This essay seeks
to find answer to question, what are factors that contribute to healing, growth
and change in a helping relationship and what other factors can cause harm to all
people through a practical study. The current essay analyses the relationship
between Annie and her therapist Dr. Bluemenfeld, Annie and her child patient
Ben and her previous therapist Melanie. In order to answer above question, a
series of further questions are prepared. It has observed that it is necessary to create
a reliable relationship between service provider and service user. It is
important for a therapist to acknowledge the approach and procedure of knowing
the issues concerned with its visitors come for treatment. In this case, all
questions are looked into from view of a therapist and how he or she deals with
customers. The customer retaining is based over the relationship, which is maintained
through self-awareness. Increasing in knowledge about customers, who is a child
a therapist also able to dictate and provide appropriate treatment of the
issues faced. Essay begins with principles
that guide all therapists in dealing with his or her individual (Ulvenes et al 2012).
It then goes on to explain how these principles bring changes to life of an individual.
After this, essay tries to explain various different approaches that a
therapist takes to treat his individual. This will include play therapy, Intervention
theory, Person centered theory. In final part, this essay provides with
different examples where an individual and his or her therapist have worked
together and how each of them has influenced behavior of each other.
Annie Rogers in
her first psychotherapy session during beginning of her one-year doctoral
clinical internship encounters Ben suffering from oppositional personality
disorder. Being a bright child and once misdiagnosed as autistic patient, medical
history of Ben moved Annie emotionally and made her wonder whether she could
help Ben or not. This highlights her sense of care and motherly nature, which
she uses to diagnose Ben. During first encountering with Ben, Annie attempts to
diagnose him with play therapy by asking questions regarding his imagination
and story formulated. Being a child
patient, Ben could not describe the problem with him in words rather showed it
visually to Annie through a small enactment that made Annie aware of his situation,
which was found to be running, fire, and being lost. Annie interpreted such
enactment as fear of being left alone, being touched or being controlled (Rogers, 1959).
There are many
principles that guide a therapist in treating their customers. For any
therapist to treatment, foremost thing is needed to understand by any therapist
is to understand basic psychology of an individual. In order to do so, a
therapist follows certain steps. First, a therapist has to talk with his
customers in a detail manner and try to understand all values and each needs of
his life from his perspective (Kearney et al 2011). This is called Emic
approach whereby a therapist puts his feet into shoes and tries to understand
his problem. There are five basic needs of life. According to Choice theory,
they are Power, Freedom, Love, Survival and Fun. Need for power is essential in
anyone’s life as this gives a feeling of being worth as a person and gives a
feeling of having achieved something in life (Rogers,
2012). Engagement with Ben highlighted the use of self-awareness,
sharing and understanding of mental state, emotion of the patient usually
needed by a doctor in treatment and in this case, for a child patient who
cannot describe his or her problem verbally but enacts through playfulness.
Annie also performs a background research that reveals the case history of Ben
to get a deep insight towards the case of her client, which will enable her to
treat Ben with efficiency. Annie acting playfully towards Ben with motherly
care made her emotionally attached to Ben, which had both positive and negative
effects. The positive effect was that Ben was being cured due to presence of
motherly love and care Annie provided to him and the negative effect was that
too much emotional attachment would cause more harm to Ben when Annie would
leave him. Thompson (2012) stated that
emotional attachment could cause harm as well as wellbeing for any patient
being treated. Annie was very much competent in interpreting actions and
emotions of Ben reacting to the needs of Ben.
Love is another
need of life as this gives a feeling of belonging to someone whether it is
family, friends, or spouse. Roger has argued Love generates care and it
provides a healing power to one’s mind. However, it is important that a
therapist understands nature of love from perspective of their customer. If customer
is child, therapist needs love of his parents whereas an adult customer needs
love from society. Freedom is another aspect, which helps mind of an
individual, to grow independently by providing a separate place for their customer
(Rogers, 2012). Without freedom, a mind
gets blocked and thus it would be difficult for a therapist to treat his
patient without understanding any nature of freedom that he or she wants to
enjoy in life. Individuals at different level want different freedom and hence
it is important for therapist to understand a psychology of individuals.
Finally, Heininen and others have commented that Fun is an essential part of
any human being without which a person cannot survive. In fact, Fun allows an
individual to stay motivated in life and helps to overcome many psychological stresses
in life (Heinonen et al.2012).
