Counselling with Reality Therapy

Robert Wubbolding

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351699556
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This practical resource is a follow-on from the hugely successful Counselling with Reality Therapy. The second edition provides a jargon-free and practical explanation of a theory and method of counselling which can be used in any therapeutic relationship. It presents a comprehensive, succinct and practical overview of Reality Therapy and also contains ideas which can be used by parents, spouses, partners, children, family and anyone wishing for more satisfying relationships. This book forms an easy-to-use introduction to this approach and includes: a discussion of the concepts behind reality therapy, choice theory, the counselling environment, procedures and special applications; information on how this approach has a wide application, including developing responsibility, motivation, self-esteem, improving relationships, dealing with discipline and problems and addictions; details of how this approach can be used in schools, by the probation and prison services, at work, within clinics and the health service and in many other areas where counselling is applicable. Contents: A Brief History of Reality Therapy; Choice Theory: The Psychology Underlying Reality Therapy - An Overview; Creating the Counselling Relationship Parts 1 and 2; The Procedures that Lead to change: The 'WDEP System'; Reality Therapy and Group Counselling; Application to Schools; Relationship Counselling; Reality Therapy and Addictions Treatment; and Paradoxical Techniques. Robert E. Wubbolding EdD, LPCC, BCC, is an internationally known teacher, author and practitioner of Reality Therapy. John Brickell DC is Director of the Centre for Reality Therapy (UK) and a senior faculty member of the European Association for Reality Therapy (EART) and the William Glasser International (WGI) organisation.

Chapter 1
A Brief History of Reality Therapy

Reality Therapy was developed in the mid-1960s in two settings: a psychiatric hospital and a correctional institution, both in Los Angeles, California, USA. Its founder, William Glasser MD, trained as a board-certified psychiatrist and learned the traditional psychoanalytical approach of psychiatry at that time: to help clients gain insight, work through transference, deal with defence mechanisms, and thereby achieve a higher degree of adjustment and sanity. Through his own experience with patients, however, he came to believe that in spite of achieving the goals of the analytical approach, patients often remained stuck in their ineffective behaviours, and many failed to take responsibility for their behaviour and were often ill-equipped to generate more effective choices. His professor, G.L. Harrington, provided support and a sympathetic ear, enabling Glasser to formulate and implement the early principles of his new treatment modality, later known as Reality Therapy. In 1960, Glasser published Mental Health or Mental Illness? in which he presented the initial idea that mental health results from the satisfaction of internal needs. By satisfying these internal motivators, Glasser claimed, human beings are no longer victims trapped and oppressed by their environments.

Early Development

The watershed year for Reality Therapy came in 1965, when Glasser published the controversial book Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry. Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the time, Glasser emphasised that people who take responsibility for their own behaviour and avoid blaming the past or outside forces, invariably achieve a higher degree of mental health than those who attribute their problems to parental influence, society, or their own past experiences. He asserted that behaviour involves choices and that there are options available for most people in most circumstances. Consequently, the intention of psychological therapy should be measurable behavioural change, not merely insight into and understanding of past events or current unconscious drives.

In addition, Glasser (1965) again referred to the importance of human needs, although suggesting that the fulfilment of the physiological needs for food, warmth and rest were rarely the concern of psychiatry. However, he went on to assert that psychiatry should concern itself most with two basic – but absolutely vital – needs: ‘the need to love and be loved and the need to feel that we are worthwhile to ourselves and to others. Helping patients fulfil these two needs is the basis of Reality Therapy.’ Indeed, Glasser contended then, and even more so in later years, that the continued failure to meet these two human needs satisfactorily is the basis of most long-term psychological problems, unhappiness, an array of health-related problems, and much of what is referred to as mental illness. Contentious indeed!

Although not warmly received by much of the psychiatric profession, many corrections personnel, addictions professionals, youth workers, psychologists, counsellors, therapists and educators welcomed Reality Therapy with its emphasis on personal choice and responsibility, focusing on the ‘here and now’ and the importance of the human needs of love, ‘involvement, with people and self-worth. They found the Reality Therapy approach made sense, was relevant to the clients they worked with and helped them to make some positive behavioural and attitudinal changes in a relatively short period of time.

Further Development

As Reality Therapy grew in popularity, the Institute for Reality Therapy was founded in 1968 to promote the teaching of Reality Therapy applied to counselling or psychotherapy, schools, agencies and management. An 18-month modular training programme was developed and the first ‘certification week’, qualifying participants as ‘Reality Therapy Certified’ (RTC), was held in 1975.

