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Unit 11: Counseling: Concept, Need and Goals with Reference to India

(i) To help the counsellee become self-actualizing. Notes
(ii) To help the counsellee attain self-realization.
(iii) To help the counsellee become a fully-functioning person.

• The immediate goals of counseling refer to the problems for which the client is seeking
solutions, here and now.
• The long-range and immediate goals are not unrelated. There is an inter-relation between,
them as both depend on the process goals for their realization. The process goals are the
basic Counseling dimensions which are essential conditions for counceling to take place.
• A major criticism levelled is that goals such as ‘self-actualization’, ‘actualizing potentialities’,
etc., are too general and amorphous and hence not useful in actual practice.
• Mediate goals (Parloff, 1967) may be considered as specific steps contributing to the
realization of general goals. Behaviourists place much emphasis on mediate goals. These
comprise the reduction of anxiety, feeling of hostility, undesirable habits, etc., on the negative
side; and the increase of pleasure, acquisition of adaptive habits, understanding of self, etc.,
on the positive side.
• The need for mental health cannot be over-emphasized. It is identified as an important goal
of counseling by some individuals who claim that when one reaches or secures positive
mental, health, one learns to adjust and responds more positively to people and situations.
• Resolution of Problems: Another goal of counseling is the resolving of the problem brought
to the counselor. This, in essence, is an outcome of the former goal and implies positive
mental health.
• Goal of counseling is that of improving personal effectiveness. This is closely related to the
preservation of good mental health and securing desirable behavioural change(s).
• The other goal is that counseling should increase the effectiveness of the individual responses
evolved by the environment. Tiedeman (1964) holds that the goal of counseling is to focus
on the mechanism of change and that the counsellee should be helped in the process of
‘becoming’—the change which pervades the period of adolescence through early adulthood
during which the individual is assisted to actualize his potential.
• Some counselors hold the view that counseling should enable the counsellee to make
decisions. It is through the process of making critical decisions that personal growth is
fostered. Reaves and Reaves (1965) point out that “the primary objective of counseling is
that of stimulating the individuals to evaluate, make, accept and act upon his choice”.
• Behaviourally-oriented counselors stress the need for modification of behaviour, for example,
removal of undesirable behaviour or action or reduction of an irritating symptom such that
the individual attains satisfaction and effectiveness.
• In 1954 the Government of India set up the Central Bureau of Educational and Vocational
Guidance Central Government came forward with programmes of financial assistance to
various States either to start or to expand their existing guidance bureaux.
• During the period of the Second and Third Five-Year Plans there was a tremendous growth
in the guidance movement in India resulting in the opening of new universities and hundreds
of training colleges to meet the demand for trained teachers for the several thousand
secondary schools which came to be opened in consonance with the Directive Principles of
Universal Education namely.
• The kind of agencies which render vocational guidance can be classified under three heads:
(i) Governmental agencies, including Central and State : The Vocational Guidance Unit of
the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India, and the Directorate of
Employment and Training at the State headquarters fall under this category.

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