Developmental Relational Counseling: Applications for Counseling Men

Developmental relational counseling (DRC) is a conceptual model designed to help people gain a deeper awareness of their relational functioning. DRC is informed by relational‐cultural theory and influenced by the Enneagram personality typology and cognitive and narrative theories. This article outlines the DRC model in counseling practice with men. Men involved in counseling services may use this approach to expand their personal awareness and promote mutual understanding in their relationships.     

The Relationship Between Counseling Trainee Perfectionism and the Working Alliance With Supervisor and Client

The relationships between perfectionism, counseling self‐efficacy, and the supervisory and client working alliance were investigated among 143 counseling trainees and 46 supervisor–trainee dyads. Maladaptive perfectionism was negatively correlated with the supervisory alliance and working alliance. Counseling self‐efficacy moderated the relationship between adaptive perfectionism and the supervisory alliance (perspective of the counseling trainee) and maladaptive perfectionism and the supervisory alliance (perspective of the supervisor). The authors conclude that supervisors should consider perfectionism and counseling self‐efficacy as important factors in supervision.     

Perceptions of War Trauma and Healing of Marital Relations Among Torture-surviving Congolese Couples Participating in Multicouple Therapy

Citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) experienced widespread torture during national wars between 1998 and 2003. Couples who survived and stayed intact suffered tremendous relationship stress. This study used a critical ethnography framework to explore the prewar, wartime, and postwar experiences of 13 torture-surviving couples who participated in a 10-session Torture-Surviving Couple Group in 2008 in the DRC. The group was designed to address the relational effects of torture and war trauma. Participants reported profound negative effects of the war on their relationships; mostly positive experiences during the group, including marital and peer connection and relationship growth; and a number of improvements in their relationship after the group. Implications include support for the use of relational interventions informed by both treatments for traumatic stress and couple approaches to promote trauma healing. Future directions call for increased funding, research, training, and clinical action to treat the effects of traumatic stress on relational family dynamics.     

LONELINESS,CLOSENESS AND SHARED RESPONSIBILITY IN SUPERVISION

This paper examines the meaning of stepping in and out of the formal supervisory roles and allowing relational unbidden experiences in the supervisory space. Such episodes evolve the supervisory relationship because they help to relieve the supervisees of their sense of aloneness in bearing a burdensome clinical responsibility: they change the supervisees’ perspective on therapeutic processes from first person singular to first person plural. Despite their evaluative function and the professional community that they share with supervisees, supervisors can facilitate the emergence of these episodes with the widely accepted practice of imagining therapeutic interactions. Such activity changes the hierarchy and reduces the tension in the supervisory space, and allows unbidden relational experiences to emerge. Thus, challenging the supervisory framework and temporarily stepping out of the formal roles not only strengthens the supervisees’ ethical clinical position but also allows for productive and creative processes in supervision.     

Separation Versus Connection,The Gender Controversy: Implications for Counseling Women

Traditional developmental theories hold that separation is the primary goal of human emotional development. Numerous current theorists question this notion. They propose that a girl's development of self is dependent on mutually empathic relationships with primary caretakers. This revision of developmental theory has implications for counseling. The counseling relationship with a woman should provide validation for her relational skill and opportunity to practice relational competence within the counseling relationship. Boys and men may also have the need to develop relational competence to secure a strong sense of self. If so, a relational model of counseling would apply to them as well.     

Supervision Is a Relationship Too: A Contemporary Approach to Psychoanalytic Supervision

This paper discusses clinical cases presented by Comins and Eliot within a paradigm of psychoanalytic supervisory work based on relational theory. Here, in making the medium of supervision more symmetrical with the message of contemporary psychoanalytic ideas about structure of mind health, pathology, and treatment, the relationship between the supervisor and supervisee is considered to contain crucial supervisory data to be delineated and discussed by both members of the dyad. The supervisory relationship is described using three dimensions: power and authority, the data held to be relevant for supervisory conversations, and the mode of the supervisor's participation in the supervisory process.     

