The relationship between personal philosophy and effectiveness in counsellors

This study investigates the relationship between the effectiveness of counsellors and their personal philosophy, beliefs and attitudes. There is a review of the relevant literature concerning the qualities and attributes of effective counsellors, with a detailed examination of studies of counsellor philosophy. Two groups (n = 14 and n = 19) of counsellors on training courses were studied. Each participant wrote an account of a ‘Helping Relationship Incident’ which was rated on the 12 dimensions of counsellor ‘perceptual organization’ developed by Combs & Soper (1963). Course tutors gave ratings of the counselling effectiveness of their students. Rank order correlations between judgements of counsellor effectiveness and ratings of perceptual organization/philosophy were made. In both groups statistically significant results were found, adding weight to the hypothesis that a ‘person-centred’ perceptual organization or belief system is an important factor in counsellor effectiveness. The implications for counsellor selection and training are discussed, and suggestions are made for further research on this topic.