Western Psychology Has Historically Struggled To Establish A Clear Sense Of The Role: Counselling And Psychotherapy Assignment, CIT, Ireland

Western psychology has historically struggled to establish a clear sense of the role of values in psychotherapeutic interventions. Values include both therapists’ and clients’ beliefs that “a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence” (Rokeach, 1973, p. 5). Theorists tend to conceptualize values as being fundamentally linked to motivation and affect (Schwartz, 2016). In contrast to other kinds of beliefs (e.g., those pertaining to objective, nonevaluative facts), values directly imply goals that are relatively stable across situations. Values may include assertions about what constitutes a healthy psychological state; prescriptive assertions about clients’ moral conduct, political, or religious stances; and a variety of other kinds of beliefs (Tjeltveit, 1986). Although therapists may explore content relevant to each of these categories of values in their work with clients, values about psychological health are the most obviously and pervasively relevant to psychotherapists’ ascribed role as experts on psychological health and well-being. Some authors have considered the question of how to manage values in psychotherapy in light of both the empirical literature on the dynamics of values in therapy sessions, as well as philosophical systems for ethical behavior.