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After reading this article we will learn about:- 1. Meaning of Counselling 2. Crime as an Area of Counselling 3. Process 4. Advantages.
Meaning of Counselling:
Counselling literally means advice. Historically speaking counselling is not strictly an emerging branch of psychology. Counselling is a part of psychotherapy and Freudian psychoanalysis. In the year 1927, counselling was also used as a technique to improve the attitude and morale of employees towards the management and industry.
But within a span of 50 years counselling psychology has gained tremendous importance because of its wide application to different areas of education, business, profession, vocation, personal life, career, delinquents and criminals.
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Earlier counselling was a branch of clinical psychology and was only used to ease mental illness. But to-day its use and application has been very wide spread, very vast and more specialized.
What is Counselling:
Counselling is a relationship between the counselor and the counselee or the counselor and the client characterized by trust and openness in an individual or small group relationship. Here the client is helped to work through his or her interpersonal or intrapersonal problems, emotions, crises, blockings or guilt feelings.
According to British Association for counselling, counselling is the skilled and principled use of relationship to facilitate self knowledge, emotional acceptance and growth and the optimal development of personal resources. The main aim of counselling is to provide an opportunity to work towards living more satisfactorily and more resourcefully.
Crime as an Area of Counselling:
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During the last three four decades, the scope of counselling psychology has spread to innumerable areas and has gained an independent status as a separate branch of psychology.
To-day the more common areas of counselling are school counselling, vocational counselling, career counselling, interview counselling, work place counselling, marriage counselling, parental counselling, health counselling, family and marital counselling, counselling for delinquents and criminals and most importantly counselling for mentally depressed persons.
Delinquents and criminals are said to be mentally sick persons who show deviant behaviour due to social, environmental and psychological causes. Being in capable of reacting in a normal way to provocations, frustrations and happenings of day to day life, they react in a maladoptive manner.
When under similar circumstances some persons react violently while others do not, it is a sign of factors within the individual and in his environment responsible for his overt aggressiveness. Even normal people need counselling at times when they are depressed, face problems in family or marital life, in business or profession.
A criminal may also be a normal individual, since all criminals may not be mentally sick. After being branded as a criminal for his antisocial and illegal activities he feels terribly depressed and dejected.
Particularly many first time criminals and criminals, who commit a crime accidentally or out of compulsion, need psychological advice and counselling. Being away from their family, friends and social main stream they experience terrible feeling of alienation and rejection.
After the criminals are released from the prison, they go back to their family or society, but because of the guilty feeling for the crime they have committed they experience terrible feeling of inferiority and alienation, they feel that their family and society will never accept them.
Some criminals driven by the idea of revenge and vindictiveness for the punishment imposed on them forget their own violation of law and try to assault and murder the family members, of the victim, even judges and advocates are sometimes not left out.
The violent tendency of many criminals responsible for their crimes may have some unconscious causes, repressed and suppressed urges for which that may need the advice, support and sympathy of the counselor.
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When a criminal feels that his family or society has rejected him he undergoes bouts of depression and may take recourse to drugs and alcohols. Educated criminals and criminals coming from good socio-economic families who have committed the crime out of compulsion or pressure need the support and advice of psychologists to ease their guilt feeling.
Criminals with strong conscience and respect for the social norms and feelings of the family are the greatest mental sufferers for their anti-social acts. Many of them are found to commit suicide. For these reasons and to bring reform in them so that the criminals will not turn to habitual or hard core criminals in future, counselling is essential.
The juveniles who are susceptible to crime and violence and normally persons having highly aggressive and violent tendencies should also be provided with counselling for the prevention of crimes.
Process of Counselling:
As observation shows, every individual whether he is normal or maladjusted needs some counselling. A counselling can be both direct, indirect on non-direct. Counselling can be imparted individually and in groups. The process of
includes a counsellor and a client. A counsellor who imparts counselling is basically a clinical psychologist and the client takes the advice from the counsellor.
Now-a-days drug addicts, social isolates, aggressive persons, and youngsters showing misbehavior, and anti-social behaviour are involved in various types of socially unacceptable conducts, petty thefts, throwing stones at innocent people and by standers, sadistic tendencies, eve teasing and many other characteristics of juvenile delinquency.
