Summary
PYC3705 SUMMARY
- Institution
- University Of South Africa (Unisa)
Summary of 26 pages for the course PYC3705 - Transformative Counselling Encounters at Unisa (SUMMARY/NOTES)
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1TRANSFORMATIVE COUNSELLING ENCOUNTERS
PART 1: BEGINNINGS: CREATING CONTEXT
Study Unit 1: Finding your personal space within the module
1.1 Transformative Counselling Encounters and I:
New encounters create new world with new meanings
The new experience can be exciting and unnerving while being life – transforming
Humans are never alone and are shaped by their personal and social histories; past memories, emotions and
vibrations
Complexity => assumption of the world/people/ourselves are subject to re – interpretation, pointing to us that
life is complex
Multiple realities => Anderson, Goolishian and Hoffman => as we encounter and explore newness, we are free
to create a new perception of reality allowing us to experiment with alternative meanings of that new
experience. The unfamiliar generates feelings of loss of certainty and predictability and the normal flow of life
we know is disrupted
Diversity => difference from our preconceived ideas and standards of believing
New opportunities => being able to negotiate new meanings and find new words representing the changing
reality; requires skills, flexibility and being present in the moment
Relatedness => relating old and new in a new context
1.2.1 Metaphors and stories as tools of communication:
Metaphors and stories help people to relate
Becoming a counsellor is a challenging and exciting process
Multiple realities => people’s experiences comprised of multiple layers, truths and voices
1.2.2 Enhancing self – awareness through reflexivity:
Davis, Sumara and Luce – Kapler =>in every activity which involves learning or self – transformation you are
always and already entangled in a relational web meaning that habits, tradition and expectations play a role in
shaping our experiences and these forces are sometimes difficult to overcome.
Experience is private and personal and others can experience it if the person shares it with them
How we affect and in turn influenced by our interactions with others has the potential to increase the quality of
our encounters with other people and enhance future practice. Hertz says that reflexivity implies a shift in
people’s ways of knowing and being in the world. Achieved by constant scrutiny of “what I know” and “how I
know it”.
When interacting with others people bring parts of themselves into the context of relating and create new
realities and ways of being characteristic to the interactional space.
Empathy (feeling with another) opens up the possibility for bonds to be built and allows us to move beyond the
first impressions created by the person’s dress, accent, mannerism or physical appearance.
Gender, race, class and citizenship play roles in our interactions with others.
1.3 Sharing our story:
A sense of community and belonging is essential to feel loved and stimulates the desire to love
Reflexivity enables people to question the meaningfulness of their life experiences, review their values and
search for new, more satisfactory forms.
Stevens => people have the ability to reflect on experiences (to be conscious of being conscious) and calls it
the capacity for reflexive awareness or reflexivity. People can be aware of thinking and what they are thinking,
acting and their actions.
PART2: THE SOCIAL LANDSCAPE: LIFE WITHIN THE CRACKS
Study Unit 2: Surveying life within the cracks
2.1 The “cracked landscape”
Our social world is not a neutral background or context for human behaviour but richly engraved with
complexity and diversity.
To understand people’s life words we must consider the “life” of the context of which they are a part
, 2
We live in a society in crisis => violence, discrimination, poverty and hunger, personal and communal suffering
and pain => we realise how fragmented and chaotic our society is.
Human capacity to generate alternatives despite the fragmented landscape indicates that meaningful life is
possible
2.3 Contending with diversity:
Acceptable behaviour for one culture may not be acceptable for another
Behaviour is the manifestation of the person’s underlying values, learnt from one’s culture
2.4 Social upheaval and multilayers of human experience:
Violence and repression affect mental health (Ms Mbanga’s shooting)
The disruption on the communities has many implications and affects wellbeing. Loss of income leads to
malnutrition and poverty.
Dislocation of people breaks ties of reciprocity and sociality increases the illegal status of refugees, leading to
additional trauma and further deterioration of living standards, family break ups and children being abandoned
or orphaned.
2.5 Tough questions for understanding hard – hitting problems:
Firstly, answers have a short lifespan. Kahane points out that tough problems are characterised by three
types of complexity:
1. Dynamic complexity = cause and effect are distant in time and space; to address it you need a
systemic approach to the problem and the solution.
