a counselor and change: Reminiscences and Resolutions

Counselors are becoming more aware of the importance of working with large systems to bring about change that will influence individuals. Working as a school counselor, the author attempted to bring about change. His methods resulted in some dramatic occurrences and encouraged him to spend considerable time reflecting on his behavior and developing guidelines for wiser future action. In this article he relates some of his early experiences as a young school counselor and suggests guidelines for bringing about change.     

An Interview With Sunny Hansen: Pioneer and Innovator in Counseling and Career Development

During her 45‐year career, Sunny Hansen was a pioneer and innovator in counseling and career development. She has lived the holistic life about which she writes and teaches. In this interview, she discussed the major influences on her life, the evolution of her professional career from English and journalism teacher to counselor and counselor educator, and her teaching and scholarship. She also shared her insights on balancing life roles, holistic life planning, and the counselor as a change agent.     

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.     

Recommended Curricular Change and Persistence in College

Counselor judgment regarding the appropriateness of student curricular choice and the strength of counselor commitment to that judgment were related to student persistence in college. Students who failed to change curricula when the counselor felt such change was indicated remained at the University a fewer number of terms than any of the other groups studied. Sex of student and strength of counselor judgment regarding curricular choice were also significantly related to persistence, although strength of counselor judgment regarding curricula choice was best treated as moderating the relationship between student behavior in relation to counselor judgment and academic performance. Results were discussed in terms of objectives and procedures of counseling with respect to academic performance.     

Clients Changing Counselors: An Inspirational Journey

Clients are a major source of influence and serve as primary teachers in the process of counselor development (T. M. Skovholt & M. H. Ronnestad, 1992). This article examines the dynamic of how counselors change as a result of their experiences with clients. Two case studies are presented as examples of counselor change.     

Toward the Cutting Edge With Strategic Planning and Futuring Techniques

Directing an academic department and counselor training program in these times of rapid change can be a challenging experience and a golden opportunity. Practical guidelines for success using futuring and strategic planning in university departments with counselor training programs will be offered.     

Impact of Selected Ethical Information Resources on Counselor Educators' Decision‐Making Regarding Boundary Crossings

A random sample of 207 counselor educators used 4 ethical information resources in the context of 16 boundary‐crossing scenarios. Burian and Slimp's (2000) social dual‐role relationship model was the only resource to change counselor educators' boundary‐crossing decision‐making in a manner that could mitigate boundary‐crossing concerns with students. Curiously, almost 60% of counselor educators stated that they would not use Burian and Slimp's model in the future when this was the only ethical decision‐making resource that made a difference in boundary‐crossing decision‐making for counselor educators.     

Short-Term Pastoral Counseling and the Use of Reframing

The purpose of this article is to deal with the advantage of combining short-term counseling with reframing techniques. Short-term counseling states that a) focusing on only one problem, and b) agreeing on a fixed amount of sessions will make the counselee more eager to change before the amount of sessions are spent. The thesis of the paper is that those counselees that engage in short-term counseling will be more resistant to change than the criteria of short-term counseling suggests. Some counselees want to initiate a power struggle with the counselor about the impossibility of change. Rather than giving in to such a struggle, the counselor should use reframing techniques to make the counselee see the problem from a new perspective. Reframing techniques are more likely to make the counselee solve the problem.     

Identifying process variables in career counseling: A research agenda

Remarkably little is known about what underlying processes and mechanisms lead to effective change in career counseling. This article examines potential reasons why career counseling process research has been infrequently conducted and provides 10 avenues from psychotherapy process research, and the limited pool of existing career counseling process research, that hold promise for advancing a productive process-research agenda in career counseling. These 10 avenues include: (a) examining the working alliance and five promising counselor techniques; (b) reconceptualizing career counseling as a process of learning, and investigating the processes that lead to effective learning; (c) investigating differences in career counseling process and outcome due to subtype membership, cultural perspectives, and other critical client attributes; (d) investigating differences in career counseling process and outcome based on counselors’ levels of self-efficacy, cultural perspectives, and other critical counselor attributes; (e) examining influential session events; (f) utilizing a common problem resolution metric for examining change across clients; (g) examining client change longitudinally to examine stability of change and functional practicality of assessed outcomes; (h) examining cognitive processes that may be mediating the career counseling process; (i) developing molecular and global taxonomies of counselor behaviors; and (j) utilizing advances in methodological approaches and statistical analyses.     

Client Quest—A Key to Counseling

The expression quest is proposed to represent any unifying theme of client purposes. Counseling is then defined as an interview in which client quest is superordinate to counselor quest. It is suggested that client quests be classified by their direction. Thus, quests may be for understanding or change, and, at a higher level, for mastering self or environment. The identification, clarification, and management of client quests becomes central to effective counseling. Ideally, as an expert in human learning and development, the counselor is a hypothesis maker who works with his client to facilitate conquest. Dissonance is said to occur when the purposive balance is inappropriate to counselor or client quests. The congruent counselor reduces dissonance by discussing changes in the purposive balance openly with the client and by avoiding professional roles in which client quests are subordinated.     

