Prevalence of Counselor Self-Reference in the Therapeutic Dyad

Ninety-one male and female counselors completed a survey assessing the frequency of their use of self-referent statements (positive and negative self-disclosure and positive and negative self-involving responses) in individual counseling. As the researchers hypothesized, counselors reported using a significantly greater frequency of positive versus negative self-reference. Contrary to hypotheses, there were no significant differences due to either counselor gender or level of counseling experience alone. There was, however, an interaction for males such that as experience increased, self-reference decreased. Implications for training and research are discussed.     

Does Receiving Genetic Counseling Impact Genetic Counselor Practice?

This study was an investigation of whether genetic counselors have received genetic counseling and if so, how they believe it affects their practice. One thousand genetic counselors were mailed surveys about the nature of genetic counseling services received, impact on their clinical practice, frequency and reasons for disclosing about their receipt of counseling to their clients, and demographics. Ninety-three of the 510 respondents reported receiving genetic counseling. Of these, almost three-fourths were practicing genetic counselors while receiving services. Reasons for services include prenatal concerns, family history of cancer, and history/risk of other genetic conditions. Frequently endorsed effects on practice include increased empathy and understanding of client decisions, feeling more connected with clients, greater emphasis on psychosocial support, and sympathy. Forty-six respondents disclosed to clients about their receipt of genetic counseling. Prevalent reasons include client asked, help clients feel they are not alone, demonstrate counselor understanding, decrease client anxiety, build rapport, and normalize client feelings. Practice and research recommendations are given.     

Client Cognitive Responses as a Function of Quality of Counselor Verbal Responses

This study examined the relationship between high and low quality counselor responses in four response modes and client cognitions. Twenty-one university students participated in two sessions of brief counseling that included high and low quality counselor responses in paraphrasing, questioning, reflection of feeling, and self-disclosure. After each counseling session, participants used Kagan's (1975) interpersonal process recall method to report their cognitions in response to these counselor responses. Results indicated that the participants had more favorable cognitions toward the counselor associated with high quality counselor paraphrasing and reflection of feeling responses. Participants' cognitions directed toward themselves did not differ in response to any of the four high and low quality counselor responses. Implications of the results are discussed.     

When the Topic is You: Genetic Counselor Responses to Prenatal Patients’ Requests for Self-Disclosure

A limited amount of research indicates patient requests play a major role in genetic counselors’ self-disclosure decisions and that disclosure and non-disclosure responses to patient requests may differentially affect genetic counseling processes. Studies further suggest patient requests may be more common in prenatal settings, particularly when counselors are pregnant. Empirical evidence is limited however, concerning the nature of patient requests. This study explored genetic counselors’ experiences of prenatal patients’ requests for self-disclosure. Four major research questions were: (1) What types of questions do prenatal patients ask that invite self-disclosure?; (2) Do pregnant genetic counselors have unique experiences with prenatal patient disclosure requests?; (3) How do genetic counselors typically respond to disclosure requests?; and (4) What strategies are effective and ineffective in responding to disclosure requests? One hundred seventy-six genetic counselors completed an online survey and 40 also participated in telephone interviews. Inductive analysis of 21 interviews revealed patient questions vary, although questions about counselor demographics are most common, and patients are more likely to ask pregnant counselors questions about their personal pregnancy decisions. Participants reported greater discomfort with self-disclosure requests during pregnancy, yet also disclosing more frequently during pregnancy. Counselor responses included personal self-disclosure, professional self-disclosure, redirection, and declining to disclose. Factors perceived as influencing disclosure included: topic, patient motivations, timing of request, quality of counseling relationship, patient characteristics, and ethical/legal responsibilities. Disclosure practices changed over time for most counselors. Additional findings, practice implications, and research recommendations are discussed.     

The Self of the Counselor

The counselor generally finds more difficulty in examining his “self” than in looking at the self of other counselors or of clients. On the assumption that the best display of counselor self occurs during the counseling relationship, a number of counseling excerpts are examined in an attempt to illustrate the level of counselor freedom. Counselor freedom is viewed as being related to the ability of the counselor to establish an empathic relationship with the client, to his ability to operate within the client's frame of reference, and to his ability to be genuine and honest in his relationship with the client.     

An Exploratory Study of Counselor Judgments in Multicultural Research

Archival data were used to explore intake judgments made by 45 counselors about 344 African-American and White clients seen at a counseling center during a 2-year period. Counselor gender was significantly associated with ratings of client severity of current condition. Neither ethnicity nor counselor experience were predictive of intake judgments.     

