscious choice when resolving their life problems and their psychological aspects of a personal and interpersonal nature [7].

Consulting in general includes a number of typical situations: information provided at the client's request about a specific problem or part of social reality, reflecting the client's search for directions and measures to transform a difficult life situation or its fragment (at the stage of orientation to the problem); information situations of a periodic nature, carried out as part of supporting a client experiencing a difficult life situation in the mode of actively coping with it (at the stage of coping with the problem); consulting situations that are in the nature of long-term interaction, including as a leading component in a program of long-term support for clients at different stages of correctional and developmental work, including the stages of orientation, coping and problem resolution; exit counseling situations that arise from time to time in the practice of interaction with a client: at the stage of problem resolution, the client may need more or less lengthy counseling regarding the phenomenology of exiting a difficult life situation (crisis) and from the advisory request as such.

Achieving and consolidating the results of counseling is one of the most important problems in the theory and practice of helping interaction. The result of consulting is assessed according to two parameters: efficiency and productivity. Efficiency is associated with achieving the most pronounced result (change) in a minimum amount of time and using a minimum amount of other costs. Productivity is associated with the achievement of truly constructive changes for the client and his life, society as a whole, in particular, the resolution of a crisis life situation, allowing the client and society to function at a higher level than before the crisis and during the crisis.

Typically, this level is described as a state in which the client is able to provide help not only to himself, but also to other people: in this case, they often talk about the formation of self-help and mutual aid groups, part of the activity of which is counseling clients going through similar changes in their lives. In addition, this is a level associated with the ability to avoid repetition of the problems that served as the source of the crisis, as well as some other problems that potentially threaten the normal development of the subject.

As for effectiveness, it is an indicator external to the counseling situation and can be assessed according to criteria related to both the aggravation and deepening of the crisis situation and its completion. At the same time, such a parameter as the delayed results of consulting is more important if we evaluate its productivity. The presence of delayed results of counseling is another parameter of the productivity of assistance: it can be used to assess with a sufficient degree of confidence whether the changes that occurred in the process of assistance, as well as the efforts of the client and specialists, were significant.

Consulting has very unobvious productivity effects: what seems essential in the process of work to a specialist may not be perceived as such by the client and vice versa. Differences in assessment of the significance of assistance, however, do not prevent the analysis of changes, especially in their long-term perspective. At the same time, the assessment of the long-term results of counseling itself is faced with the fact that during the client's life many other events occur to him that are not directly related

to counseling, but can have at least no less impact. Therefore, the study of delayed results must be carried out, considering counseling as one of the factors in the client's life changes. It is also important to note that although counseling does not pretend to be the change itself, rather providing information and psychological support for the client's life, it is still aimed specifically at transformation - and the most pronounced productive transformation - of his life. In addition, this transformation in the format of ideas for psychological assistance should be productive both for the client and for the entire community around him. The consultant acts as a double agent, helping to balance the interests of the client and society. Thus, the consultant is able to take into account the interests of the client and his model of productive transformations as much as society takes into account in a given historical and cultural period.

The implicit and immanent conflict of interests of the subject and the surrounding community in a counseling situation appears as a search for a productive compromise by means of a productive confrontation between these interests and the semantic positions behind them. Information and psychological support for the client clarifies the positions of the parties involved in a difficult life situation and helps to find productive contexts for considering and reconciling contradictions between individual and social interests. Reconciliation and coordination help to introduce something new both into the practice of counseling and into the practice of relationships between a person and society, and social development. Modern researchers have shown the need to create a culture of counseling and life in which the client and consultant do not “simply follow the orders” of society and other people, but make a conscious choice, trying to harmonize relationships between people [2; 7].

The need for interconnected and mutually supporting internal and external changes is the key to the productivity of any support: without this unity it is impossible to talk about a truly significant change. Internal changes provide stability and the unfolding of ever new changes outside. External changes help and confirm the implementation of changes internally. Their harmonious unity is the goal of advisory assistance in social work both at the stage of prevention and at the stages of coping and final understanding of what is happening with a subject experiencing a difficult life situation.

The set of consulting results internal to the subject can be classified as follows: changes in the subject's relationship to the world and the problem situation as a whole, changes in worldview and understanding of the situation; changes in the subject's attitude towards other (specific) subjects, changes in the understanding of significant (in life in general or in a specific situation) other people; changes in the subject's attitude towards himself, changes in self-understanding.

In turn, these three areas of change can be divided into: changes associated with the expansion and deepening of understanding, relationships or, conversely, with the truncation of understanding; changes associated with a more or less pronounced refocusing of attitude and understanding, including a rethinking of life and its components, and assessed as more or less radical and productive; changes that are of a pronounced effective nature, associated with a greater or lesser transformation of the internal, personal, or external, social life of the subject; changes that have more or less delayed consequences, a greater or lesser range and the stability of these consequences as a whole (assessed as systemic, partial-fragmentary or local, as well as stable or unstable).

