Introduction

Guidance and Counselling is one of the important courses that keep on growing
across the country. According to Autumn (2013), counselling is a process where, by talking
to a professional about how youre feeling, you can work out, or try to change, the things that
cause you distress. Another definition was given by John Staffold (2009) where he stated
that "guidance and counselling is a concept of helping individuals discover and develop their
psychological, educational, and vocational potentialities, to achieve an optimal level of
personal happiness and social usefulness. It is essentially democratic in that each individual
has the right to shape her own destiny".
In addition, Steven (2014) mentioned that counselling is a helping approach that
highlights the emotional and intellectual experience of a client, how a client is feeling and
what they think about the problem they have sought help for. Another opinion by Pesce
(2007) stated that counselling is a form of psychological or talking therapy in which a
counsellor helps another person to change how they feel or helps them to work through
emotional, behavioural problem based on the few definitions of counselling above, I believe
that counselling aims to help us deal and overcome issues that are causing pain, stress, or
making us feel uncomfortable. Counselling can provide a safe and regular space for clients
to talk and explore difficult feelings. The counsellors job is to support clients and respect
their views. They will not usually give the clients advice, but will help them to find their own
insight and understanding of their problems.
In this assignment, I need to discuss and analyse the article entitled Innovations in
Career Counselling (Lee and Johnston, 2001). In this article, the main highlight being given
to the Personal Career Theory (Holland, 1997) which is closely related to the Client-Centred
Theory. Thus, using the understanding of the concept of guidance and counselling and the
relation with Client-Centred Theory, I will analyse and discuss the Personal Career Theory.

Personal Career Theory

Based on the article, Personal Career Theory fits within the holistic context in that it
emphasizes a client-centred approach to counselling and facilitates discovery of information
about the clients whole life experience. According to Chris Molyneux (2002), "Client-centred
therapy, also known as person-centred therapy, is a non-directive form of talk therapy that
was developed by humanist psychologist Carl Rogers during the 1940s and 1950s".

There are some important keys in Client-Centred Theory. According to Harvard

Health Publication (2006), "According to Carl Rogers, a client-centred therapist needs three
key qualities which are genuineness, unconditional positive regard and also empathetic
understanding. For genuineness, the therapist needs to share her or her feelings honestly.
By modelling this behaviour, the therapist can help teach the client to also develop this
important skill. For unconditional positive regard, the therapist must accept the client for who
they are and display support and care no matter what the client is facing or experiencing.
Meanwhile, for the empathetic understanding, the therapist needs to be reflective and act as
a mirror of the client's feelings and thoughts.
In corresponding to the Client-Centred Theory, based on the article, Holland argues
that everyone has a Personal Career Theory, which is an individualized conceptualization of
how careers and work unfold and operate. People develop ideas about how individuals may
be categorized along various dimensions, how environments may be classified, and how
people and environments interact. Further, people have a concept of self that includes ideas
about their abilities, interests, goals, and personality. They also have assumptions about
what will contribute to their having satisfying work and non-work activities, and how to
achieve career and life goals. Each persons Personal Career Theory results from their
unique life experience.
Counselling requires a set of skills in dealing with the client. In the Personal Career
Theory, one can use the skills in identifying problems to explore the issues of the clients.
This skill can be done by asking open-ended question. Examples of open ended questions
are 'how did you feel when doing the job?' and also 'why is that important to you'. These
types of questions were asked to motivate client to communicate and also to encourage
client collaboration.

Rationale of Using Personal Career Theory

The Client-Centred Theory is the approach used in the Personal Career Theory.
Phelps (2010) supported that this type of therapy is a counselling approach which has the
goal to help people by believing in them, empathizing with them and ultimately empowering
them to resolve their own issues. Carl Rogers (1951) believe that all humans have positive
traits, good, rational, social, realistic and dynamic personality that grows in the tendency
towards self-perfection. The concept of this theory is more towards self-improvement and
everyone is capable in making changes to their own behaviour.

By using this theory, one can easily diagnose the problem that client might have. By
interviewing the client, one will most probably know what the client really feel that made him
had no interest to participate in the activity or doing the job properly. By sharing his problems
to the counsellor, the client can express his emotions that he has kept for a long time. As a
counsellor, one can ask him open-ended questions, use paraphrasing and reflections to elicit
response and explore his true feelings.
Apart from that, this model also emphasises on the conditions states that there must
be some sort of genuineness from the counsellor to the client. This means that the
counsellor cannot simply say the right things or act their way through the relationship. As a
counsellor, one should even discuss about his own feelings if they were in the client shoes if
that seems to be genuine enough to him. Through the counselling session, one will also
make the client think about the consequences of his decisions. The counsellor will make him
realise that the wrong decisions would not give any benefits to him in the future and in fact
causes harm to him.

Practical Considerations in Malaysia

In the context of Malaysia, Client-Centred Theory or person-centred approach cannot
be easily applied. Malaysia a culturally and religiously diverse country of about twenty-three
million people consisting of 59% Malays and other ethnic groups, 32% Chinese, and 9%
Indians and others. According to Mardiana Mohamad (2011), Malays are generally softspoken and shy, though that has changed recently. Personal feelings or private matters are
rarely discussed with outsiders. From this situation, little is known about what Malays would
feel, perceive or expect as clients. It is also not known whether, given the counsellors
personal qualities of genuineness, unconditional positive regard and empathy, they would
feel more comfortable about disclosing personal or private matters or not. Thus, it is
unknown whether Client-Centred Theory is suitable with Malaysian context or not.
However, according to Zakaria and Asyraf (2011), it is stated that in Malaysia,
person-centred approach is most widely used by those counsellors, followed by Rational
Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT) and an eclectic approach. Based on Mardiana
Mohamad (2011), they have done a finding on a male named Sabri. Using this approach
through the safe and empathic counselling relationship, he managed to be guided to find out
the way to solve his own problems and developed a sense of trust in his own capacity. He
made more efforts than ever to improve himself. When he did well, he took pride in his
achievement, and evaluated the experience. He learned about the virtues of commitment,

hard work and success. Thus, it can be concluded that Client-Centred Theory is suitable to
be used in Malaysian context.

Conclusion
To sum up, the benefits of counselling include a greater degree of self-awareness
and understanding of oneself and others. This improves self-esteem, and becomes reflective
in the personal relationships. Through counselling, people will feel better about themselves
and who they are. In counselling, people were reminded that they have their own direction,
goals, confidence and they are able to achieve it. Counselling does not have to be
something to be ashamed of but rather be proud of because it shows how people want to
lead a happy life. Besides, counselling improves one self-knowledge, well-being health, and
clarity of mind. In term of teaching and learning, teachers or counsellors at school often let
small misbehaviours go, waiting to address them until theyve escalated and are much more
difficult to reverse. As a teacher, one need to realize the need to equip with more counselling
and guidance skills and theories are very useful in dealing problems faced by pupils at
school. As a conclusion, guidance and counselling will make us feel more inspired,
motivated, and organized.
(1500 Words)

References
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