Advancing access to Medicare-funded mental health treatment during the opioid epidemic: A counselor advocacy analysis

Although advocacy is a priority for counseling professionals, little is known about counseling advocates’ participation in the legislative advocacy process. Recent legislation to address the opioid crisis allowed counseling advocates to provide public comments to advance counselor inclusion in the Medicare program. A thematic analysis of 548 public comments provided on behalf of the counseling profession yielded four categories: advocacy on behalf of (1) the proposed rule change; (2) broader Medicare inclusion; (3) the proposed rule change with an additional request for broader Medicare reimbursement; and (4) no clear advocacy. Subthemes included increasing access to care, qualifications necessary to provide care, and the urgency of the opioid epidemic, among others. Implications for the counseling profession and counselor advocacy are discussed.     

Counseling Competence and Perceptions

A motion picture test of counselor perceptions of counseling interview segments was developed in order to analyze change in trainee perceptions during a practicum, and to explore the relationship between counselor perceptions of others and counseling competence. Cross-validation results from a group of 30 NDEA Counseling and Guidance Institute trainees demonstrated a significant relationship between post-practicum counseling competence and both pre-practicum and post-practicum test scores. The test appears to be relatively independent of other commonly used selection criteria.     

Transference,Insight, and the Counselor's Intentions During a Counseling Hour

The interactive effects of transference and client insight on session quality, and the relationship between transference and counselor intentions, were studied within the context of a single counseling session. Thirty-eight experienced counselors audiotaped one counseling session and rated their intentions for each intervention. Counselors also rated transference, insight, and session quality. As hypothesized, when transference was high, client insight was positively related to session quality. Furthermore, negative transference was related to several counselor intentions. Negative transference may signal counselors to focus on the relationship and underlying client issues, and to avoid structuring and directing behavior change.     

Development and Disequilibration: Predicting Counselor Trainee Gain and Loss Scores on the Supervisee Levels Questionnaire

Relative importance of adult cognitive development (according to Perry), education, and experience in predicting longitudinal gain and loss scores on a measure of counselor supervisee development (Supervisee Levels Questionnaire) was examined. Results indicated cognitive & #x2013;developmental stage predicted score change better than age, education, or experience. In addition, an unanticipated, discontinuous, patterned relationship between student cognitive stage and the gain/loss scores was discovered. The possibility of developmental disequilibration is discussed along with implications for counselor education and adult development theory.     

The Counselor and the Curriculum

The counselor is involved in the curriculum structure of high school because of the amount of time he spends in educational planning with students. His record of participation in curriculum change has been poor. Educational counseling has consisted of adjusting the student to the curriculum that exists, rather than working for curriculum change that can benefit all levels of students. Curriculum resources should be thought of in a broad sense of not only formal courses and units but also extracurricular activities both in and out of school. The counselor is stationed at the crossroads of student and community needs. What is he doing to help integrate these needs through continual curriculum revision?     

Student protest and the counselor

The problem of student protests provides a challenge to counselors because it indicates, among other things, that guidance has been ineffective. Five trends in student attitudes are described that seem to underlie widespread student unrest against the establishment. Then the role of youth in present-day social change is defined and related to activism, and suggestions are made for counselors interest***ed in channeling student protests into educational improvements. Finally, a more aggressive and active stance by the counselor is called for as part of a revamping of the priorities governing counselor activities.     

A Performance-Based Admissions Screening Program

The development of a competency-based admissions program for counselor education majors at James Madison University was begun in 1974. This program evolved as a result of dissatisfaction with traditional criteria used for selection of applicants to counselor training programs. The development progressed from a reference checklist to eventually include a career-goal essay, personality testing, and a required on-campus interview. Continued revision, including quantification of the various portions of the screening process, has led to its present state. Further refinement and change continue as additional research is completed.     

心理治疗关系之作用机制研究述评

综述心理治疗理论中有关治疗关系之治疗机制的理论观点。发现主要存在三种不同的观点。其中社会影响观点认为治疗关系的作用在增强治疗者在当事人心中的可信性,从而强化了治疗者的说服性信息对当事人态度改变的影响力;心理动力学观点主张移情性治疗关系使得当事人早期的依附情况及当事人的内部工作模型得以在治疗中显现,从而为分析治疗提供依据并指示方向;当事人中心观点则认为良好的治疗关系降低了当事人的防卫性,从而使得当事人的感受和体验可以无障碍地进入意识,进而促进了当事人的一致性。作者提出这个领域今后的研究应该考虑以“跨理论”的角度,加强理论模型的提炼和实际检验     

Rethinking Change in Counseling

The idea of change is one of the most fundamental concepts underlying practice in counseling and guidance. Yet the complexity of change, as it applies to people, is seldom examined in detail by the counseling practitioner. The author discusses the concept of change through its definition and looks at different forms of change, different change tempos, and the value of change for people. He concludes with a change position that attempts to identify the counselor not only as a change agent but also as a preservationist.