The ideal of advisory assistance seems to be associated with a radical constructive (productive) systemic and stable internally and externally directed transformation of the subjects' understanding of themselves, other people, the problem situation and the world as a whole, accompanied by a redirection of understanding, its expansion and deepening [3]. These parameters, however, do not necessarily characterize any change or any advice. At the same time, they can act as its criteria: the more criteria of this list are met, the more generally effective the assistance provided can be considered and the more significant the change associated with it.

Conclusions

Productive counseling, as a rule, is aimed at expanding and deepening understanding, as well as relationships with understood objects, however, in some cases, it is observed as a more or less permanent effect that the subject loses a three-dimensional vision of what is happening to him and other people, a significant narrowing of categories and aspects understanding what is understood. This can be both the result of destructive tendencies in counseling, including trauma and conflicts in the process of communicating with an incorrect, unprofessional consultant, and the necessary effect associated with redirection and focusing, for example, cutting off unnecessary aspects that interfere with understanding. This is especially noticeable when a client who comes to a consultation “works himself up”, exaggerating the threats emanating from a person or situation, perceives his suffering as completely unique and exceptionally deep, extensive, and also explores, following someone from his environment, then, which has nothing to do with him and his condition.

Changes that are clearly actionable are usually the obvious task of the consultant. However, on the one hand, the rush to achieve the “effectiveness” of counseling is dangerous: significant intrapersonal and interpersonal changes, including their manifestation in a person's behavior and communication, are sometimes the result of a long and extensive semantic processing of the problem situation in the dialogue between the consultant and the client with his environment. This kind of dialogue can take place both during and after the consultation.

On the other hand, the absence of behavioral changes and changes in the client's communication with people around him usually indicates the absence of serious changes within him, his understanding of himself and the world. The changes that occur in the client's understanding have more or less delayed consequences, as well as greater or lesser range and stability. It is wrong to say that local and partial changes are less significant than those that can be classified as systemic. Each client, in his search for new meanings in life, moves at his own rhythm and along his own path: the consultant-facilitator helps him, but does not force changes.

Unsustainable changes can mark moments of transition, including toward more significant and more sustainable transformations of the client's external and internal life. Moreover, if we are talking about “negative” partial short-term changes, the meaning of which can only be understood in the general context of the completed process of value-semantic transformation of the individual associated with one or another change in her life activity.

Assessment of the effectiveness of assistance according to the list of selected criteria, in connection with the aspects of ambiguity described above in understanding what is happening in counseling and in considering its results, is therefore not absolute. In any case, it represents a specific practical task in each individual episode, solved by specialists during the course of counseling, as well as in the process of monitoring general problems and results of counseling.

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psychological counseling psychologist

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References

1. Adams M. The myth of the untroubled therapist: private life, professional practice. N.-Y.: Routledge, 2013. 160 p.

2. Arpentieva M.R. Psychological aspects of cancer. Social Science and Humanity. 2016. № 3. P. 210-228.

3. Bager-Charleson S. Reflective practice in counseling and psychotherapy. N.-Y.: Learning Matters, 2010. 192 p.

4. Ballatt J., Campling P. Intelligent kindness: reforming the culture of healthcare. N.-Y.: RCPsych Publications, 2011. 224 p.

5. Barker R.L. Social work dictionary. 6th edition. Washington, DC: NASW Press, 2013. 528 p.

6. Bentall R.P. Doctoring the mind: why psychiatric treatments fail. N.-Y.: Penguin, 2010. 384 p.

7. Chaleff I., Zimbardo Ph. Intelligent disobedience: doing right when what you're told to do is wrong. N.-Y.: Berrett-Koehler, 2015. 240 p.

8. Cormier L., Hackney H. The professional counselor. Prentice Hall: PRT, 2013. 320 p.

9. De-Medicalizing misery: psychiatry, psychology and the human condition / ed. by M. Rapley, J. Moncrieff, J. Dillon. N.-Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 320 p.

10. Deurzen van E., Adams M. Skills in existential counseling and psychotherapy. N.-Y.: Sage, 2010. 176 p.

11. Feltham C. Critical thinking in counseling and psychotherapy. N.-Y.: Sage, 2010. 240 p.

12. Finlay L. Phenomenology for therapists. N.-Y.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

312 p.

13. Gopee N. Practice teaching in healthcare. N.-Y.: Sage, 2010. 208 p.

14. Kinderman P.A prescription for psychiatry: why we need a whole new approach to mental health and wellbeing. N.-Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 224 p.

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