A Call for Greater Collaboration Between the Counseling Psychology and School Counseling Professions

Recently, The Counseling Psychologist (Vol.32[2], 2004) published a special issue titled “Counseling Psychology and School Counseling.” A cadre of counseling psychologists and counselor educators was assembled by the special issue editors, F. A. Hoffman and R. T. Carter (2004), to react and respond to J. L. Romano and M. M. Kachgal's (2004) article that stressed the need for greater collaboration between the counseling psychology and school counseling professions. A range of perspectives and views was represented in this issue. The current article summarizes these accounts and offers implications for counseling psychology.     

Counseling Men in Groups

This article advocates group counseling as an effective intervention strategy for problems that characteristically confront men. It is maintained that aspects of the traditional male socialization process create therapeutic obstacles for counseling men in groups; the purpose of the male's defenses is anxiety reduction, although the male's coping behaviors are usually an excellent example of his inner personal problems. Counseling men in groups also has implications for group counselors, specifically with regard to counselor sexism, countertransference issues, and special applications of group counseling techniques and skills.     

Wittgenstein and the Criticism of Religion A Case Study

This article discusses the relevance of Wittgenstein's remarks on the doctrine of predestination for an understanding of his approach to religious matters. On the one hand, Wittgenstein held that this doctrine involves distorted concepts and is ethically and religiously nonsensical. On the other, he stated that others may find it “good and godly.” He seems to suggest that personal experience shapes the genuine meaning of the doctrine of predestination. The points that emerge cast light on tensions prevailing between Wittgenstein's conception of meaning as essentially a social and inter-subjective matter and his individualist perspective in the matter of religion. These issues lie at the heart of the dispute over Wittgenstein's views on the possibility of a philosophical criticism of religion.     

Cross-Cultural Counseling: An Existential Approach

Counselors continue to express concern about problems inherent in cross-cultural counseling. Despite the large literature on the subject, counseling members of ethnic groups different from that of the counselor remains problematic. Three concepts— Umwelt (the physical environment), Mitwelt (the interpersonal world), and Eigenwelt (one's inner world)—offer significant philosophical assistance to counselors wishing to overcome cultural encapsulation because, although surface cultural differences exist, humans are fundamentally more alike than they are different. The counselor needs to accept this reality to be effective in counseling culturally different clients, whether they are American minorities or foreign visitors.     

A Conversation About the Intersection of Faith,Sexual Orientation,and Gender: Jewish,Christian, and Muslim Perspectives

Recent challenges to counselor education and the ACA Code of Ethics (American Counseling Association, 2005 ) provided impetus for this article, which is focused on how 3 major Western religions address counseling and counselor training with diverse clients. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives are highlighted as related to counseling and training issues across faith, sexual orientation, and gender issues.     

Semantics and the sacred

ABSTRACT

This article looks at four different scholarly perspectives on ‘sacred’ – the ineffable sacred, the experienced sacred, the polarized sacred and the contextualized sacred – in order to draw out their implicit presuppositions about meaning. The first two stances presuppose that meaning depends on what bits of language are about (referentialism), and the other two stances presuppose that meaning depends on relations between bits of language (holism). The article concludes three things: these prominent views of ‘sacred’ rest on usually implicit or unrecognized assumptions about the nature of meaning; some of those assumptions explain why certain theories are contentious and problematic and others ground more promising and productive approaches.     

Introduction—Accountability or A-ccount-ability?

Guest Editors Larry Ellis and William Prochnow introduce this special issue of JEC by raising questions and issues of accountability that affect all professionals in employment counseling. Past accountability definitions hare been narrowly defined using accomplishmen/cost approaches. The Manpower Administration has attempted to use this approach in the provision of and justification for counseling services. Positive outcome data have been obtained for counseled applicants, but the counseling function is still being questioned. This article proposes expanding the concept of counselor accountability and introduces a multi-approach to accountability.     

