Approach
According to Glasser, human beings have four basic psychological needs after survival. The most important need being to love and be loved by another person or group for a feeling of belonging. The need for power, through learning, achieving, feeling worthwhile, winning and through being competent. The need for freedom, including independence and autonomy while simultaneously exercising personal responsibility. The need for fun, pleasure seeking enjoyment and relaxation is also a very important need for good psychological health. One of the core principles of reality therapy is that, whether people are aware of it or not, they are always trying to meet these essential human needs. These needs must all be balanced and met for a person to function most effectively. However, people don't necessarily act effectively at achieving these goals. Socializing with others is one effective way of meeting the need to belong. But how a person chooses to interact with and gain attention and love from others is most often at the root of their psychological dismay. Reality therapy stresses one major point - people are in control of what they are currently doing in their lives whether or not it is working in their favor toward meeting their basic psychological needs for power, belonging, fun and freedom. And it is through an individual's choices that he or she makes change happen for the better or worse.
In our current society, the survival need is normally being met - it is then in how people meet the remaining four psychological needs that they typically run into trouble. Reality therapy holds that the key to behavior is to remain aware of what an individual presently wants and make choices that will ensure that goal. Reality therapy maintains that what really drives human beings is their need to belong and to be loved. What also drives humans is the desire to be free and with that freedom comes great responsibility (one cannot exist without the other). Reality therapy is very much a therapy of choice and change, based on the conviction that even though people are often products of their past, they don't have to be held hostage by it forever.
Read more about this topic: Reality Therapy
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