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Behavioural approaches counselling
In the early 1900s, John B Watson, attempting to make psychology more "scientific," founded an area of psychology that focuses on observable of an organism and avoids the subjectivity of mental processes. Behavioural approaches to counselling are based on this area of psychology, which is called behavioural psychology. According to this approach, psychological dysfunction is due to conditions that lead to the learning of inappropriate responses. Thus, the goal of behavioural counselling is to change those behaviours that are maladaptive (Hosford 1969). Counselling interventions-are based on various learning theories, such as classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social-learning theory. Recently there has been a renewed interest on cognition and its effect on behaviour.

The resulting approach is called cognitive behaviour modification. The most commonly used behavioural procedures are systematic desensitization, modelling, reinforcement, extinction, and cognitive restructuring; however, behaviour counsellors will use any ethical procedure that will help the client change his/her behavioural in the desired way. Even though a wide variety of procedures are used by behavioural counsellor, a general sequential model for counselling contains the following steps: identify the problem, formulate counselling goals in observable and measurable terms; observe and record client behaviour determine and implement counselling strategies; evaluate goal attainment; and if goals are met, terminate counselling (see Behavioural Counselling).