Life designing: A paradigm for career construction in the 21st century

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new social arrangement of work poses a series of questions and challenges to scholars who aim to help people develop their working lives. Given the globalization of career counseling, we decided to address these issues and then to formulate potentially innovative responses in an international forum. We used this approach to avoid the difficulties of creating models and methods in one country and then trying to export them to other countries where they would be adapted for use. This article presents the initial outcome of this collaboration, a counseling model and methods. The life-designing model for career intervention endorses five presuppositions about people and their work lives: contextual possibilities, dynamic processes, non-linear progression, multiple perspectives, and personal patterns. Thinking from these five presuppositions, we have crafted a contextualized model based on the epistemology of social constructionism, particularly recognizing that an individual’s knowledge and identity are the product of social interaction and that meaning is co-constructed through discourse. The life-design framework for counseling implements the theories of self-constructing [Guichard, J. (2005). Life-long self-construction. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 5, 111–124] and career construction [Savickas, M. L. (2005). The theory and practice of career construction. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counselling: putting theory and research to work (pp. 42–70). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley] that describe vocational behavior and its development. Thus, the framework is structured to be life-long, holistic, contextual, and preventive.     

Epistemology and School Counseling

Because a counselor's interactions with his clients should be an out-growth of his philosophical commitments, he must grapple with certain epistemological questions: (a) Can human beings know the extramental world or merely their own ideas? (b) Is human knowledge a valid representation of the extramental world? (c) Can human beings reach agreement about the nature of extramental realities? The counselor can assume two possible stances. First, there is the “realist” position which states that there is an extramental world, we can achieve valid knowledge of it, and the knowledge of various observers can agree. Second is the “phenomenalist” position: There is an extramental world, but no one can achieve valid knowledge of it, nor can various observers easily agree regarding its nature. The realist counselor should help his client perceive his problem situation as it “really” is and as it appears to others. The phenomenalist counselor cannot do this instead, he can only try to enter the client's subjectivity and to help him deepen and enrich his unique perception of the problem situation.     

The Effect of Previous Experience on Preference of Approach for Effective Counseling

Students in a general psychology class viewed four videotapes of initial vocational-educational and initial personal concern counseling sessions. The sessions were presented from a client-centered approach and from a behavioral approach, and employed the same client and counselor. After viewing the tapes, the students were asked to indicate which approach they thought would be more effective in helping a client. Results showed that students who had previously experienced counseling preferred a behavioral approach for both the vocational-educational concern and the personal concern. Students with no experience of counseling did not exhibit a preference.     

The effect of previous experience on preference of approach for effective counseling

Students in a general psychology class viewed four videotapes of initial vocational-educational and initial personal concern counseling sessions. The sessions were presented from a client-centered approach and from a behavioral approach, and employed the same client and counselor. After viewing the tapes, the students were asked to indicate which approach they thought would be more effective in helping a client. Results showed that students who had previously experienced counseling preferred a behavioral approach for both the vocational-educational concern and the personal concern. Students with no experience of counseling did not exhibit a preference.     

An alternative for counselor education

What is it that makes the counselor a professional? Is it possible to separate the personal and political responsibilities of the professional counselor in today's world? In this article, David Island tries to answer these questions and provides an alternative model for approaching counseling and counselor education in a period of rapid cultural change.     

Client Perceptions of the Impact of Genetic Counseling: An Exploratory Study

Twenty-eight former genetic counseling clients seen at a major Midwestern university were recruited to be interviewed about their genetic counseling experiences, including most and least helpful aspects, what they learned, how this information impacted their decision-making, and their perceptions of their genetic counselors' behaviors. Responses were inductively analyzed, and several themes were identified, including: Clients sought genetic counseling to obtain genetic-medical information; a majority accurately recalled this information; genetic counseling influenced decisions for about 50% of the sample; decision-making was affected by several extra-session factors; a majority experienced distress during the session; most perceived genetic counselor responses as nondirective and liked this approach; counselor behaviors regarded as directive involved discussion of pregnancy termination; participants disagreed about the need for and provision of genetic counselor support; most regarded the session as helpful and stated that they would seek genetic counseling again. Suggestions for addressing these issues in practice and research are given.     

Integrity in Pastoral Counseling

This essay suggests that pastoral counseling involves a spiritual and emotional quest for wholeness. The personal quest of the pastoral counselor has a parallel impact upon the quest of those who seek his or her counsel. The essay presents the view that faith must be established in the life of the pastoral counselor in at least four areas: in community, in the use of one's spiritual gifts, in the love of mercy and the doing of justice, and in communion with God.     

Don C. Locke: A Profile in Leadership

This interview highlights the professional influence of Don C. Locke on the field of counselor education and supervision as well as his thoughts and views on multiculturalism and leadership in the field of counselor education, scholarship, teaching, and mentoring. This interview took place 1 year after Locke left his position as a counselor educator in which he provided 30 years of service to the field of counseling, counselor education and supervision, and the multicultural movement.     

