Computer Science I Essay, Research Paper

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At times great thinkers, philosophers, and educators of a given society tend te precipitate and ingenually costruct beliefs or theories about existing citizens in their society. These theories are usually based on specific traits, usually psychological, that certain people in their society may express. The studies and investigations of great thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Rodgers, and B.F. Skinner attempt to solidify, in terms of applicability, theories related to the guidance/counseling situation in modern school systems. The examination of my thesis will include consideration of the purpose of guidance in schools by each theorist, and will attempt to describe how pupil personnel services might be organized, if one were to be consistent with each theorist?s concepts, as applied to the counseling realm.

As Mortensen states, in short, Freud represents the psychoanalytic approach, Rodgers represents the humanistic or person-centered approach, and Skinner represents the behaviorist approach (112). Accordingly, the goals and techniques in the guidance/counseling milieu are strongly contrastive among the three theorists. In addition, the three approaches are obviously more individually effective in dealing with appropriate problems. For example, Freud?s psychoanalytic approach would be most effective in counseling a student with family problems, rather than a student who merely wishes technical advice on a career choice. Taking Freud first, we find that although he wrote in a letter to Jung, ?Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love? (Bettelheim 32), the fact is that the psychoanalyst, or the counselor basing his or her guidance on psychoanalysis, is the ultimate definer of every aspect of the encounter with the patient,

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client or student. Bettelheim correctly argues that ?Freud has been misunderstood by many translators and therefore, unfairly lableled as an inhumane tyrant, desiring primarily to control human lives and define reality in his own terms (134). Accordingly, one might expect the counselor using his theories to try to dictate to the student seeking guidance. While this may be a harsh conclusion to Bettelheim, it is an inevitable one when we consider the Freudian approach in comparison to the client-centered approach of Rodgers, for example. On the other hand, Skinner, as we shall see, would devise an even more harsh counseling program in terms of eliminating consideration of the student?s freedom and individuality. One can not quarrel, in any case, with Bettelheim?s basic argument that ?the purpose of Freud?s lifelong struggle was to help us understand our self , so that we would no longer be propelled by forces unknown to us, to live lives of discontent, or perhaps outright misery, and to make others miserable, very much to our own detriment? (169-71). But honorable purpose are often achieved through means which lead to the domination of one person over another. In the case of school counseling; the imbalance in power would be even more drastic in a program based on psychoanalysis. Lindsey states the fundamental definition of psychoanalysis as being: ?a method of studying human behavior, as well as a method of treatment? (27). This simply means that psychoanalysis combines the use of free association, the subject speaks the first thought that comes to mind without inhibition or censorship; a permissive setting, and typically a couch on which the patient reclines, looking away from the therapist. The patient begins to reveal a host of material that is not only private, but also unconscious in

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that the patient is not consciously aware of what he or she is saying at the given time. As Dyer states, ?Freud?s theory emphasizes the overriding importance of early (particularly infantile) experience, of sexual drives and of the unconscious, in determining adult behavior? (407-408). ?The individual?s early relations with his or her parents are (seen to be) vital in the young individual?s development? (Lindzey 34). Clearly then one can see that Freud?s approach as applied to counseling in schools is limited, first because psychoanalysis is more effective in treating adults rather than children or teenagers, and second because it would in any case only be useful in treating students whose primary problem is a deep-seeded emotional one. This approach is not as useful or convenient in treating the student with more practical needs that are simply not found in psychological turmoil. The purpose of guidance in schools for Freud, then, would be to discover, perhaps even in the case of the student seeking career guidance, would be to contact the deep seeded unconscious traumas which prevent the student from fulfilling himself or herself in the present, as well as in the near future. The organization of pupil personnel services under Freud would involve the employment of many psychoanalysts, who would daily analyze student-clients with all sorts of problems, using concepts of the id, the ego and the superego. However, as Lindzey points out, ?the pleasure principle, the castration complex, the techniques of free association, and dream analysis are other concepts that are incorporated in Freud?s theory? (91). Even the student with a career choice problem could be eligible for psychoanalysis if the counselor feels that the student is unaware of deep-seeded superficial, practical or technical problem. In short, the utilization of a guidance program based on Freudian principle would be entirely ?impractical and

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unnecessary for the handling of the bulk of student counseling and/or guidance questions and problems? (Mortensen 216).

