Schools of counselling and helping

 Schools of counselling and helping

A useful distinction exists between schools of counselling and helping and approaches to counselling and helping. A theoretical approach presents a single position regarding the theory and practice of counselling and helping. A school of counselling and helping is a grouping of different theoretical approaches that are similar to one another in terms of certain important characteristics that distinguish them from theoretical approaches in other counselling and helping schools.

Probably the three main schools that influence contemporary counselling and psychotherapy practice are the psychodynamic school, the humanistic school and the cognitive-behavioural school. Sometimes the humanistic school incorporates existential therapeutic approaches and then gets the broader title of being the humanistic-existential school. Be careful not to exaggerate the differences between counselling and therapy schools, since there are similarities as well differences amongst them. Box 3.1 briefly describes some distinguishing features of the psychodynamic, humanistic and cognitive-behavioural schools.