An Analysis of Two Counselling Theories: Psychodynamic and Behavioural

This essay provides a comparative analysis of two prominent counselling theories: psychodynamic and behavioral. The essay begins by introducing the core principles of each theory, highlighting the psychodynamic approach's focus on the unconscious mind and past experiences as determinants of behavior, and contrasting it with the behavioral theory's emphasis on environmental influences and learned behaviors. It then delves into the key concepts within each theory, such as the Id, Ego, and Superego in psychodynamic theory, and classical and operant conditioning in behavioral theory. The essay further discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, including the testability of behavioral theory versus the challenges in scientifically observing and verifying psychodynamic concepts. The essay concludes by emphasizing the behavioral theory's greater testability and consideration of external environmental influences, while acknowledging the subjectivity and limitations of the case study-based evidence often used in psychodynamic theory. The essay uses multiple academic sources to support its analysis.

Running head: THEORIES OF COUNSELLING
Theories of Counselling
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1THEORIES OF COUNSELLING
Counselling theories are considered to be the building blocks of profession. Some of
the leading counselling theorists include Albert Ellis, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Rogers etc.
(Leighton, 2016). This essay shall elaborate on presenting an essay on company two theories
of counselling in light to different academic sources. The two chosen theories for this purpose
are psychodynamic theory and behaviour theory. These two theories are two major theories
of personality and they view personality from two different perspectives.
Firstly, it is to mention that psychodynamic approach or theory is guided by a core
principle that claims that unconscious human mind harbours the deep rooted memories and
feelings that have the possibility of affecting their behaviours (Hanna, 2015). This theory was
evolved from the work of Sigmund Freud during his investigation of the unconscious mind
and this is why this theory is based on his idea that “true knowledge of people and their
problems is possible through an understanding of three areas of human mind”. These areas
include- the conscious, the unconscious and the subconscious. However, in contrast to the
psychodynamic theory, the behavioural theory of counselling focuses on the assumption that
it is the environment that determines the behaviour of an individual. The way in which an
individual responds to a particular situation is the outcome of his or her past learning and his
behaviour that has been reinforced in past. It is to note that this theory was developed by
Wolpe during 1950s and it was evolved from the psychological theories and research of
learning that are concerned with the observable behaviour.
Secondly, psychodynamic theory believes that every human being experiences
conflict and tension in between three different elements of their personalities and they are the
Id, the ego and the superego (Janis, 2016). The Id is that part of human personality that is
concerned with some satisfying instinctual basic needs for pleasure, food and comfort. Ego,
on the other hand, can be referred as the realistic awareness of one’s self. According to (), it
is a common and logical sense side of human personality. Finally, superego is developed

2THEORIES OF COUNSELLING
from the age of three in a child’s life. It controls and curbs the basic instincts of the Id and
might be socially unacceptable by many. It is also to mention that this theory argues that
experiences that one experiences that an individual gain during his childhood have a
significant impact on their overall development of their adult personality. On the other hand,
the behaviourists believe that human behaviour are learned and therefore, they can be
unlearned when required (Curtis, 2014). Human personality is viewed as a pattern of the
learned behaviours that are development through either operant or classical conditioning and
are then further moulded by reinforcing rewards or punishments. It is to note that classical
conditioning refers to the process of learning through association and this suggests that
individual learns to get connected with neutral stimulus with a reflex response like delight or
anger. Operant conditioning on the other hand refers to the process of learning through the
results of behaviour.
Furthermore, as compared to the psychodynamic theory, a weakness of the
behavioural theory is that it ignores a part of unconscious. It is to note that as per Goodman
and Goodman (2014), cognitive factors can never be overlooked when learning is required to
be understood. He have also claimed that punishing or rewarding shape the personality of an
individual and cognition has a great impact on the same. With the same, the behavioural
approach have mainly tested on animals and this implies that some findings might not be
applied to the human beings as humans are much more complex than animals. However, a
major strength of behavioural theory over psychodynamic theory is that in terms of
testability, it focused only on the behaviour that could be observed and tested and this makes
it very useful for experiments that are done under laboratory settings where the behaviour
could be verified and observed. Psychodynamic theory cannot be scientifically observed and
verified. Even no one can design an experience that could effectively refute the

3THEORIES OF COUNSELLING
psychodynamic theory. This makes it difficult to prove where the unconscious do exist or
whether the notion of retrained memory is real or not.
Hence, from the above analysis it is to conclude that in terms of testability and
methodology, behavioural theory of counselling is much more encompassing as compared to
the psychodynamic theory. Unlike the psychodynamic theory that cannot be tested or
observed scientifically, the behavioural theory can be easily tested and observed and can
therefore be used in laboratory settings as well. Also, behavioural theory takes into
consideration the external environmental influences. Lastly, it is also to mention that majority
of the evidences in the psychodynamic theory have been taken from the case studies by
Sigmund Freud and they are very subjective and are hard to generalise the outcomes to larger
population.

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References:
Curtis, K. (2014). Learning the requirements for compassionate practice: student
vulnerability and courage. Nursing Ethics, 21(2), 210-223.
Goodman, Y. M., & Goodman, K. S. (2014). Vygotsky in a whole language perspective.
In Making sense of learners making sense of written language (pp. 98-114).
Routledge.
Hanna, T. S. (2015). COMMON GROUND: PASTORAL COUNSELING AND ALLIED
PROFESSIONAL INTERVENTIONS. Understanding Pastoral Counseling, 181.
Janis, I. L. (2016). Psychological stress: Psychoanalytic and behavioral studies of surgical
patients. Academic Press.
Leighton, T. (2016). Faith as a therapeutic companion: Instructing counselling students on the
import of religion. Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy/Revue
canadienne de counseling et de psychothérapie, 50(3).