Skinner?s approach to counseling would be closer to Freud?s than to Rodgers?, both in terms of the counselor?s dominance of the encounter with the student, as well as in terms of the view of the student as being generally at the mercy of forces beyond his rational control. As we shall see, Skinner?s approach is similarly impractical and generally inapplicable to the school pupil personnel service program. Regarding the behaviorist approach of Skinner, Schmuller writes:

?There is a growing consensus among guidance personnel that the education of a counselor should involve some formal exposure to the work of the behaviorists. However, the behaviorist often face special difficulties. For example, if the focus is on generalities and concepts, this training will be vulnerable to the criticism that this is only providing the future counselor with little more than common sense, laced with unnecessary, if not confusing jargon? (179-182).

In other words, behaviorism is as marginally applicable as psychoanalysis as to the school counseling situation, if not even more so. Whereas, psychoanalysis sees unconscious fears and desires as the elements around which the individual?s life revolves (until he is freed by the expertise of the psychoanalyst), behaviorism sees the individual as being composed of objective behavior (which can be scientifically manipulated by the ministrations of the behaviorist for the benefit of both the individual and society). Neither approach grants the student; whatever his or her problem or need, the kind of individual

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dignity granted by Rodgers and his more humanistic client-centered approach. Most of Skinner?s theories about human behavior ? are based on laboratory experiments with animals, especially pigeons and rats? (Lindzey 12). It is not difficult to see, then, that students would not take immediately to the behaviorist approach, particularly when we consider that students are among the greatest resisters to guidance, which is imposed upon them without adequate explanation. The behaviorist counselor would not put any significance in what the student says or thinks, but would instead form a picture of the needed behavioral change exclusively on the basis of what actions can be perceived. The guidance program and pupil personnel services based on behaviorism would consist primarily of a system of rewards and punishments. If there is any place for such a program in the schools, it would clearly be most applicable in cases in which a student is a trouble maker and is making trouble in order to receive attention. The behaviorist would impose a system of rewards and punishments in which undesirable behavior is punished and desirable behavior is rewarded. In all but the earliest grades, however, it is unlikely that such a system would have little success, if any at all. As Dyer, Piaget, Maeroff and others indicate, ?rewards/punishment systems in schools have not proved successful, primarily because the student causing trouble can easily see through the behaviorist manipulation and will resist its efforts, for the student is not a rat or pigeon? (123). Many believe that if behaviorism, as a guidance system were to prove to be successful, then, as Lindzey points out, ?it would prove so only in treatment of the earliest members of nursery school, say in which the child?s behavior is most

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manipulative? (46). Again, as with psychoanalysis, behaviorism, as the basis of school guidance and counseling, would prove to be inapplicable in most situations as well as inconvenient and ineffective. As Mortensen and Schmuller write, in the application of behaviorism to the counseling setting, ?Although the student is involved in the determination of the desired change, it is the counselor who shoulders the responsibility for this change. The student?s vital sense is being manipulated and they would have little to say about this manipulation. It is the counselor who controls the procedures, and reality is what the counselor says it is, and not as the student perceives it? (59-60). The student who refuses to be manipulated so blatantly, who refuses to be reduced to what the behaviorist counselor sees as a set of ?behavior patterns? or who insists on his own way in the counseling session and his own dignity as an individual greater than the sum of his external behaviors, this student would clearly not be a prime candidate for behaviorist based counseling. On the other hand, the confused student, the student who seeks primarily to change his behavior and not seek explanations (such as he who is abusing drugs, for example) about the deeper elements of his personality, this student may be a fine candidate for this type of counseling. The pupil personnel services designed around the behaviorist approach will be a more simple one than in the case of psychoanalysis, because the process of manipulating behavior through the reward/punishment operations is a much simpler one than the full-blown psychoanalytic approach in its most strict Freudian application, which would technically involve an average of five times a week analysis. The organization of behaviorist based pupil personnel services would therefore

