This article reviews the past research and principles for facilitating moral growth through group discussion and the theories of judgment-action discrepancies. It suggests that an approach which takes into account the moral claim the troubled child is “acting out” in moral misbehavior must be addressed if moral growth is to be fostered. The article suggests a model for reforming moral misbehavior which employs an intervention technique using the actual moral misbehaviors as the basis for both moral discussion and behavioral intervention to produce an effective change in moral behavior.

Counselors can assist clients toward appropriate metaphorical interpretation of stress as moral “growing pains” during therapy. Kohlberg's theory of moral development generates the foundation for this approach. Current trends in the literature support the need for people to interpret their experience metaphorically. Therefore, encouraging clients to explore implications of physiological correlates of stress may offer productive directions for therapy and growth.

This article outlines a relationship between the crises that create stress in our lives and periods of instability in moral development. Stressful issues, we suggest, are more difficult to resolve during periods of developmental instability. When problems are most stressful we often experience the impact of that stress physiologically. The physiological symptoms of stress, we argue, reflect unresolved problems in primary relationships that occurred during the early (sensorimotor) developmental stages when feelings are experienced physiologically. In this way the physiological symptoms of stress become a metaphoric map for the developmental resolution of moral issues. Thus, stress and its symptoms, rather than becoming debilitating, can be reconstructed as “Growing Pains.”

Blakeney and Blakeney offer a metatheoretical perspective for counseling and therapy that gives primacy to developmental issues and to understanding the worldview of the client. Their thinking adds to the growing paradigm shift currently occurring in the counseling field. This article further demonstrates the holistic and integrative nature and potential of the Blakeney framework, using Developmental Counseling and Therapy (DCT) as a method of translation. The authors offer a framework that challenges the notion of “higher” forms of knowledge, emphasizing instead multiperspctive thought and life‐span cognitive‐developmental processes.

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