It’s important when choosing a counsellor that you are informed of the counsellor’s theoretical base and to determine whether that theoretical base accords with what you want from therapy.

My approach to counselling is Integrative, with an emphasis towards Humanistic.  This means that I have been trained in a number of different approaches, which enables me to adapt my counselling approach to your personality / presenting problem.  The approaches I am able to incorporate into your therapy include: Person-Centred, Transactional Analiysis (TA), Psychodynamic and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).  The key component in counselling is the therapeutic relationship between client and counsellor.

Here, the main features of humanistic counselling will be looked at.

Humanistic counselling evolved in the 50s when many psychologists and therapists wanted to look at psychology and therapy in ways not available to them in behavioural or psychoanalytic psychology. For this reason it became known as the ‘third force’. The main difference is the emphasis on the ‘human potential’ for creativity, love, growth and psychological health rather than any felt need for pathological labels or diagnosis as a starting-point for therapeutic interventions.

Prominent figures of the movement are Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers (the founder of person - or client-centred counselling) and Fritz Perls (the founder of gestalt therapy).

The main therapies considered to be humanistic are person-centred, gestalt, transactional analysis (TA) and transpersonal.

In humanistic counselling the capacity for growth and fulfilment underlies the approach to all clients. The fundamental drive of the person is seen to be a need for fulfilment. What gets in the way or ‘blocks’ fulfilment in the sense of self is not seen as static problems and/or diagnoses like ‘depression’ but rather hindrances in dynamic processes that would otherwise lead to the depression lifting.

Humanistic counsellors aim to help their clients work with these processes to allow changes that occur naturally when the processes being blocked are lessened or eliminated. Also worked with is the thinking that goes along with these blocks so that the person can move towards a clearer, less cluttered sense of self.