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be based on the individual?s behavior, whereas Freud?s approach would be based on the individual?s particular neuroses and complexes. The specific ordering of the behaviorist approach would depend on the nature of the individual?s undesirable behavior and the nature of the desired behavior, which would be largely determined and manipulated by the counselor. In neither Freud?s nor Skinner?s perspectives, is the dignity, freedom, and special worth of the individual student (or of the counselor) placed at the center of the counseling experience, as is the case with the humanistic approach of Carl Rodgers. Kappleman and Ackerman, in their delineation of the basic operational philosophy of a successful and meaningful and comprehensive pupil personnel services program, listed among other statements, as we shall see, qualify Rodgers? approach and disqualify Freud?s and Skinner?s as applicable to the guidance of students: ?such services are an integral part of the educational process; pupil personnel services workers provide unique learning experiences to the youth, enabling them to achieve a higher degree of self-confidence and personal integration; services must be planned and organized to provide their unique contribution to each pupil?s learning, as well as to implement other parts of the school program; the pupil must be the primary focus of attention and his or her personal worth must be recognized; the worker must recognize the importance of the quality of interpersonal relationships? (163-64).

While neither psychoanalysts nor behaviorist fulfill all these requirements, Rodgers? client-centered therapeutic approach does. Rodgers explains that ?the goals of counseling are in general the same as those of guidance. Counseling, however, is more personal and more intimate and totally individual in focus. Its purpose is to enhance the

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personal development and the psychological growth toward maturity, of its clients. It is purposeful, for it is concerned with the learning and growth of each individual? (162). In A Way of Being, Rodgers writes of his own counseling center in Chicago:

?I have come to trust the capacity of persons to explore and understand themselves and their troubles, and to resolve those problems, in any close, continuing relationship where I can provide a climate of real warmth and understanding?I am going to experiment with putting trust in students, in class groups, to choose their own directions and to evaluate their progress in terms of their own choosing? (38).

This is far from the process of psychoanalytic based or behaviorist based counseling. In Freud?s approach, the student is seen as, in the beginning of guidance, a helpless victim to his or her unconscious fears and longings. In Skinner?s approach, the student is seen as even more helpless and remains so even after his or her behavior has been manipulated by the counselor. In Rodgers? approach, however, the student is seen as a free individual who may be confused, who may be in the turbulence of the learning process, but who is nevertheless capable of sorting out that confusing and turbulence in order to come to clear choices. The purpose of the guidance situation in Rodgers? scheme, then is far different than that of Skinner or Freud. Rodgers? does not mean to define reality for the student, nor does he mean to manipulate his behavior. Instead, the purpose of guidance to Rodgers is to provide that environment in which the student is free and encouraged to explore himself or herself in order to reach clear choices. As Rodgers argues, the reason that other guidance counselors choose the more rigid forms of psychoanalysis or

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behaviorism is because they do not trust themselves, and they do not believe enough in the results of a guidance session in which they give themselves and their student-clients a meaningful amount of freedom: ?I learned that not only could I trust clients and staff and students, but I could also trust myself. Slowly I learned to trust the feelings, the ideas, and the purposes that continually emerge in me. I found myself becoming much freer, more real, more deeply understanding with my clients and also with others? (39).

Clearly, then, with this purpose (to provide an informal and reassuring atmosphere for student and counselor) and faith (in student and oneself) in mind, it is clear that the organization of the Rodgers client-centered, humanistic approach to guidance and pupil personnel services will be organized with far less rigidity and imbalance in counselor/student power relationships than the approach of Freud or Skinner. Freud?s guidance is based on the power of the counselor to interpret dreams and words; Skinner?s is based on the power of the counselor to manipulate behavior of the student; Rodgers? is based on the humanity of the student/counselor relationship, on mutual risk, learning, personal growth, as well as enrichment.