Autobiography
Professional counselors must have a great deal of self-understanding to be effective with their clients. Self-understanding allows us to improve our conceptualization of other people. The theories we will discuss in this course (i.e. physical, social, cognitive, moral, and emotional development theories) provide an important basis for developing understanding of ourselves and others.

For this assignment, you are asked to write an autobiography (an account of your own life) that connects your life experiences across domains (e.g. social, cognitive, moral, spiritual, psychological, etc.) to theory. There are sometimes multiple theorists that we will review for a given category. For instance, we will review theories by Havighurst, Erikson, and Adler for our understanding of social development. Please do not feel pressured to incorporate every theory for this assignment but DO incorporate at least one theory (or a blend of theories) for each category. For example,

1.  How can social influence affect behavior? Explain your response.

2.  What does it mean to conform? How can this be applied to working with offenders?

3.  What are the elements of persuasion? What forms of persuasion and group influence principles are displayed in the correctional setting?


When answering this question, please consider the most common elements of persuasion: the communicator, the message, how the message is conveyed and the audience.

Discussion 4, main post

Ancient histories have brought us foundational principles which are still active today in therapeutic consulting rooms, with or without critical attention to them, and with important consequences for how we care for others.  For instance, whether the self is a think or a process, how the relation of matter and form, or physicality and spirit, shape how we understand body and mind, whether causation is inherent as a law of nature or imposed on it, the relation of inner experience and the objective world, and what is considered the good life. Pick one ancient concept, whether Western, Eastern, Caribbean, African, Indigenous, and discussion how you see it live today.



Clara respond to the post

For Scalambrino (2018), the ancient Western concept of anima, the root word of animation, can be considered in relation to the ancient concept of the soul, in view of theological interpretations of the psyche, and in view of ancient Greek p