It is said that “Morning shows the Day”. Unless the adolescents and youngsters even the young adults showing tendency of high aggression and violence are treated from the very beginning through psychological counselling crime cannot be prevented.
Realizing the importance of counselling in preventing crime many clinical psychologists have attempted to trace out a procedure of counselling. Before the process of counselling starts the first step is to select the clients for counselling on the basis of tests supplemented by observation than through mere observation only.
For the prevention of crime and delinquency first of all subjects of various age groups showing continuous misbehaviour, anti-social and violent conducts should be selected for the sample of the study. Interview of parents and teachers can help in the selection.
Secondly the sampling must be representative or random. It should not be biased and erratic. After the sample is selected intelligence, personality and delinquency tests along with tests of aggressiveness, sadism etc. should be administered to select the highly aggressive, delinquent and criminal tendency subjects.
The final sample on whom counselling is to be imparted is now selected. Thereafter the subjects are categorized on this basis into different groups of age, educational qualification and degree of delinquent traits i.e., highly aggressive, moderately aggressive, non-aggressive qualities.
Those groups which are highly aggressive and show violent qualities and the moderately aggressive groups should be imparted counselling against violence, aggressiveness and crime either in groups or individually. The non-aggressive groups need not be given any counselling.
The counselor only shows the mirror to the client to see his own self, his suppressed, repressed and unconscious guilt feelings which are the basic cause of his anti-social behaviour and illegal activities. Sometimes people suffering from obsession compulsion disorder or social pathology show pathological behaviour.
Revolt against the laws and orders of the society due to some underlying unknown causes also leads one to break laws and go astray. In such cases counselling by a clinical psychologist seems imperative.
The difference between psychoanalysis and counselling is that while psychoanalysis is a complex and long-term treatment, counselling is a simple and short-term treatment. While psychoanalysis involves complex processes like resistance, transference, counselling is reletatively a simple procedure.
In counselling the relationship between the client and counseller is based on confidence and good will like psychoanalysis. Finally, psychoanalysis is a costly treatment while counselling is affordable by the middle class.
Psychoanalysis is provided only to mentally ill persons and neurotics while counselling is provided to otherwise normal persons with some sort of maladjustment, depression, anxiety and anti-social behaviour. Both in counselling and psychoanalysis the client is helped in developing insight in to his repressed materials and complexes which ai-e the cause of his criminal tendency and delinquency.
Let us take some case studies to explain these points.
Z a 18 year old boy was constantly oppressed by the desire to attack ‘Y’ 11 20 yr. old youth working in their house as a servant for the last 03 years. He was so much obsessed with this thought through geared to go near him and the kitchen knife, lest he may attack him.
Z a very sober and reasonable boy came to me for counselling. I used to take his tutorial and practical classes in college so he was well known to me and had a good rapport with me, though initially he was very reserved and was inhibited in his talks with me.
First we discussed about his studies, his parents and family members, his hobbies etc. When the inhibition was done away with I gradually went into his problem. On the first day he just told me about his obsession.
We met again after 3 days. Each session of counselling lasted for an hour. In the second session I encouraged him to speak out his childhood problems, relationship with parents, siblings and peers. With initial hesitations he narrated everything. Next I came to the servant who was the source of his annoyance and tried to find out details about him.
In course of discussion he told me that he had a cousin brother of his age who stayed in their house for six months when they were 8-9 yrs. old. While playing together they fought. His brother who was stronger than him attacked him violently and brought a kitchen knife lying near-by and tried to attack him.
He somehow managed to escape and the next day his cousin brother left never to return again. Now I asked him if he had any quarrel or encounter with his servant, whether he ever misbehaved him, disobeyed him. He replied that although these years he had and still has a very cordial relationship with him.
Then I told him that his encounter with his cousin and hatred towards him for his behaviour several years back was thrown to the dark chamber of his unconscious. After several years it has come out and transferred to the servant in the form of violent crime. I also gave him some counselling how to manage his aggressiveness.