Glasser continued consulting in schools and became increasingly concerned about the negative effects of school failure on life chances and wellbeing. In 1968, he wrote Schools Without Failure, in which he asserted that, when children are unable to control or effect their world successfully (that is, to succeed in school), it hurts so much that they often stop trying to learn. This sense of failure often led to the disruption and rejection of school, and increased the possibility of them turning to drugs or other negative symptoms, in an attempt to gain a sense of need satisfaction in some other way.

Many Reality Therapy practitioners, as well as Glasser, devoted themselves, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, to consulting with schools and providing teacher training. Further to this, Glasser became heavily influenced by the ideas of the business and industrial guru W. Edwards Deming, who taught and extolled the values of quality as being essential to sustaining prosperity and success. Glasser applied many of Deming’s ideas to education and, in 1990, wrote The Quality School, which taught why and how to create quality (of school work, effort and behaviour) for enhancing success in education. Many schools interested in these principles in the USA formed a consortium, which in 1998 consisted of well over 200 schools. Glasser maintained his involvement with education and wrote The Quality School Teacher in 1993 and, later, Every Student Can Succeed in 2000. The influence of these ideas continues to this day with ‘Quality Schools’ established in such countries as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Croatia and Ireland.

From Control Theory to Choice Theory

Reality Therapy was established as a method (in 1965) before it had an underlying theory, despite the fact that Glasser was emphasising (in his book Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry, 1965) the importance of psychiatry concerning itself with the needs for human involvement, love and self-worth, as well as physiological survival needs – as described earlier. He was indeed looking for a complementary theory or model which he could apply his own ideas to. He came across ‘Control Theory’ (later called ‘Perceptual Control Theory’ or PCT) after reading Behavior, the Control of Perception (1973) by the engineer and medical physicist William Powers. Glasser visited Powers and asked his permission to incorporate his own ideas in the Control Theory framework, which Powers agreed to, provided that Glasser did not distort the main tenets of the theory.

However, Glasser (1980, 1984) extended Powers’ interpretation of Control Theory (or Control System Theory) by incorporating a system of needs – love and belonging, power/self-worth, freedom, fun and enjoyment, and physiological survival or self-preservation – which are the underlying source of behaviour. They comprise the motivational engine driving and sustaining human choices. Glasser moulded the theory to the clinical setting and the practice of counselling and psychotherapy. Indeed, he gradually overlaid his own ideas too far away from the original Control Theory and was criticised by the Association of Pure Control Theorists for doing so. With this criticism in mind, Glasser changed the name for his ‘adaption’ to ‘Choice Theory’, in 1998, and wrote the book Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom. From this time, and until his passing in August 2013, Glasser put ever-increasing emphasis on the importance of: (a) relationships – ‘most long term psychological problems are at their core a relationship problem, (b) the destructive effects of external control on relationships, in all areas of life; and (c) that the pathway to happiness and mental wellbeing lies in replacing external control with Choice Theory psychology.

Theory into Practice

Putting Choice Theory into practice in the field of counselling and psychotherapy is Reality Therapy, and, when doing so in coaching, managing, supervising, mentoring and teaching, it is referred to as Lead Management.

Glasser broadly conceptualised the essentials of both Reality Therapy and Lead Management as environment and procedures, allowing therapists and practitioners to exercise their creativity in helping clients evaluate their choices, meet their needs more effectively, replace external control with Choice Theory, and so enhance their relationships. Robert Wubbolding (1991) created an approach, referred to as the Cycle of Counselling, Coaching and Managing and the WDEP System, which readily enabled student practitioners to learn and implement the main ideas. Many teachers and practitioners of Reality Therapy and Lead Management (in several countries around the world, including the UK) have adopted this WDEP approach as a tool for teaching and practising.

Current Reality Therapy

At present, Reality Therapy is recognised as an effective therapeutic modality with many applications. For example, an unpublished document of the United States Department of Defense, used in 1981 in a conference on drug abuse in the US armed forces, stated that over 90 per cent of the more than 200 armed forces clinics that treat drug and alcohol abuse use Reality Therapy as their preferred therapeutic approach.

Much of the work of practitioners of Reality Therapy extends beyond the world of psychotherapy. At the present time, The William Glasser International organisation and its instructors teach the concepts in Glasser’s book The Quality School (1990) to schools in the USA and in several other countries around the world. In this ground-breaking work, Glasser applied many of the ideas of management guru W. Edwards Deming (1984) to education. The major problem underlying the educational system, Glasser claimed, is not the disruptive students, poorly paid teachers, unused computers, lack of community involvement or any of the numerous other problems. Rather, these problems are symptoms of the simple but overlooked fact that Americans had settled for mediocre work, behaviour and personal effort on the part of students. If education is at risk, it is due to the lack of quality education.

Glasser believes that Choice Theory and Reality Therapy, if adapted and taught properly, can enhance the quality of performance in schools. In a Quality School, everyone is trained to use the principles of Deming and Glasser, and currently such schools have been established in several countries, including Canada, Croatia, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Slovenia and Ireland, as well as in the USA.

