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Reality Therapy
William Glasser developed a theory of counseling
that focuses on individual’s taking responsibility for their
choices in life. Reality therapy relies on the basic
assumption that that the only thing an individual can
control is the present life. When identifying problems with
an individual, Glasser often found that the issue stemmed
from a current unsatisfying relationship or the lack of any
sustaining relationship. These problems develop from the
client’s inability to connect, to develop intimacy, or to
develop depth with at least one significant person in their
life. The Reality therapist has the goal to help
the client develop better ways of relating to others in
order to experience happiness and greater fulfillment in
life. This is one of the challenges of Reality therapy:
helping clients to identify that their behavior is limiting
them. Unfortunately, this limiting behavior is often in
response to the frustration and hurt of unsatisfying
relationships, which further compounds the problem.
Glasser identified five needs that guide
individuals through life and motivate people to seek deep
and lasting relationships. These genetically coded needs
are survival, love and belonging, power or achievement,
freedom or independence, and fun. While each individual has
varying degrees of each need, they are present and need an
opportunity to be experienced and lived in life. Reality
therapy sees individuals as being social creatures both
needing to receive and provide love.
The therapist’s responsibility is to help the
individual prioritize needs, deciding what is most important
and how to make the required changes necessary to enable
greater happiness and responsibility for choices and
outcomes. This is considered Choice theory, which Glasser
integrated into Reality therapy in recent years.
Individuals develop a concept of what they want for their
life and store this information in a scheme he termed their
quality world. It is this concept that counselors
must tap into using both the sense of ownership and
responsibility for themselves as well as incorporating
choice therapy to make decisions and follow through to
experience happiness.
When understanding behavior in the perspective of
reality theory, four identifiable components work together
towards understanding one’s experience of happiness, acting,
thinking, feeling, and physiology. Glasser looks at how an
individual feels or behaves as being active rather than
simply constant states of being. Rather than saying an
individual is depressed, Glasser would identify the
individual as depressing, or rather than being angry, the
individual would be seen as angering. These active verb
forms place the individual in a position to change. Rather
than something that is happening to them, they are instead
experiencing a state of being that they have the control and
responsibility to change.
During therapy, the counselor works with the
client to determine the relationships that the client wants
to become more connected with or to reconnect. This happens
with the understanding that the only person the client can
change is himself or herself. The focus remains on the
present with an understanding that while individuals are
products of their past, they are not victims unless by
choice. The therapist functions in the role of
establishing a good relationship between himself and the
client. This provides a foundation where the client is safe
and able to move towards people and activities that are
satisfying and bring happiness. An essential component of
reality therapy is for the counselor to convey to the client
that no matter how bad things are with the circumstances,
there is always hope. Once this foundation is set,
implementing specific procedures to establish change in
behavior begins.
A system in this theory provides the guideline to
implementing change. WDEP is an acronym used to define the
process of technique: wants, direction, evaluation, and
plan. The first component explores wants and needs,
encouraging clients to recognize and refine how they wish to
have their needs met. The second component is determining
direction and how the client is moving towards their goals
or what they are doing that impedes their own happiness.
This involves gaining awareness of their choices and the
results of these actions. Third is an evaluation of whether
one’s present behavior has a reasonable chance of obtaining
what the client wants. During this evaluation, clients are
required to look at the choices they have made and analyze
this in regards to their total behavior. This is one aspect
of Reality therapy where the counselor is directive, helping
the client to see how some of their behavior is not
effective.
The final component of treatment is developing a
plan and setting it into action. This involves identifying
specific ways in which the client can fulfill their needs
taking into account the priority they identified. Obtaining
client commitment to this plan is imperative to ensure that
once counseling is complete the client is will be able to
continue to pursue happiness and take responsibility for
their choices.
Criticism of Reality therapy includes the lack of
emphasis and consideration to the unconscious and the power
of the past. While the past is considered it is limited to
individuals accepting their experiences and choosing to feel
and act against the trauma they may continue to carry and
protect themselves from. Consideration is not provided to
such aspects as repressed conflicts and the power of how the
unconscious affects aspects of thought, emotions, behavior
and choice. Further, individuals who are suffering with
real illness such as depression or schizophrenia are left
feeling that they are choosing their conditions.
Personal
Evaluation
Reality therapy places a great deal of emphasis on personal
responsibility. Unlike person-centered theory where
individuals and all of their habits, thoughts, and behaviors
are unconditionally accepted, reality therapy focuses on
accountability and challenges clients towards greater
personal responsibility. I believe that in our current
society where blame and responsibility are so frequently
deflected onto everything except the individual, the
principles in this theory should be more widely incorporated
into counseling practice.
This form of therapy would be especially useful
for young people who are so easily drawn into peer pressure,
that they do not see the effects of their choices, but
simply behave according to the group. By bringing to bear
the causual chain of events that result from individual
choices, people are better able to make the necessary
changes in their lives in order to affect positive growth.
Simply providing safety to the client is not enough for the
reality therapist, but challenges towards personal
responsibility comprise a much higher purpose.
Being a
Christian who believes in freewill, I appreciate this theory
more than several others I have learned about strictly
because of its emphasis on responsibility. In addition, its
proposal that humans have root needs is also agreeable to me
as I too hold that primary needs drive human behavior. I
also favor its cognitive approach in analyzing behavior and
its effects on the individual and the environment. Only
through this deconstructing does true understanding come
about, which is a form of cognition. So, this form of
therapy has many components that are favorable to my
personal worldview. In my own personal theory of
counseling, I have drawn several concepts that are similar
in scope to reality therapy. I believe that with only
minimal modifications, a Christian counselor would do well
with this form of therapy and maintain spiritual integrity.
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