2. Social complexity = there are many different and usually conflicting points of view/assumptions about an
issue and the problem isn’t owned by a single entity, demands a participative approach
3. Generative complexity = the old solutions are no longer working; the problem is constantly changing and is
unpredictable, requiring a creative approach.
Secondly people have an inherent desire to solve their own problems. When universal responses are imported
they meet resistance and often fail. That happens because they are inappropriate in a given context or there’s
lack of ownership from people who haven’t participated or been consulted in the decision – making. The
success of implementing interventions on social issues often depends more on the ownership and motivation of
those involved than on the cleverness of the idea.
Study Unit 3: Holding the cracks
3.1 Listening to the stories of other people:
Life is more complex than it used to be => increasing demand for counsellors to restore and support sense of
order and wellbeing in people’s lives. Network of family and community depleting and people struggle to find
people to turn to for help.
3.1.2 The bare essentials of relationship encounters:
Show positive and unconditional regard for others in forming a successful relationship with people. Positive
acceptance encourages interactions and disclosure, opportunity to explore change and provides clients with
acceptance and genuine caring.
3.1.3 Sharing warmth and understanding:
Non – judgemental presence:
Showing empathy and genuineness encourages the development of trust. Maintaining warmth and
understanding, without being judgemental provides a comfortable foundation for development of counselling
relationship. Conveying warmth through body language – using posture, maintaining eye contact and personal
space – encourages the development of trust as it provides reassurance.
Valuing and respecting others; accepting the other person totally shows that you value them and are there to
support them through the counselling process
, 3
3.2 Some voices from within formal structures: (check DVD, interview with Mrs Khumalo Modutla and Ms Mmatsilo
Motsei)
As a counsellor be a good listener who is able to ask the right questions – ask he client to look at themselves,
their lives and options
The basic human needs are to be accepted, acknowledged and honoured; simply be there
3.3 Finding your own story:
As a counsellor one never cease to grow. One is required to alter attitudes, thoughts, assumptions, concepts,
heuristics, approach and actions as situations change.
3.4 Locating psychology within society:
* (Read the two chapters by Seedat and Mackenzie and Van Omen and Painter in the READER p. 91 -
139)
Nelson and Prilleltensky dichotomy of ameliorative versus transformative interventions => SA psychology
continues to be mainly ameliorative (assisting individuals, groups and communities in dealing with difficult
circumstances) rather than transformative (helping to bring about structural change in society that addresses
the causes of personal suffering and oppression)
Nelson and Prilleltensky suggest that clinical and counselling psychologists need to take into account more than
just the “traditional values” of personal growth, protection of health and caring and compassion. They suggest
attention to group and collective wellbeing => diversity, collaboration, support for community infrastructures
and social justice. This can be done by emphasising personal, relational and collective values to avoid
disempowerment by blaming an individual, a family or a group.
Structurally caused/co – caused problems refer to widespread pathological and exclusionary ways of relating
like sexism, racism, genderism, ethnicism, xenophobia, elder – neglect and other difference – based behaviours
and norms. Structural consequences include labelling, stigma, exclusion and disenfranchisement.
Supportive community arrangements not visible to outsiders (stokvels, religious support networks and
groupings, informal bartering arrangements, various cultural traditions which enhance communal expression
and joining, cultures of giving and sharing with the poor)
The ways in which counselling takes place needs to acknowledge the wider societal arrangements contributing
to personal, familial and collective suffering/oppression. Support networks in communities should ideally be run
in the community and by the community.
Study Unit 4: Contextualising Counselling
4.1 Providing context about counselling:
The importance of circumstances and events that form the environment within which sth. exists or takes place.
Info conveyed through gestures, facial expressions, relationship to people and objects in the vicinity and shared
histories are used as cues to assist in understanding the explicit communication.
Context is used to refer to any info that can be used to characterise the situation of an entity (person, place or
physical space).
Context is valuable because counselling is within historical context that provides different ways of thinking
about people and the nature of being
Interconnectedness = everything connects to everything else. Counselling has a history
Diversity and creativity = variety of models and approaches in counselling show that there are fundamentally
different ways of viewing people and their emotional and behavioural functioning. Counsellors need to find sth.
that can ground their practise and they can work with.
Collaboration and networking
4.2 Diversity of theory and practice in counselling:
Counselling is interdisciplinary activity that contains different traditions and schools of thought and spreads
across theory, research and practice.
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