Still, Reality Therapy remains primarily a method of counselling and psychotherapy and continues to grow in both its popularity and applicability and, indeed, in its academic stature. Of outstanding note has been the European Association for Reality Therapy’s (EART) accreditation, in 2007, of their five-year psychotherapy training programme by the European Association for Psychotherapy. Since that time, EART has been able to award successful candidates with the European Certificate in Psychotherapy (ECP); this is recognised as the highest qualification in psychotherapy in Europe, apart from a doctorate. In addition, Choice Theory and Reality Therapy training enjoy significant academic recognition in such countries as South Korea, Australia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada and the USA. The Choice Theory/Reality Therapy Certification training programme has been taught to over 10,000 people around the world and literally hundreds of essays, articles and research studies have been published on the applications of Reality Therapy.

In 1981, the Journal of Reality Therapy was launched, edited by Lawrence Litwack and succeeded in 2009 by Thomas Parish. Under the editorship of Dr Parish, the name of the journal was changed to The International Journal of Choice Theory and Reality Therapy. It continues to publish research studies and articles on a wide range of Reality Therapy applications.

The year 2011 marked the formation of an International Board of Directors representing seven regions around the world. This board formulates training policies, programmes and procedures, especially those that focus on the certification process conducted through the organisation William Glasser International.

As a method, Reality Therapy focuses on skills for dealing with people of any age, ethnic group, social status, culture or gender who present with a wide variety of situations and diagnoses. While the differences between theory and practice are clear, at the grassroots level, the terms Choice Theory and Reality Therapy are often used interchangeably. Of necessity and quite appropriately, this book, as with most training sessions in Reality Therapy, will include explanation and discussion of the theoretical foundation (Choice Theory) as well as the ‘delivery system’ of Reality Therapy.

Chapter 2
Choice Theory: The Psychology Underlying Reality Therapy – An Overview

Introduction

The underlying psychology described in this chapter is based on a long-standing theory of brain functioning which is rooted more in the field of engineering than in psychology. Norbert Wiener (1948), who coined the word ‘cybernetics’, described the importance of both information and feedback in engineering and in biological systems. He later described the sociological implications (Wiener, 1950). Other major contributors to the development of the theory include William Sickles (1976) and Gordon Pask (1976).

William Glasser was, at that time, greatly influenced by the work of William Powers (1973). In Powers’ opinion, Control Theory provides a true-to-life alternative to the ‘mechanistic formalisms’ of behaviourism. Glasser (1980, 1984, 1998, 2011) added to this theory by incorporating psychological principles and by using it as a clinical and educational model. It is now applied to counselling, psychotherapy, education, management, parenting and virtually every human relationship. And it is made operational through the principles of Reality Therapy, which is the focus of this chapter.

Basic Principles of Choice Theory

Glasser (1986, 1998, 2011) stated that human beings are driven to behave. Human behaviour originates from within a person, not from outside stimuli. Although the external world is constantly giving us ‘information’ (stimuli), we only behave or respond when we perceive that such information is either helping us to meet our ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ or is threatening their fulfilment in some way (this is explained more fully later). Whether the behaviour we generate is effective or ineffective, it is aimed at having an effect on the external world so that human needs and wants are fulfilled. More specifically, Choice Theory, as used by practitioners of Reality Therapy, can be summarised in five main principles, described in the rest of this chapter.

In 1996, Glasser changed the name of the theory he was now teaching and using from Control Theory to Choice Theory. Over the years, Glasser had made so many changes from the original Control Theory that he decided he could no longer justify using that name. Further, because he was teaching that most of our conscious behaviour was a choice, he decided the name Choice Theory was more accurate to his ideas (Glasser, 1999). Beyond this, Glasser formulated both a clinical and an educational mode that has developed a very wide applicability. In fact, the theory and its delivery system, Reality Therapy, are applicable to virtually all human relationships.

Ayn Rand (1943) said ‘Throughout history there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their vision’. William Glasser MD, the founder of Rea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 A Brief History of Reality Therapy
• Chapter 2 Choice Theory: The Psychology Underlying Reality Therapy – An Overview
• Chapter 3 Creating the Counselling Relationship – Part 1
• Chapter 4 Creating the Counselling Relationship – Part 2
• Chapter 5 The Procedures that Lead to Change: The ‘WDEP System’
• Chapter 6 Reality Therapy and Group Counselling
• Chapter 7 Application to Schools
• Chapter 8 Relationship Counselling
• Chapter 9 Reality Therapy and Addictions Treatment
• Chapter 10 Paradoxical Techniques
• Conclusion and Summary
• References
• Useful Contacts