Psychoanalysis vs. Adlerian vs. Gestalt statements

Clients are ready to terminate therapy when they have clarified and accepted their current emotional problems, have understood the historical roots of their diffficulties, and can integrate these awarenesses of their present problems with past relationships

Psychoanalysis

Our infantile conflicts may never be fully resolved even though many aspects of transference are worked through with a therapist

Psychoanalysis

We experience transference with many people, and our past is always a vital part of the person we are presently becoming

Psychoanalysis

The transference situation is considered valuable in therapy because its manifestations provide clients with the opportunity to reexperience a variety of feelings that would otherwise be inaccessible

Psychoanalysis

The key to understanding human behavior is understanding the unconscious

Psychoanalysis

Most psychological conflicts are not open to conscious control because their source has been repressed and remains unconscious

Psychoanalysis

The unconscious, even though it is out of awareness, has a great influence on behavior

Psychoanalysis

Development during the first six years of life is a crucial determinant of the adult personality

Psychoanalysis

Most personality and behavior problems have roots in a failure to resolve some phase of psychosexual development in early childhood

Psychoanalysis

One learns the basic sense of trust in one’s world during the first year of life

Psychoanalysis

To progress toward healthy development, one must learn how to deal with feelings of rage, hostility, and anger during the second and third years of life

Psychoanalysis

It is normal for children around the age of five to have concerns about their sexuality, their sex roles, and their sexual feelings

Psychoanalysis

Insight, understanding, and working through earlier, repressed material are essential aspects of therapy

Psychoanalysis

Therapists should engage in relatively little self-revelation and should remain anonymous

Psychoanalysis

For therapy to be effective, clients must be willing to commit themselves to an intensive and long-term therapeutic process

Psychoanalysis

Therapy is not complete unless the client works through the transference process

Psychoanalysis

Analysis and interpretation are essential elements in the therapeutic process

Psychoanalysis

It is important that a client relive the past in therapy

Psychoanalysis

Effective therapy cannot occur unless the underlying causes of a client’s problem are understood and treated

Psychoanalysis

The basic aim of therapy is to make the unconscious conscious

Psychoanalysis

The social determinants of personality development are more powerful than the sexual determinants

Adlerian

Humans can be understood by looking at where they are going and what they are striving toward

Adlerian

People have a need to overcome inferiority feelings and strive for success

Adlerian

If a client is depressed, therapy should focus on the thinking patterns that lead to certain behaviors and feelings, not feelings alone

Adlerian

People are best understood by seeing through the “spectacles” by which they view themselves in relation to the world

Adlerian

Although people are influenced by their early childhood experiences, they are not passively shaped by them; they are the creator of their own life

Adlerian

It is therapeutically useful to ask clients to recall their earliest memories

Adlerian

Each person develops a unique lifestyle, which should be a focal point of examination in counseling

Adlerian

Clients in counseling should not be viewed as being “sick” and needing to be “cured”; it is better to see them as being discouraged and in need of reeducation

Adlerian

Knowing about clients’ position in their family origin is important as a reference point for therapy

Adlerian

Typically, clients come to therapy with mistaken assumptions or faulty beliefs about life

Adlerian

Because emotions are integrated with out cognitive-behavioral processes, it is appropriate that the counseling process be aimed at the exploration of the client’s thoughts, goals, and beliefs

Adlerian

Although a good client/therapist relationship is essential for counseling to progress, this relationship alone will not bring about change

Adlerian

One of a counselor’s main tasks is to gather information about family relationships and them to summarize and interpret this material

Adlerian

People tend to remember only those past events that are consistent with their current view of themselves

Adlerian

Dreams are rehearsals for possible future courses of action

Adlerian

Conscious factors should be given more attention than unconscious factors in therapy

Adlerian

Although insight is a powerful adjunct to motivational changes, it is not a prerequisite for change

Adlerian

Insight can best be defined as translating self-understanding into constructive action

Adlerian

At its best, counseling is a cooperative relationship geared toward helping clients identify and change their mistaken beliefs and goals

Adlerian

Growth occurs our of genuine contact between therapist and client more than from the therapist’s interpretation or methods

Gestalt

Therapy aims at awareness, contact with the environment, and integration

Gestalt

The here-and-now focus of therapy is more important than a focus on the past or on the future

Gestalt

It is more fruitful for the therapist to ask ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions than to ask ‘why’ questions

Gestalt

Rather than merely talking about feelings and experiences in therapy, it is more productive for clients to relive and reexperience those feelings as though they were happening now

Gestalt

One’s past is important to the degree that it is related to significant themes in one’s present functioning

Gestalt

A major therapeutic function is to devise experiments designed to increase clients’ self-awareness of what they are doing and how they are doing it

Gestalt

A primary aim of therapy is to expand a person’a capacity for self-awareness, which is seen as curative in itself

Gestalt

Awareness includes insight, self-acceptance, knowledge of the environment, responsibility for choices, and the ability to make contact with others

Gestalt

Unfinished business from the past usually manifests itself in present problems in functioning effectively

Gestalt

We change when we become aware of what we are as opposed to trying to become what we are not

Gestalt

Focusing on the past can be a way to avoid coming to terms with the present

Gestalt

Effective contact means interacting with nature and with other people without losing one’s sense of individuality

Gestalt

Therapy best focuses on the client’s feelings, present awareness, body messages, and blocks to awareness

Gestalt

The therapist’s main function is to assist the client in gaining awareness of the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of experiencing in the here and now

Gestalt

The therapist should avoid diagnosing, interpreting, and explaining at length the client’s behavior

Gestalt

In therapy it is extremely important to pay attention to the client’s body language and other nonverbal cues

Gestalt

As therapy progresses, the client can be expected to assume increasing responsibility for his or her own thoughts, feelings, and behavior

Gestalt

It is important that therapists actively share their own present perceptions and experiences as they encounter clients in the here and now

Gestalt

The most effective experiments grow out of genuine interaction between client and therapist and generally help clients gain increased awareness of fragmented and disowned aspects of themselves

Gestalt