Experienced and well qualified talking therapists may use a broad range of counselling, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy approaches to help their clients and they tend to know which approaches are most suitable to help which particular clients with which particular problem. Below are some of the most common and effective approaches to counselling and therapy that are utilised by many eclectic counsellors and therapists.

The Egan Helping Model of Brief Solution Focused Therapy.

This three stage approach to counselling and helping assists clients to manage and overcome their problems by:

• identifying and clarifying problem situations and unused opportunities,
• identifying a preferred scenario with the client and systematically formulating strategies and methods to overcome particular problems.

Gerard Egan's helping model may be seen as being a developmental and systematic eclecticism.

The Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Approach.

The CBT approaches to counselling and therapy are based upon the theories and skills of Cognitive and Behavioural counselling. These approaches are often based upon sound research and the awareness of the ability of the client to develop more effective behaviours through improved cognitions (thoughts) that may be developed through identification of maladaptive thoughts and presuppositions, problem solving therapy, self management therapy and other CBT approaches. CBT is a solid and effective approach towards helping a client overcome depression, anxiety, anxiety disorders (phobias & OCD etc) and social interaction problems. Most eclectic counsellors and therapists now use CBT approaches to one degree or another.

The Person Centred Approach.

This humanistic approach is perhaps the most common method of counselling in the UK and it is based upon the theories of the 20th century American psychologist and clinician Carl Rogers. When a counsellor is working with a client from a Person Centred approach they are non-directive and allow the client to guide the topics being discussed in counselling, paraphrasing, reflecting and summarising what the client have said whilst at the same time maintaining the human qualities of empathy, genuineness and unconditional positive regard for the client. Person Centred counselling is largely based upon providing nurturing conditions that can activate the innate capacity possessed by the client for healing and personal growth (the Self-Actualising Tendency). This type of counselling can be very helpful in helping a client come to understand their own feelings and to gain a deeper insight on their own situation. Eclectic counsellors and therapists often mostly use this approach to some degree or other, especially during the early stages of the therapeutic alliance.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (including Timeline Therapy).

NLP is an approach to counselling and positive human change that was developed by the study of linguistics, successful psychotherapists, positive thinking, hypnotherapy and personal excellence by its founders (Bandler and Grinder). It is a powerful and effective approach to therapy that uses a model of how human beings process information and how they can use their freedom to choose to improve their situations in innovative ways, through techniques that can (amongst other things) help them feel more confident about the future or better about the past.

The Hypnotherapeutic Approach.

Hypnotherapeutic approaches to therapy form a broad and effective eclectic system that has been used successfully in many countries around the globe. Hypnotherapy is based upon the use of various hypnotic techniques (including suggestion therapy, hypno-healing, hypno-analysis and many others) to help clients to overcome a wide range of problems. Hypnotherapy is helpful for a broad range of client problems.

Multi-Modal Therapy.

This broad holistic approach has its roots in the Cognitive Behavioural tradition and in systems theory. It was developed by the psychologist and clinician Arnold Lazarus to provide a brief but comprehensive form of therapy that takes into account the behaviour, feelings, sensations, imagery, cognitions, interpersonal relationships and drugs & biology of the client (their BASIC I.D.). A key element of Multi-Modal therapy is to match interventions with client needs in ways demonstrated to be effective from a wide range of therapeutic approaches (which may often include CBT, PCA, NLP etc, but only where appropriate). Multi-Modal therapists approach client problems in a broad multi-layered. Multi-Modal Therapy may be seen as a form of technical eclecticism.

The Human Givens Therapy System.

The Human Givens approach to counselling and psychotherapy was developed by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell of the European Therapy Studies Institute (ETSI). They broadly explored why some psychotherapeautic techniques worked and why some didn't. From their research they developed the idea that human beings have innate physical and emotional needs and that nature has given us resources to help fulfil them (these needs come from our common biological inheritance, whatever our cultural background). The basis of this organising idea has produced new and improved ways of viewing and treating depression, anxiety disorders, psychosis and addictions and together these methods and techniques form the Human Givens therapy system.

Transactional Analysis.

This approach was developed by the American physician Eric Berne as a means of helping clients overcome problems that have arisen in relation to interpersonal relationships and personal development. Transactional analysis theory notes that human beings tend to relate to each other in three main Ego States. These are Child (including unhealthy adapted child and healthy free child), Adult (which is the rational ego state) and Parent (which includes the critical parent and the nurturing parent). Based upon these ego states transactional analysis helps us to better understand and improve our interpersonal relationships (free child, adult and nurturing parent generally being the healthiest ego states to be in). Transactional analysis also helps individuals to disentangle themselves from 'games' (common human interactions based upon manipulation) and to understand and overcome problematic 'scripts' (inappropriate and maladaptive parental injunctions subconsciously maintained since early childhood, such as 'don't succeed').