A Relational Approach to Career Counseling: Theoretical Integration and Practical Application

This article reviews the current status of career theory in practice and presents a theoretical overview of relational theory and its logical extension to the career domain. Despite the emergence of literature regarding the interconnectedness of career progress and the quality of relationships in one's life (e.g., D. L. Blustein, 2001; D. L. Blustein, M. S. Prezioso, & D. E. P. Schultheiss, 1995; D. E. P. Schultheiss, H. M. Kress, A. J. Manzi, & J. M. Glasscock, 2001), counseling practice is limited by the absence of a meaningful approach to intervene in clients' relational and career worlds. The relational career counseling approach moves counseling toward a contextually based relational perspective to facilitating career progress. This approach is illustrated with a case example.     

Key issues in the pastoral supervisory relationship

The supervisory relationship in pastoral counseling is examined with special focus on (1) the person of the supervisor; (2) the person of the student; (3) the learning contract; (4) the focus of the material presented in the supervisory session; (5) various supervisory models; (6) the dynamics of role modeling; and (7) the pastoral dimension of the relationship.     

Exploring Counselor Experiences of Training in Relational Depth: An Interpretative Phenomenological Inquiry

Relational depth is an emergent counseling construct that captures the profound connection felt by client and counselor in moments of therapeutic encounter. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis to understand how 10 doctoral counseling students perceived curricular experiences designed to facilitate their ability to engage in relational depth. We identified the following themes: mutuality, counselor growth, externalized to internalized expectations, authenticity, impact of relational depth educational experiences, and relational depth reflection and articulation.     

Career counselor training and supervision: role of the supervisory working alliance

The importance of career counseling within our educational and professional systems is clearly recognized, yet little attention has been directed toward explicating the career counseling supervision process. Research on personal–emotional counseling supervision has stressed the critical importance of the supervisory relationship. The purpose of this study was to better understand the nature and effect of the supervisory working alliance in the supervision of career counselors, using case study methodology. Results point to the importance of explicitly addressing the working alliance early in the work, exploration of affect in supervision, and cognizance of the power differential inherent in a training relationship.     

Socializing the newcomer: The mediating role of leader–member exchange

We expand organizational socialization research by integrating social exchange theory, specifically leader–member exchange (LMX), as an important mediator in explaining newcomer attachment to the job, occupation, and organization. Using temporally-lagged data from 213 newcomers across 12 telemarketing organizations, we found that newcomer perceptions of LMX mediate the association between supervisory socialization tactics (i.e. supervisory job-focused advice, guidance, and role modeling) and occupational identification as well as between supervisory socialization tactics and perceived person-organization fit – but not between supervisory socialization tactics and job satisfaction. Our study specifies (1) LMX as a compelling mediating mechanism within the new employee ‘on-boarding’ process and (2) the immediate supervisor as an important relational source for newcomer attitudes.     

Marital and family therapy supervision: A relational-attachment model

Drawing from attachment theory, this article presents a collaborative marriage and family therapy supervisory model which both advocates and demonstrates a relational and an educational construct for facilitating the supervisory process. Issues concerning cognition and anxiety management are addressed in the context of attachment theory and stages in the supervisory process are identified. Cognitive, emotional, and social development are linked to attachment theory and discussed in the context of supervision.     

Supervision and Analysis at a Crossroad: The Development of the Analytic Therapist: Discussion of Papers by Joan Sarnat and Emanuel Berman

This discussion of papers by Sarnat and Berman on psychoanalytic supervision explores the complex nature of the contemporary psychoanalytic supervisory relationship. It considers how developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice, reflecting relational, intersubjective, attachment, and field theory influences over the past 30 years, have changed the ways in which many analysts practice and theorize supervision. Contemporary supervisors attend not just to the patient being presented, or to the therapeutic dyad, but to the supervisory relationship itself as part of the clinical/supervisory frame of reference. Similarities and differences between therapy and supervision are considered.     

