Today I thought it would be interesting to talk about a more contemporary researcher in psychology and his theories, since I recently blogged about more prominent figures in the past. So I thought I would talk about William Glasser and some information about his theory. Glasser is an American psychiatrist who developed Realty Therapy-("an approach to counseling and problem-solving which focuses on the here-and-now of the client and how to create a better future"). Glasser also developed Choice Therapy, which "posits that behavior is central to our existence and is driven by five genetically driven needs which are: survival, belonging/connecting/love, power/significance/competence, freedom/responsibility, and
Fun/learning, much like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs . Glasser also believed in what he called a "Quality World"-(things that are important to us like family or cultural values, etc.). The "Quality World" concept is part of choice theory and Glasser also talked about a "Comparing Place", which is where people compare together the real world we experience with the "Quality World". Glasser believed people try to achieve the best real world experience, consistent with the "Quality World". Glasser believed that total behavior is comprised of acting, thinking, feeling and physiology. The origins of a lot of unhappiness for people according to Glasser are from poor kinds of relationship with close people in our lives. Glasser felt that pleasure and happiness are related, but not wholly synonymous, for example sex could be considered pleasurable, but could possibly for some lead to less happiness, through a later divorce in a sexual relationship for instance. Choice Theory follows the belief that mental illness is the showing of unhappiness and that we are able to learn to choose from alternate behaviors that will be the influence of greater satisfaction and realty therapy helps one to learn and gain a wider perspective of these alternate decisions. I like where Glasser is coming from with his theory, which to me seems to make sense as a way to analyze where a problem might be coming from and focus on what in the future can change for the better. I will just leave this post off here with what is considered the Ten Axioms of Choice Theory:
("The Ten Axioms of Choice Theory
1. The only person whose behavior we can control is our own.2. All we can give another person is information.3. All long-lasting psychological problems are relationship problems.4. The problem relationship is always part of our present life.5. What happened in the past has everything to do with what we are today, but we can only satisfy our basic needs right now and plan to continue satisfying them in the future.6. We can only satisfy our needs by satisfying the pictures in our Quality World.7. All we do is behave.8. All behavior is Total Behavior and is made up of four components: acting, thinking, feeling and physiology9. All Total Behavior is chosen, but we only have direct control over the acting and thinking components. We can only control our feeling and physiology indirectly through how we choose to act and think.10. All Total Behavior is designated by verbs and named by the part that is the most recognizable").