A therapist can
bring significant changes in life of a customer. He can motivate a customer to any
change way person is living is life. Therapist can bring in a new dimension to all
value of individual’s life. On the other hand, therapist treats customer in
such a manner than brings in new light in to his or her life from nowhere. A
therapist can change behavior of his customer to some extent by making him
understand all values of different components in life. Individual often comes
to a therapist with a completely different set of believes. However, it is duty
of a therapist to change beliefs of his individual through various techniques (Del Re et al. 2012). Customer directed
approach through understanding of benefits are understood by both Annie and Dr.
Blumenfeld as both of them are able to reveal through empathy the weak point
of their patient. In case of Ben, Annie was
able to uncover his needs through interpretation of his actions and enactment
and studying his case background. Dr. Blumenfeld through his analysis was able
to understand the trauma faced by Annie and helped her confront such trauma in
past. The recovery process was also understood, as Annie becomes cautious
regarding the fact that leaving Ben would devastate him due to emotional
attachment. Wampold (2012) commented that the
factors such as Ben’s intellect were understood by Annie, which highlights that
factors and events are appreciated by her.
A therapist to
tackle difficulty in decision-making process uses intervention theory. Through
this theory, a therapist tries to understand when it is appropriate to intervene
in to life of a customer and when it is not so appropriate. This theory is more
specifically used when a therapist is dealing with child individual.
De haan believes
that a Therapist also uses play therapy in order to deal with all children person’s
aged between 3 and 11. This is because child of this age needs special care. It
is more difficult to for a therapist to understand psychology of a child (de Haan et al. 2013). A child is often self regulated and his mind
is free of any bindings. Therefore, whatever is given to him, as input will
stay with person for lifetime. Hence, a therapist needs to adopt a very
delicate therapy in treating a child. This is where play therapy comes to help.
It is easy to teach and tame mind of a child through different play techniques.
Howe described that emotion is a major factor in understanding and managing the
emotions for an efficient practice of social care (Nitzarim, 2012). Annie uses her emotion to understand Ben’s
emotional state however becomes too much involved that makes her mentally ill
herself. Dr. Blumenfeld in the other hand tries play therapy on Annie to
understand her needs and make her competent in confronting her fear and bad
experience.
According to
Thompson, Person centered therapy is more important when it comes to treat an
adult customer. Major objective of this theory is to help a customer understand
how his behavior is affecting his surrounding and how surrounding is affecting
his attitudes. For this, a therapist has three core conditions – Empathy that
is ability to understand a individual’s perspective from his angle, unconditional
positive regards and Congruence that is ability to clearly communicate with a customer
(Thompson et al. 2012).
A therapist also
undertakes different means to control customers, which is next issue of essay. A
therapist tries to influence control over his individual through various means.
He may exercise his controls by one to one communication, or may tell him a
story from his life about how he bounced back from a very difficult situation.
All these can be done only if customer is an adult one (Del Re et al. 2012). On the other hand, if customer is a
child, then therapist needs to adopt a more delicate approach. In this case, he
tries to enter into life of a child by acting as local guardian. He tries to
teach children by playing with him and staying with him when he is along. He
also sometimes tries to influence his individual verbally only. He listens to all
feelings of his customer and tries to guide him according to psychology that a
customer possesses which is established by Del Re and others. However, in an
attempt to recover Ben, due to extreme emotional attachment, Annie became a
mental patient herself. Due to overwhelming emotional misbalance, Annie had to
be hospitalized herself. After recovering from her illness, Annie started
working with Dr. Blumenfeld who was a psychoanalyst. While working together,
they unrevealed a hidden abuse in Annie’s life, as both her parents were
abusive to her in her childhood. Such abuse made Annie confused regarding
attachment and love. Dr. Blumenfeld through playful therapy helped Annie to
justify and confront her bad experience in past and enabled her to overcome the
relationship disaster happened with her previous therapist Melanie.
A therapist
enters into life of his individual as a guide. He encourages participation from
his customer and tries to influence attitude of his customer. On the other
hand, this participation rate varies from customer to individual. It is
expected that an adult person will participate more than a child individual.
This is because therapist expects that his or her adult individual will be able
handling his emotion in much matured way than a child. A child is expected to
slip every now and then. Therefore, individuals of moiré aged are expected to
participate more aggressively than a child (Rogers,
2012).
