| Assessment Type | Reflective Essay |
| Learning Outcome | a) Critically review, interpret, integrate, synthesise knowledge of major paradigms associated with counselling and psychotherapy. b) Exercise adaptability and judgment when critically analysing, evaluating and applying the underlying structure of different therapeutic practices. c) Critically apply self-awareness and self-reflexivity to identify specific counselling and psychotherapy approaches that resonate with their own developing framework of practice. d) Effectively demonstrate professional knowledge and integrated understanding to communicate ideas at an advanced academic level, using contemporary communication approaches |
| Length | 2500 words |
Assessment Details and Instructions
Purpose:
In
this essay you will have an opportunity to demonstrate your capacity
for critical thinking, and your grasp of the theoretical paradigms and
their clinical application in specific modalities. Address one of the
following questions exploring why it is relevant to therapeutic
practice.
Q: Is there an unconscious and if so, what is it, and why is it therapeutically relevant?
Process:
In your essay you must:
- Explore how BOTH Cognitive-Behavioural and Psychoanalytic paradigms would respond to the question.
- Please
also draw upon at least two therapeutic modalities/approaches that are
illustrative of each paradigm (For instance, you might chose CBT and ACT to illustrate Cognitive-Behaviouralism or you may draw upon
Freudian and Jungian analysis to illustrate Psychoanalysis). - Use these modalities to argue for or against this question and illustrate how the paradigms offer contrastive responses.
- Based
on this critical evaluation which position do you feel more comfortable
with, and is there a therapeutic modality that you are drawn to working
within in the future? (You may answer this question reflectively and in
the first person)