Promoting Relational Competencies in Counselor Education Through Creativity and Relational-Cultural Theory

Abstract

This article addresses the need to identify requisite relational competencies that professionals providing creative and innovative counseling services must hold when facilitating responsible, growth-fostering connections between service providers and others. This article also includes a discussion on how the relationally responsible use of power must be included in any forum that examines relational dynamics and competencies. Although subsequent writings will discuss creativity-related competencies in greater depth, the focus of this paper rests on some relational challenges that students and professionals in the counseling and related fields face and on the need to identify relational competencies that can facilitate successful resolution of these challenges.     

Overseeing the Overseer: Contextualizing Training in Supervision

In responding to the Ellis and Douce article (this issue), the author of this article attempts to explain how the trainer of a consultative group in supervision might distinguish among the three relational contexts to assist the supervisor in understanding the source of supervisory dilemmas and in turn devise strategies that might be directed to the appropriate context. Furthermore, she presents a larger context for discussing the elements of supervision and their interrelationship. The map is a heuristic tool for developing a common language for understanding and analyzing the supervisory situation.     

Using Relational‐Cultural Theory in LGBTQQ Counseling: Addressing Heterosexism and Enhancing Relational Competencies

The authors describe the use of a relational‐cultural theory (RCT) lens (Miller, 1976 ) in counseling practice with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQQ) clients. A review of LGBTQQ counseling and RCT literature is discussed. A case vignette of a counselor applying RCT tenets to work with a LGBTQQ client is described. Implications for using RCT as a counseling theoretical framework with LGBTQQ clients are reviewed.     

Relational Victimization and Rejection Sensitivity: The Long‐Term Impact of Social Hurt

The Rejection Sensitivity Model is used to examine the social antecedents to expectations of rejection among adults. College students (N= 314) completed measures of relational victimization and rejection sensitivity. Results indicate that relational victimization is significantly related to rejection sensitivity for women. Implications for counseling and research are offered.     

Candidates' evaluation of psychoanalytic supervision

The origins, methods, results, and discussions of a project undertaken by the advanced candidates at the Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis have been described. This project was designed to examine the supervisory process and to compile a consensual critique of individual supervisors from the candidate's point of view. We have included vignettes of supervisory experiences. It became our purpose to: (1) Develop a set of criteria by which the strengths and weaknesses of supervisors can be evaluated, (2) Involve the candidate in assessing his own learning needs, (3) Promote the objective assignment of supervisors, an assignment determined by the patient's problems, the candidate's learning needs, and the supervisor's varying capacities and abilities to effectively understand these problems and deal with these needs, (4) Expand the supervisory process to include what we felt were often unconscious or hiterto unacceptable issues, such as the function and use of countertransference, and the detection and open discussion of transference dilemmas between analyst and both patient and supervisor, (5) Stimulate dialogue at all levels of psychoanalytic education on the patient-analyst-supervisor relational system.     

Motivational Interviewing in the Reciprocal Engagement Model of Genetic Counseling: a Method Overview and Case Illustration

Motivational Interviewing is a well-described counseling method that has been applied to a broad range of health behavior encounters. Genetic counseling is an emerging area of utilization for the method of Motivational Interviewing. The relational and technical elements of the MI method are described within the context of genetic counseling encounters. Case excerpts will be used to illustrate incorporation of MI methods into the Reciprocal Engagement Model of the genetic counseling encounter.     

Sex-role flexibility,locus of control,and occupational status

The present study looked at the relationship between occupational status (supervisory vs. nonsupervisory positions) and locus of control and androgyny, and between locus of control and masculinity and femininity. On the whole, individuals employed in supervisory leadership positions were more androgynous and obtained more internal locus of control scores. Moreover, most women managers were androgynous, while male managers were either androgynous or masculine sex typed. Masculinity correlated positively with internal locus of control, but femininity in and of itself was not found to be relevant in predicting locus of control. Implications for vocational counseling for women as well as directions for future research are discussed.