Orleans, V. & Scoyoc, S. (2009). A Short Introduction to Counselling Psychology. London: SAGE. Kapitel 1-6

 

Epistemology is the part of philosophy that concerns the nature and rood of knowledge and its limits.

Counselling psychology focuses on the client’s wellbeing here and now, like a part of this person rather than trying to categorise psychopathology.

Theory vs. practice; practice in relation to research, humanistic base value vs. positivistic scientific belief system.

Philosophy: metaphysic (what the worlds components are build from, like the human), ontology (existing, being), epistemology and ethics (right and wrong).

Philosophers that separated psychology from philosophy:

Decartes; founder of psychology as a discipline separate from philosophy, with its framework for working with the mind and body – dualism, two separate things, “I think, therefore I am”.

Francis Bacon; the human has control over the nature, created the idea of an experiment.

Thomas Hobbes: thinking=language, agreement between humans

John Locke; sensing and radical reflection, you reflect on what you have reflected on.

Leibniz; divides conscious attention from unconscious attention

Modern psychology; rationalising, positivistic approach, research gives answers, institutionalising and rules for scientific experimenting.

Wundt; divided philosophy from science, created experimental psychology of introspection, which led to behaviourism that criticised introspection because it could not be observed.

Gestalt psychology (von Ehrenfels); reductionist, a movement against the experimental psychological wave

Russell; describes the romantics and that something can be influence by emotions.

Rousseau; describes the self, as a reaction to empiricism and rationalism

Kant; the relation between perception of an object and the object itself, the role of the receiver and the reality of perception.

Husserl; phenomenology, the analysis of the structure of consciousness

Heidegger; the structure of consciousness is combined with the structure of the human existence, existential phenomenology, existentialism – the humanistic wave.

Maslow; humanism in the USA, self-actualization

Depth psychology; Freud’s psychoanalysis and special weight on the unconscious is significant for the philosophy.

Post positivistic realism; focuses on the change but acknowledges that resources and benefits is driven by labels and identities. Counselling psychology believes that it is important to cooperate with the philosophy to get the humanistic aspect back in psychology.