Gestalt Counselling.

This approach to counselling was developed by Fritz Perls from Psychoanalysis and Gestalt psychology in the earlier part of the 20th century CE. It uses psycho-dramatic techniques and linguistic methods to help a client get in touch with the here and now and their real feelings. Clients are often guided into symbolic imaginative discussions between themselves and relevant others or different tendencies within themselves in Empty Chair Work. Gestalt counselling helps a client to recognize their own choices and responsibility in their situation and may teach them how to avoid choosing psychosomatic and other escapes from choice or responsibility. A key element of Gestalt counselling is to understand the well being or dysfunction of the client in terms of their psychological homeostasis or lack of it.

Reality Therapy.

This is a less common, but highly effective, approach to counselling and psychotherapy that was developed by William Glasser in the late 20th century CE. Reality therapists help clients to be aware of the directions in which their current behaviours are taking them, accept the common sense realities of the world, to evaluate their own plans and desires for realism and then to create realistic plans for self improvement. Reality theory reminds clients of the level of choice (and therefore control) that we human beings have over our lives and encourages them to learn to exercise that control sensibly and automatically.

Psychodynamic Approaches.

Psychodynamic approaches to counselling are based upon the developments that came out of the work of the early theorist Sigmund Freud and his methods of Psychoanalysis (which is now rare). These approaches include (amongst others):

• Adlerian counselling (Individual Psychology), which was developed by the theorist and clinician Alfred Adler and is based upon helping clients to understand their childhood experiences in relation to birth order and other factors, helping them overcome either Superiority or Inferiority Complexes and teaching a goal orientated and common sense outlook to human change (as in Cognitive and Problem Solving therapy).
• Jungian counselling (Analytical Psychology), which was developed by the Austrian psychiatrist Carl Jung and is based upon helping clients to become mature and individuated individuals at one with their spiritual selves. Jungian counselling is concerned with the inner symbolic world of the subconscious mind's imagery (as expressed through archetypes in dreams etc) and may be particularly suited to clients in later life.

Logotherapy.

This existential approach to counselling was developed as an aid to help individuals come to terms with personal responsibility, discover their own meaning of life and to come to terms with their spirituality. It was developed by Victor Frankl, who had survived the holocaust. During that time had noticed that those people in the camps who had spirituality or a strong personal meaning to their life tended to survive and find the means to go on, whilst those without a personal existential meaning tended to perish quickly. Later in life he noticed that these same factors were true in normal life, but that they were less obvious. A key element of Logotherapy is to help clients to escape from existential angst and the mass neurotic triad of depression, addiction and aggression and to find their own meaning of life, love and work and get in touch with their own personal inner spirituality, something that for each client may be a different thing.

Other approaches that may be offered by eclectic talking therapists include the long established and respectable practice of Autogenic Training, which provides clients with a systematic education in methods that help them reduce their experience of stress (autogenic trainers teach clients mental imagery to help them to learn control of their body's autonomic responses), the fashionable Life Coaching, in which the Life Coach uses a set of techniques to help their client identify and achieve beneficial goals in life and, the slightly controversial yet effective, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy, in which a methology of rapid eye movements is used to help clients 'reprocess' traumatic memories. At the same time many eclectic therapists are now also trained in either Thought Field Therapy or Emotional Freedom Technique (TFT & EFT), which (although not talking therapies as such) are psychotherapeutic tools based upon accupressure theories. Both TFT and EFT have been demonstrated to help clients, but some psychologists have suggested more conventional (non-accupressure related) psychological explanations as to why they do.

Although each of the above mentioned talking therapy methodologies comes from a slightly different perspective, each one has a proven track record in helping clients, with each having its own areas of particular effectiveness. Whilst purist practitioners of any one of the above therapies may provide effective help, the advantage of going to a well trained and experienced eclectic counsellor (or a therapist who uses a broad based system such as Multimodal Therapy or Human Givens counselling) is that their broader repertoire of skills and understandings and their more pragmatic approach enables them to approach different problems in a broader way - using skills from the different approaches that have been shown to particularly effective (an option that the single method practitioner does not have).

Most 'eclectic' counsellors and therapists generally maintain the Rogerian Core Conditions of Empathy, Unconditional Positive Regard and Genuineness as a basis for counselling/therapy and they then use theoretical understandings, methods and techniques from a couple or several of the other abovementioned therapies (and in some cases other methods not mentioned above). The key feature of the 'eclectic' type counsellor is their common sense approach in using whatever is most appropriate and helpful for each particular client.

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