Page 284 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Guidance and counseling

Notes • lt helps the students in proper educational and vocational choice. Personality plays an important
role in an individual, personal, educational and vocational adjustment and success. It is,
therefore, important to diagnose the individual’s personality pattern to see whether he posses
the traits which are likely to contribute significantly to his adjustment to the course or career
he is choosing.
• It helps the individual in resolving emotional conflicts. Personality diagnosis becomes essential
when the difficulty the individual encounters in making proper adjustment with the educational
and occupational choices, lies in emotional conflict about which the client has no knowledge.
When the cause of the mental conflict is diagnosed, it may be possible for him to solve his
problem in his own way.
• It helps the clinical psychologist.

A clinical psychologist can use personality assessments to help choose the best
therapy for his clients. Thus, personality assessment is important for educational,
career, personal and social counseling.

Self Assessment
1. Fill in the blanks :
(i) _____ is designed to assess the characteristics of people such as their abilities, attitudes,
motivations, interests, needs and values.
(ii) According to _____ theory of multiple intelligences there are _____ distinct intelligences that
are relatively independent of each other.
(iii) _____ is thought of as a natural tendency, special ability or capacity or cluster of abilities.
(iv) _____ provides information on performance of the students in different subjects and indicate
their strengths.

26.2 Client Appraisal Techniques

In the preceding section dealing with the use of psychological tests we observed more than once
that tests are not infallible. They are not goals in themselves and they should be used to supplement
other information that is available concerning the client.
Some of the more important devices used in counseling under the non-teat category are: (1)
autobiography, (2) anecdotal records, (3) rating scales, (4) diaries, (5) case study, (6) cumulative
records, and so on.
26.2.1 Autobiography

An autobiography is an introspective report of one’s own experiences. The psychological tests, it is
often pointed out, cannot provide adequate information, for observations could be introduced
artificially within the test situation. Protagonists of autobiographies claim that they are able to
overcome the above limitation of psychological tests and provide an authentic insight into their
own personalities. One of the other important merits of the autobiography is its vast scope.
Autobiographies are generally considered to fall into two categories, namely, unstructured and
structured. Most literary autobiographies fall into the unstructured category. Behavioural scientists,
sensing the usefulness of autobiography in recent times, have devised what is known as a ‘structured
autobiography’. In contrast to the unstructured one this is more purposeful, pointed and specific.
Naturally it is easier to analyze and study. The unstructured autobiography, as the name indicates,

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