Holistic counselling takes into consideration all the aspects of the persons well being as a whole in order to create an understanding and deeper clarity in regards to the issue at hand. Holistic counselling offers the client the tools in which they can explore all aspects of the situation in order to achieve a greater Self-Awareness by combining the Mental, Physical and Spiritual aspects of a person in its entirety as the Self. This enables the client to explore all aspects of their sub conscious blocks enabling them to release the root cause of dis-ease within the physical body.
The unconscious self is an important aspect of holistic counselling because this is where we store and bury all our unpleasant memories and emotions that our conscious mind is unable to process at the time.
These thoughts residing in the unconscious mind became a passionate topic of interest for Freud and the only way he could make sense of this concept was to consider the existence of another kind of mind that is very separate from the conscious mind.
Freud discovered that this “other mind” is where
Familiar and or uncomfortable memories, images and feelings are stored. Freud named this “other mind” the unconscious mind because it was apparent to Freud that we did not have direct access to the information stored in that area of the brain nor was the nature of the accessibility of the contents. The unconscious minds mental process are inaccessible to the consciousness and is thought to influence feelings and behavioural issues. The three components of personalities according to Freud are as follows:
The ID which is what we are initially born with and can be described as our primal instincts and is fully formed from the moment we are born. Freud describes the ID as “the dark, inaccessible part of our personality.”
The Ego which is the part of Self that regulates the IDs demands and tries to ensure that the ID’s demands are justifiable and maintainable in accordance to society’s expectations and group consciousness reality.
THE SUPER EGO is often described as the moral self. It is the part of ourselves that we attain which aspires us to be great role models and holds us accountable for our decision making and ID impulses that we grow to judge as unethical or dishonourable and creates confliction of guilt and promotes self-sacrifice and nobility and the drive to be better role models within society or as parents, teachers etc.
The importance of Freud’s concept of Self allows us to understand the complicated depths of our mind as an entire package that harbours all sorts of contradictions and superficial urges that seems to have a mind of its own at times, orchestrated from a rudimentary primal programming which can be buried away deeply.
The importance of holistic counselling is to help decipher and ascertain what drives these contradictions within the mind to help determine a clear understanding as to why we respond to negative impulses the way we do.
