FAMILY COUNSELING

Family Counseling



Family Counseling

Introduction

Family counseling is also called family therapy. It is a branch of psychotherapy which deals with families and couples in intimate relationships to develop and groom the relation. Experiential Therapy of Family Counseling has emerged from humanistic-existentialist movement of the 1960's, Gestalt Therapy, Psychodrama, Client-centered and Encounter-group movement. The intention of family counseling is to capture change in terms of the systems of communication among the family members. Experiential counseling is based on believe that cohesiveness of the family is extremely significant for the personal growth.

The relationships are recognized as the significant factor in mental health. There is different school of thoughts regarding family counseling. One thing is common among all that either the issue is with individual or with family; involving families in the issue are beneficial. The role of the family counselor is very important because he should have the ability to influence individual or groups from his conversations. The approach of family counseling has been used in a variety of human dilemmas. There is no relationship in which the approach of counseling could not work effectively.

Discussion

Experiential Therapy of Family Counseling

Experiential Therapy of Family Counseling has emerged from humanistic-existentialist movement of the 1960s, Gestalt Therapy, Psychodrama, Client-centered and Encounter-group movement. Carl Whitaker's originative and spontaneous conceiving shaped the ground of a sheer and imaginative approach to family therapy (Capuzzi & Gross, 2003). He believed that active and forceful personal involvement and caring of the therapist would be the best way to bring about changes in families and promote flexibility among family members. The experiential family therapists focus on emotionality.

Experiential Therapy

The basic goal of experiential therapy is to cut down sensitivity and unfold the cryptic levels of experiencing by relinquishing the clients from their desires. Another aim of experiential therapy is to reduce conflicts and struggles between the family members and to increase improved communication. It tends to increment personal wholeness that is integrity (congruence between internal experience and external behavior) less habituation, elaborated experiencing vehemence on the feeling of human nature. It tries to improve liberty for each member and improved agreement about roles, fusion of demands for a person's development and fortifying the unit of family.

In experiential therapies, the nature of therapy is an important component of the therapeutic process. Integral to the existential-experiential process of therapy is the understanding that what is therapeutic does not necessarily involve the experience itself; it involves the significance the individual attaches to it (Gladding, 2007). Regardless of how or why the therapeutic moment occurs for some clients, All psychotherapy is oriented towards increasing personhood, increasing oneness, integration, self-esteem,” each an acknowledgement of the existential qualities of humanity.

Assumptions

The theory is based on practical concept. It could block clinical work. The concept is clear that each individual of the family has the right to be themselves. It is based on the realization that family is a cohesive unit; it is not a collection of distinct individuals (Carter & McGoldrick, ...