Cross-cultural pastoral counseling: Method or hermeneutic?

This article explores some of the meta-questions that emerge when talking about “cross-cultural pastoral counseling.” Is it a distinct counseling method or a practical hermeneutic that prompts the counselor to examine his or her therapeutic approach? The author argues that “cross-cultural pastoral counseling” is really a hermeneutic that challenges the pastoral counselor to an ongoing evaluation of how and to what extent his or her approach to pastoral counseling may be guided by dominant social convention versus the gospel mandate of Matthew 25: 31–46 [RSV]. The article reviews relevant literature, discusses three fundamental changes (“conversions”) that are necessary for the pastoral counselor in order to do cross-cultural pastoral counseling, and presents a case illustration involving a multi-cultural pastoral counseling intervention.     

Nietzsche and the Empirical: through the eyes of the term ‘Empfindung’

Abstract

This paper examines Nietzsche’s attitude to the empirical by concentrating on his concept of Empfindung (sensation, perception, feeling). In Section 1, five distinctive features of his use of ‘Empfmdung’ are described in relation to the philosophical tradition and some of his sources in 19^th Century physiology. All five features, I argue, point to Nietzsche’s philosophical concern to stake out the limits of ‘Empfmdung’ as an aspect of human finitude. In Section 2, my attention turns from the term ‘Empfmdung’ to Nietzsche’s actual argumentation. The bewildering variety of perspectives and arguments concerning ‘Empfmdung’ in his writings are broken down into three basic types of argument or discourse with radically different, incompatible presuppositions: a critical, epistemological discourse serving anti-metaphysical ends; a quasi-scientific discourse serving critical-epistemological ends; and a quasi-ontological discourse of life that looks to explain the results of Nietzsche’s critical epistemology. The value of this ‘contradictory’ practice, I contend, is twofold: Nietzsche makes epistemology fruitful for the philosophical problem of life; at the same time he offers a performative critique of epistemology by the manner in which he exceeds it.     

PUTTING PRESUPPOSITIONS ON THE TABLE: WHY THE FOUNDATIONS MATTER

Abstract. Over time scientists have developed an effective investigative process that includes the acceptance of particular basic presuppositions, methods, content, and theories. The deeply held presuppositions are the philosophical foundation of scientific thought and do much to define the field's worldview. These fundamental assumptions can be esoteric for many and can become a source of conflict when they are not commonly shared with other points of view. Such presuppositions affect the observations, the conclusions drawn, and the positions taken. Furthermore, in some cases presuppositions in science have undergone important shifts in meaning, causing an increasing dissonance. We argue that disputes in religion and science often are due to these very basic differences in philosophy that are held by members in the different communities. To better understand the nature of science and its differences with religious views, presuppositions rather than conclusions should be articulated and examined for validity and scope of application.     

Self-Discovery and the Role of the Counselor

The major thesis of this philosophic treatise is that unless the counselor realizes in his own life the full import of the search for meaning and self-understanding, he will be unable to empathize adequately with the struggles of another human being who likewise seeks to realize his highest potential. Hindering our self-discovery are the problems of meaninglessness, alienation, and the loss of our freedom. The path toward breaking out of our insulated selves is: (a) to accept fully, on a personal level, a sense of responsibility for what we are, and (b) to realize that self-fulfillment occurs within a social context. The former involves a sense of personal integrity and the latter gives a contextual frame of reference to our search for meaning. The path to self-understanding is difficult and threatening, but as the counselee perceives—on both the intuitive and operational levels—the counselor's sincerity in his own quest for fulfillment, the goals we seek to achieve in the counseling relationship will be facilitated.     

The Effect of Gender and Self‐Care Behaviors on Counselors' Perceptions of Colleagues With Depression

This study examined the effects of gender and self‐care behaviors on counselors' perceptions of depressed colleagues. Three hundred and six respondents completed 1 of 8 versions of vignettes describing either a male or female counselor responding to his or her depressive symptoms through the use of antidepressants, counseling, alternative therapies, or no course of action. Target counselors who took antidepressants were perceived as more competent than counselors who practiced holistic measures and those who chose no course of action. Target counselors who sought personal counseling were perceived as more ethical than those choosing no course of action.