Introduction to Counseling: Theories and Techniques

30 vocabulary flashcards based on the lecture notes covering Existential Therapy and Person-Centered Therapy.

Existential Therapy

A therapeutic approach that focuses on exploring themes such as mortality, meaning, freedom, responsibility, anxiety, and aloneness as they relate to a person’s current struggle.

Givens of life

The core existential themes that include death, freedom, choice, isolation, and meaninglessness.

Capacity for Self-Awareness

An existential premise stating that increasing our awareness leads to greater possibilities for freedom and the ability to live fully.

Inaction

Viewed within existential therapy as a decision rather than a neutral state.

Thrown

A concept describing how a person is situated in the world, which serves as a product for discovering meaning.

Freedom and Responsibility

The assumption that we are the authors of our lives and are responsible for our actions, choices, and failures to take action.

Striving for Identity

The concern for preserving one's uniqueness and centeredness while also desiring to relate to other beings and nature.

The search for meaning

The struggle for a sense of significance and purpose, often asking questions like "Why am I here?" and "What gives my life purpose?"

Existential anxiety

The unavoidable result of being confronted with the givens of existence, such as mortality, pain, suffering, and the need for survival.

Awareness of death

A basic human condition that provides motivation to appreciate the present moment and teaches us how to live fully.

Authenticity

Living fully and making choices that lead to becoming what one is capable of being, rather than deceiving oneself.

Fellow travelers

A term for existential therapists who are willing to make themselves known through appropriate self-disclosure.

Person-Centered Therapy

An approach developed by Carl Rogers that emphasizes the client's ability to engage their own resources for growth.

Carl Rogers

The psychologist who maintained that congruence, unconditional positive regard, and accurate empathic understanding create a growth-promoting climate.

Congruence

Also called genuineness or realness, this occurs when a therapist's inner experience and outer expression match during the therapy hour.

Unconditional positive regard

Deep and genuine caring for the client as a person, which is not contaminated by evaluation or judgment of their behaviors.

Accurate empathic understanding

The ability to sensitively and accurately grasp the subjective world and internal frame of reference of another person.

Subjective empathy

A type of empathy that enables practitioners to experience what it is like to be the client.

Interpersonal empathy

Pertains to understanding a client’s internal frame of reference and conveying a sense of their private meanings to them.

Objective empathy

A type of empathy that relies on knowledge sources outside of a client's own frame of reference.

Full empathy

Understanding both the meaning and the feeling of a client's experiencing, described as knowing "what it is like to be you."

Independence and integration

The goals of person-centered therapy aimed at helping clients better cope with problems rather than just solving a specific issue.

Masks (Facades)

Socially developed personas that characters wear, often causing them to lose contact with their true selves.

Active self-healers

The person-centered assumption that clients are responsible for creating their own self-growth.

Non possessive caring

A component of unconditional positive regard where the therapist accepts the client without judgment of feelings or behavior as good or bad.

Self-structure

The internal framework into which clients move to incorporate and accept conflicting feelings like shame, hatred, and anger.

Emerging awareness

The realization by clients that they can change the way they view and react to events, even if they cannot change the events themselves.

Security of dependence

The comfort clients may trade away in exchange for the anxieties that accompany choosing for themselves.

Genuineness

The state of being authentic and integrated, where a therapist is without a false front in the relationship with the client.

Socialization

The process through which clients develop masks or facades that lead to a lost contact with the self.