Multicultural Counseling and Intrapersonal Value Conflict: A Case Study

The internal conflict between professional and personal values that counselors can experience when working with clients whose culture and values are different from their own is discussed. This is not a conflict between the counselor and the client, but is a conflict experienced within the counselor who is attempting to help resolve problems within the client's frame of reference, or worldview. A case study is presented that illustrates the senior author's experience in coping with a specific value conflict. It is suggested that as counselors become more proficient in multicultural counseling and more able to promote decision making from another's point of view, feelings of internal conflicts will decrease. Means of decreasing the likelihood of value conflicts are offered.     

Counselor Bilingual Ability,Counselor Ethnicity,Acculturation, and Mexican Americans' Perceived Counselor Credibility

This study examined the effects of counselor bilingual ability and counselor ethnicity on client‐perceived counselor credibility and cultural competence. Participants were assigned to 1 of 4 treatment conditions created by crossing counselor ethnicity with counselor language. No significant differences were found. Regarding rank ordering of the conditions, the European American bilingual counselor was perceived to be more culturally competent than were the Mexican American bilingual counselors. Findings underscore the importance of bilingualism for European American counselors when working with bilingual Mexican American clients.     

Metaphor as an Instrument for Orchestrating Change in Counselor Training and the Counseling Process

The authors explore the use of metaphors as a training tool for beginning counselors for enhancing client case conceptualization, counselor‐client relationships, and intervention strategies. The history of the use of metaphors in counseling, several definitions, and a case study are presented. The authors discuss intentional use of metaphors with students in training and with clients. How to introduce the use of metaphors into counselor training and practice is also included.     

Addressing Privilege and Oppression in Counselor Training and Practice: A Qualitative Analysis

This qualitative study explored how 16 counselors conceptualize and address issues of privilege and oppression in the counseling session as well as how they perceive their training with respect to these constructs. In an effort to bridge multicultural training and counselor practice, implications for counselor training are provided based on the clinical and academic experiences counselors reported. Additionally, future research directions are included.     

The Inclusion of Spiritual Process in Counseling and Perceived Counselor Effectiveness

In this study, client level of spirituality was examined as a potential moderater for the effectiveness of including spiritual process in the counseling process. Using an analogue design, participants were crossed on self‐reported level of spirituality and randomly assigned to 1 of 2 analogue conditions. Results suggested that a spiritual intervention was perceived similarly to a cognitive‐behavioral intervention for all respondents. Those respondents who self‐reported higher levels of spirituality rated the counselor on the analogue as more expert and more trustworthy, regardless of which of the 2 analogue conditions they evaluated. Implications for counselors are provided.     

Counselor and client personality as determinants of counselor expectancy effects

Seventy-eight students enrolled in summer-session college courses were randomly assigned to serve either as counselors or as clients for a 20-min, role-played peer counseling session. All of the subjects completed a battery of standardized personality measures. Each counselor interacted with two clients. Prior to the sessions, the counselor was led to believe that one of the clients was especially introverted and that the other client was especially extraverted. Dependent measures were based on clients' change scores on a mood adjective rating scale administered before and after the peer counseling sessions. Analyses showed that counselors who were more successful at biasing their clients in the direction of their expectancies (a) scored higher on measures of Dogmatism, Nurturance, and Social Recognition, (b) scored lower on Impulsivity, and (c) were more likely to be women. Clients who were more susceptible to counselor bias scored higher on the Self-Monitoring Scale, the Self-Monitoring Other-Directedness subscale, and Social Recognition. These results are discussed in light of previous research and their implications for research on interpersonal expectancy effects.     

Parental Involvement in School Counseling Services: Challenges and Experience of Counselor

School counselors include parents as informants in school counseling for various reasons like for consultation and client’s intervention which could lead to a different experience. The objective of the present study was to explore the challenges faced by school counselors when involving parents in the school counseling process and the ways they handle the challenges. The participants consisted of seven school counselors, with whom in-depth interviews were conducted. The subjective experiences of the school counselors were objectively interpreted by the researcher using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The research results were categorized into master and subordinate themes using double hermeneutics. The results revealed that although school counselors have their own individual perceptions of challenges and methods of handling parental inclusion in the school counseling context, there still exist similarities in their methods of handling. The study highlights school counselors’ beliefs about parents’ perceptions and expectations of counseling as well as parents’ reaction toward their child’s problem as a challenge. The findings throw light on the need for stronger evidence-based practices and policies for school counseling programs. Training and competence-building programs for school counselors would improve the service delivery.     