After six months Mr. Z again comes to me when I was in my chamber. I asked him if he now okay. He replied smartly. “Everything is now okay mam “thank you”. That was a moment which brought some joy to my mind. I was indeed happy to minus at least one criminal from the society.
If this sober, reasonable and otherwise non-aggressive boy would not have ventured to come to me for counselling, he would have definitely attacked his servant and who knows, would have been labeled as a criminal, spoiling his own life and life of his parents.
Nemours examples of this type which require counselling are found in our day to day life. A child of 8 years was always found making drawings of aggressive models.
He was always found fighting, kicking spitting on his class mates, telling lies, pinching his friends, eating away their tiffin forcibly and stealing pencil and rubber of class mates and throwing outside the class room through the window so that the class teacher will punish these students for not bringing pencil and rubber, when such behaviour aggravated his parents sent him to a child psychiatrist for counselling.
In course of counselling the root of such behaviour was found to be parental rejection and their autocratic behaviour, faulty childrearing practices. After sessions of counselling the child was reformed within the months.
The parents of the child were also given counselling. The child was made to understand that what he is doing is wrong, nobody would like him, he will be punished and will be asked to leave his parents, stay in the jail for juveniles.
His parents will hate him. After return from jail he will not be allowed to study with other children. He was also shown a juvenile film depicting how the delinquent had to pass through so many problems and hardships for showing such behaviour.
The fear of loss of love of parents had a very positive effect in reducing his anti-social behaviour. Now-a- days in most cases before undertaking counselling the clients are administered various tests as required. The tests are supplemented with observations.
Projective tests of personality like Rorschach test. Thematic Apperception Test, Rosenzweig Picture Frustration tests are administered to ascertain the extent of delinquency behaviour before counselling is provided.
Advantages of Counselling:
Counselling has many advantages. Now-a-days counselling has become a very common method of easing tension and anxiety. Counselling also helps one to solve the problems he faces in his immediate environment.
Besides counselling is very urgent for suicide prevention, domestic violence and marital unhappiness, crime and delinquency, and other anti-social behaviour and tendency for these. In counselling the counselor sorts out the problems of his client through readjustment, and restructuration of values, and beliefs.
Dramatic changes have been found in the clients due to various types of counselling. Counselling not only helps people overcome their personal problems but helps in bringing out unexplored and hidden potentials.
Many people are not aware of their potentials even after long-long years, until the counselor points it out to them. Various communication problems of delinquents and problem children even problem adults are also solved through counselling.
Conflicts, frustrations and tensions are resolved in a very constructive and socially adoptable manner through counselling. In a number of psycho-medical situations like anxiety, stress, and loneliness counselling has been found to be very useful. When counselling is combined with medical, social and spiritual resources, it becomes more effective.
Originating from Sigmund Freud, various techniques and schools of counselling have grown these days. The counselors have tremendous responsibility in solving the problems of the clients by using it as an interpersonal process. Through counselling the individuals as well as the communities are benefitted.
While counselling has rapidly progressed in Western countries, in India psychological counselling is still in infancy. Except in big metropolitan cities, professional counselors are not available in plenty in other places. People also are not aware of counselling. In India there are only 3500 qualified psychiatrists which seem to be quite meagre.
Counselling is necessary for everyone at one time or another for ensuring happiness of people. It is also essential to bring about social integration and social change. Therefore government organisations and voluntary agencies should take the help of counselling for preventing crime and delinquency which are spreading like infectious disease in the society.
In this context the reforms taken up by Police Commissioner, Kiran Bedi, (I.P.S) in the Tihar jail, Delhi is worth mentioning. She for the first time started various prison reforms for the rehabilitation of prisoners, for which she got the prestigious Magasayray award.
Counselling, yoga, education, meditation, vocational training, entertainment and emphasis on extracurricular activities were the main aspects of her reform process.
These prison reforms helped a lot the convicts of the prison in changing their personality and life style immediately as well as subsequently. The efforts of Human Rights commission to protect the interests of culprits, criminals and delinquents are also helpful in changing the attitude of the society towards the criminals as well as of the crimes towards themselves.