Next area of this
essay is how a therapist tries to provide support to his or her individual’s
participation and reduce risk of oppressiveness. It is very important than a therapist
acting as guide for individual but customer should not become over dependent on
his or her therapist for such guidance. It is in this respect, therapist needs
to stop giving advice but direct a customer to act as self-directed learner (Del Re et al. 2012). After customer
gains in experience about how to deal different situations, it should be left for
customer to decide as to what fits him best. It is important that a customer
learn how to change his attitude according to various different situations.
According to Kearney, more importantly, it is for a therapist to know where to
stop being guiding his customer. This distance between customers and therapist
will help a customer to emerge as self centered and self dependent model in
future (Kearney et al.2011). In
the case study, Melanie caused harm to Annie as she tried to force her own
fantasies on Annie. Such forcing of fantasies broke Annie due to improper
manipulation. Melanie messed up in treating and diagnosing Annie and made
situation worse.
There are many
cases where a therapist has been working with his or her customer together.
This is particularly a situation when person is a child. This is because he
needs to spend more time with children than an adult. In case of child customer,
a therapist adopts different techniques to teach child as to how to behave in
public and tries to build his character upon it (Rogers,
2012). A child’s mind is more ready to accept teachings when it comes in
form of plays and stories. On the other hand, a therapist tries to create more
of self awareness when he is dealing with an adult. This is because it is more
important for an adult customer that he becomes aware of his own attitudes and
behavior by his own. In case of a child, a therapist can himself sometimes acts
as a role model. Child tries to learn from his or her therapist by observing
his behavior. However, as age increases, child might forget some of the old
habits. It is here that role of a therapist becomes very important. He needs to
keep himself in contact unless child gains that maturity to keep himself under
control (Snyder et al. 2012).
The different
feminist developed a concept of ethics of care, which guide a therapist in
treating his customers. Therapist tries to understand dependence and
interdependence of his customer on therapist behavior (Snyder et al. 2012). He also tries to understand varying
degree of such interdependences. Therefore, it is more interaction from both
side and not just depended on customers for total rectification. Ethics of care
guide a therapist in understanding value of individual‘s choice and their
respective outcome and tries to take extra care about feelings of the customer.
Through these ethics, a therapist tries to give more attention to the
individual feelings and emotions and reason why a person is behaving in that
particular way (Thompson et al. 2012).
Roger believes
that customers as well as a therapist both are affected in process. On one
side, a customer learns new behavior from therapist as a part of guidance and
on the other hand, therapist gains in experience as to how read minds of different
people. Beside this, a therapist also learns how each individual vary in their
thinking process under same given conditions. Children learn certain behavior,
which he continues to grow as he grows up his age (Rogers, 2012). Adult customers get much-needed social feelings
when he talks with a therapist. Therapist can provide him with real boost in
confidence to customer and he might get a motivation back to work with more
fresh energy. On the other hand, therapists sometime also are influenced by
behavior of his or her customer. In this way, both ways both gets affected by
each other’s behavior and both develops a boning that influence important life
activities of both individuals (Snyder et al.2012). Core conditions of
Carl Rogers being empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regards are
found non-uniformly throughout Shining Affliction. According to Robinson (2011), empathy is referred to as
frame of reference, which is the reason for perception to this world. In such
the counselor tries understanding feelings and thoughts through experiencing in
clients way and is also referred to as walking in someone’s else’s shoes. Annie
walks in the shoes of Ben during his counseling, which helped Ben in recovering
from his trauma however made Annie mentally affected. Congruence, which leads
to building trust and relationship with the counselor, helps in defeating the
negative impact that someone has left on the client (Nguyen, 2011). Dr. Blumenfeld uses congruence to remove the
negative effects Melanie, Annie’s former therapist has left on her. Annie
before Dr. Blumenfeld who never asked Annie regarding justification of her
actions rather also faced unconditional positive regard and hence Annie was
free to open up to Dr. Blumenfeld without any fear of being criticized.
On concluding,
it can be said that a therapist plays important part in life of his or her individuals
and shaping his attitudes and behavior in his life. Interaction between two is
helpful to both individuals as they both learn from each other responses under
different situations. Finally, it can be said that for any therapist to give
his person best service, it is important that he spend much of his time with
person and try to understand psychology
as to why he is doing that particular act under that specific circumstances (Thompson et al. 2012). It is important
that therapist stays beside person during time of crisis and listens to each
advice of therapist so that they both develop a close bonding. This is
essential for both partners for their growth in long run.