Counselor Ethnicity,Counselor Nonverbal Behavior,and Session Outcome With Asian American Clients: Initial Findings

Five Asian American and 5 European American female counselors each saw 3 Asian American volunteer clients for 1 session of career‐focused individual counseling. Examination of counselor nonverbal behaviors revealed that European American counselors displayed significantly greater frequency of adaptors, postural shifts, and smiles than did Asian American counselors. The frequency of smiles was significantly positively correlated with client‐rated session positivity and session arousal, and the frequency of postural shifts was significantly positively correlated with client‐rated session arousal. Limitations and implications of the findings are described.     

Why Are Self-Disclosing Counselors Attractive?

Despite much evidence that counselor self-disclosure tends to be favorably received by clients, it is unclear which component is more influential: the act of revealing personal information or the information itself, especially when it implies client-counselor similarity. Based on the social influence model, we contrasted, in a quasicounseling analogue, (a) counselors who disclosed personal material that was similar to the client's problem, (b) counselors who disclosed problematic but irrelevant information, (c) counselors who disclosed nothing, and (d) counselors whose similarity to the client was revealed by someone else. Results show no differential effects on participants' perceptions of the counselor, but postresearch structured interviews indicated that both the disclosures and the similarity information had a considerable impact on participants' experience as clients during the counseling session.     

The counselor perspective on the use of directives in counseling in China: Are directives different in China as in the United States?

Eight Chinese counselors were interviewed about their use of directives in counseling. They typically believed that directives can be beneficial in counseling Chinese clients. They used directives to extend the influence of counseling beyond sessions, meet client needs and expectations, and fit their own personality and orientation. In terms of conditions that need to be met for directives to be helpful, they identified client factors such as readiness, communication styles, past experience, and insight; the counselor factor of ability to communicate directives; and the therapeutic relationship. They emphasized the importance of clients acquiring a new perspective as a result of directives. Cultural factors in using directives are discussed.     

The Effect of Client Demeanor Upon the Verbal Responses of School Counselors

In a study of counselor verbal behavior as a function of client stimulus input, a counseling paradigm was employed using 4 client-actors and 30 counselors. Independent variables were hostile or friendly client behavior, amount of counseling experience, counselor sex and client sex. The dependent variable of counselor verbal behavior was measured by a revision of the Bales Interaction Process Analysis Categories. Analysis of variance led to the finding that all of the independent variables had a statistically significant effect upon the counselors' verbal responses, but the number of response categories affected varied from 1 to 7 depending on the variable involved. Significant interaction effects were also found. From the data, it was concluded that client demeanor and client sex significantly influenced counselors' verbal responses, but counselor experience and counselor sex were relatively unimportant in their effect upon the counselors' behavior.     

Effects of Supervisor Style and Empathy on Counselor Perceptions in Simulated Counseling

Effects of supervisor style (techniques type and counseling type) and supervisor empathy upon counselor perceptions in a supervision analogue were examined. Three groups of 14 students heard two sets of recorded client statements and responded as counselors. The two experimental (E) groups had 20-minute conferences with supervisors between the first and second sets. Controls (C) received no supervision. Counselor perceptions were measured by questionnaire responses. Although subjects supervised by an emphasis on techniques rated themselves less relaxed and less confident about the meaning of empathy than those with an emphasis on counseling, their performance on the criterion of empathy was higher. Both E groups perceived themselves as higher than C's in amount learned, but they were no higher on the performance measure. No differences were found for reactions to supervision (items given E's only) or reactions to participation in the experiment. Empathy of supervisors did not appreciably affect counselor perceptions.     

Client as counselor: self-regulation strategies

Recent research in counseling suggests the efficacy of teaching the clients to be their own counselors through the use of self-regulation procedures. This article explores three primary steps involved in helping clients to control their own behavior change: self-observation, self-monitoring, and self-regulation strategies. Self-regulation provides an affirmative answer to the question: “Is the client a counselor?” by promoting client responsibility and independence in the counseling process.     

“Meeting Someone at the Edge”: Counselors’ Experiences of Interpersonal Stress

Using consensual qualitative research, the authors explored the factors that contribute to counselors’ experiences of interpersonal stress and how counselors respond to interpersonal stressors within therapeutic settings. Thirteen professional counselors representing a variety of counseling contexts and settings participated in semistructured interviews. Through consensus building, the authors identified 4 domains within the data: client characteristics, relationship dynamics, counselor response, and personal vs. professional self. The findings suggest that client characteristics and relationship dynamics are catalysts to counselor interpersonal stress responses, which shape their conscious awareness of the experience. Implications for clinical practice, clinical supervision, and counselor wellness are discussed.