Page 43 - NAMAH-Jan-2018

Notes on counselling

Freedom of choice

Dr. Soumitra Basu

Abstract
A consciousness-based counselling approach provides a flexibility to the therapist to facilitate a growth
in consciousness. One innovative approach is to offer a freedom of choice at an optimal point in therapy
so that the client can choose from alternatives. This phenomenon is simultaneously therapeutically
effective and increases compliance.

A consciousness approach to counselling integration of the being around a principle
gives a great flexibility and freedom, as greater than the ego. The initial symptom or
one does not have to forcefully fit a client’s constellation of symptoms is often a starting-
clinical repertoire into a fixed structure of point for a deeper journey to the depths of the
a certain theory of psychopathology or a being. After all, the ancient Sanskrit word for
certain pattern of psychotherapy. In the case health is svastha, which means to be poised in
of an integral paradigm of counselling, the one’s true Self or soul — the truth-principle
therapist can try to understand any problem of one’s being. Even the best of the world’s
at the plane of consciousness from where therapists cannot mitigate every suffering and
it arises and then devise an appropriate a poise in one’s Self can help to bear suffering,
remedial intervention in consonance to that anguish and pain with magnanimity, equipoise
plane. If the therapist thinks it appropriate and joy. The true centre of our being is the
that a certain standard therapeutic technique harbinger of peace, love and unalloyed joy. To
like cognitive-behavioural therapy or even a have that experience is the quintessence of a
psychoanalytic technique would be suitable, consciousness-based therapy.
that also could be employed provided it is
used as an intermediary route to a deeper A case study based on the consciousness
vision of a growth in consciousness. approach:

A consciousness-based counselling, founded The leftist intellectual
on an integral perspective, has a wider aim
that leads to a growth in consciousness and This was a leftist intellectual, a product of

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