William Glasser (May 11, 1925 – August 23, 2013), a renowned American psychologist and psychiatrist, developed Reality Therapy in 1965 - a method of counselling and psychotherapy. In this his disagreement with the Freudian (Sigmund Freud: 06/05/1856- 23/09/1939) theory of mental illness was openly noted, which found great support from a teacher and psychiatrist G. L. Harrington in 1965, an anti-Freudian whom Glasser credits as being his ‘mentor’.
Validated by research studies, this theoretical approach has been successfully taught and practiced in the United States, Canada, Korea, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Norway, Israel, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Colombia, Kuwait, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and Hong …show more content…
Not looking to unlock trauma or recurring dreams, reality therapy's only workable arena is the present and going forward in the best possible way, while remembering the importance of taking responsibility for one's own actions and realizing that the only person one can control is oneself. In that realization of personal responsibility, one is given greaterfreedom and happiness. Some people find fault with Glaser’s notion that people chose the behaviours that afflicted them by choosing chronic depressive thought patterns and choosing profound psychosis. Apart from specific brain pathology, Glasser argues that mental illness is a result of unsatisfying present relationships or general unhappiness. The Reality Therapy approach to counselling and problem-solving focuses on the here-and-now actions of the client and the ability to create and choose a better future. Typically, clients seek to discover what they really want and how they are currently choosing to behave in order to achieve these goals. According to Glasser, the social component of psychological disorders has been highly overlooked in the rush to label the population as sick or mentally ill. Reality Therapy attempts to separate the client from the behaviour. Just because someone is experiencing distress resulting from a social problem does not make him sick; …show more content…
Then, measures are introduced to understand the concept of choosing all of our behaviours, through the concept of total behaviour composed of actions, thoughts, feelings, and physiology. According to Glasser (1998), individuals have direct control over acting and thinking; however, they have indirect control over feelings and physiology. Once these concepts are explained to a student, the interventions based on Reality Therapy principles can be introduced. The four fundamental questions of Reality Therapy are as follows and can be viewed as a problem solving model:
Validated by research studies, this theoretical approach has been successfully taught and practiced in the United States, Canada, Korea, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Norway, Israel, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Colombia, Kuwait, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and Hong …show more content…
Not looking to unlock trauma or recurring dreams, reality therapy's only workable arena is the present and going forward in the best possible way, while remembering the importance of taking responsibility for one's own actions and realizing that the only person one can control is oneself. In that realization of personal responsibility, one is given greaterfreedom and happiness. Some people find fault with Glaser’s notion that people chose the behaviours that afflicted them by choosing chronic depressive thought patterns and choosing profound psychosis. Apart from specific brain pathology, Glasser argues that mental illness is a result of unsatisfying present relationships or general unhappiness. The Reality Therapy approach to counselling and problem-solving focuses on the here-and-now actions of the client and the ability to create and choose a better future. Typically, clients seek to discover what they really want and how they are currently choosing to behave in order to achieve these goals. According to Glasser, the social component of psychological disorders has been highly overlooked in the rush to label the population as sick or mentally ill. Reality Therapy attempts to separate the client from the behaviour. Just because someone is experiencing distress resulting from a social problem does not make him sick; …show more content…
Then, measures are introduced to understand the concept of choosing all of our behaviours, through the concept of total behaviour composed of actions, thoughts, feelings, and physiology. According to Glasser (1998), individuals have direct control over acting and thinking; however, they have indirect control over feelings and physiology. Once these concepts are explained to a student, the interventions based on Reality Therapy principles can be introduced. The four fundamental questions of Reality Therapy are as follows and can be viewed as a problem solving model: