For the most part the aim of counseling has been self-improvement intended to resolve a significant personal problem. In other words, counseling has been about change. The theories counselors use to bring about change are varied, encompassing insight, skills training, and problem solving.
Counseling is challenging because many people change slowly if at all, while others change but over time go back to old habits. Sigmund Freud took notice of this very common resistance to change and put forth a theory of unconscious defenses to explain it. I think it undeniable that people resist changing; I think that is because true personality change often requires a change in values, and people resist changes in their values.
My colleagues and I have been working on a new strategy for counseling people. Instead trying to change people to adjust to current life situations, we teach them to find new life situations in which they can thrive. As we like to say, "Better to marry the right person to begin with than need to a counselor to teach you to get along with somebody else."
We are not the only ones who have tried to match people to partners, careers, and life situations so they will thrive and not need to change. Others have attempted the same strategy. What is new with our group, however, is we have field tested with tens of thousands of people scientifically validated, seemingly superior matching technologies. Our work is published in 17 articles and five books.
Our research shows that 16 needs and life goals are universal to human nature. These motives include everything from a need for acceptance to needs for sex , order, and status. Although everybody embraces all 16 life goals, individuals prioritize them differently. By objectively assessing an individual's unique needs hierarchy, we can match people to mates, careers, and life situations.
The Reiss Motivation Profile is a standardized assessment of how an individual prioritizes the 16 universal needs and motives of human nature. The results are "idiot proofed," that is, stated in plain language counseling clients can understand. Experience shows that clients agree with about 85 percent of the statements in the computer-generated interpretive reports. The instrument has been demonstrated repeatedly to have construct/factorial validity; test-retest reliability; and to correlate significantly and as predicted with other personality measures such as Big 5 personality scales, Myers Briggs personality scales, and measures of Murray's needs. The instrument is cross culturally validated and has been translated into a half dozen languages.
Counselors can use the Reiss Motivation Profile to assess their client's needs, life goals, values, and priorities. In marital counseling the Reiss Relationship Profile compares the motives and values of a couple, identifying what the couple will quarrel over and why, and also showing the specific attractions in the relationship. Job coaches use the Reiss Business Profile which projects the 16 needs into employment situations and helps coaches assess specific conflicts of values between the individual and boss, coworkers, or corporate culture.
Many client problems may be attributed to unmet needs. In a relationship, for example, the couple may be quarreling because each is not meeting the other's needs. A partner who has a high need for independence, for example, will resist providing the emotional support a partner with a high need for interdependence requires. In a job situation, a person with a high need for honor might be stressed out working for a company like BP where cutting corners seems to have been part of the culture.
