Dual Relationships and Pastoral Counseling: Asset or Liability?

Dual relationships are proscribed in the standards of ethical conduct for most professional groups that provide counseling or psychotherapy. Dual relationships are thought to be unethical because they cloud the clinical judgment of the counselor and may present conflicts of interest that prevent the counseling relationship from being beneficial. Pastors frequently provide counseling for troubled persons or families, yet they often maintain other roles and relationships with these persons and families. This article addresses the issue of the inevitability of dual relationships in pastoral counseling. Courses of action for handling dual relationships in pastoral counseling are identified.     

Editorial synthesis for counseling psychology and relationship science: Making connections and expanding disciplinary diversity

The field of relationship science began with understanding the role of attraction and has expanded to examine factors associated with relationship initiation, development, and maintenance. Despite the growth of the field, recent reviews of topics present in relationship science have revealed a dearth of literature examining sociocultural contexts that may impact relational processing, especially for traditionally underrepresented groups in science. Notably, given the theories, frameworks, and methods applied in these disciplines, counseling psychology and relationship science are at the forefront of examining such contexts. To this end, the goal of the special issue was to bring together scholars whose work is either an application of or showcases how the contemporary foci of counseling psychology, including but not limited to intersectionality, social justice, cultural competence/humility, identity, strengths-based approaches, and social power hierarchies are applicable to the study of relationships broadly defined. This editorial synthesis provides a brief summary of the four articles that are included in this special issue and ends with recommendations for future research that intersects counseling psychology and relationship science.     

Cognitive Processes in Close Relationships: Recent Findings and Implications for Counseling

Coinciding with the recent growth of professional interest in relationship counseling has been the emergence of important research on the cognitive processes of persons in close relationships. In this article the author reviews selected findings from this literature, which illuminate the attributional, self-evaluation, and self-verification processes of participants in close relationships, and discusses their implications for the counseling of distressed couples.     

高校心理咨询师多重关系情境与决策类型的研究

为探索高校咨询师面临的多重关系伦理情境、决策过程,对访谈17名高校心理咨询师的资料进行分析。结果：常见情境主要包括接送礼物承载的新关系、来访者和咨询师除咨询关系外的师生关系、咨询师与和来访者有关的第三人有关系、咨询师在咨询室之外的场所偶遇来访者、来访者有咨询师的联系方式、来访者和咨询师有身体接触等。决策表现为两种：经验主导型,决策时未意识到处于伦理情境只凭经验决策;伦理主导型,决策时意识到处在伦理情境。结论：高校心理咨询存在一些特殊多重关系,心理咨询师需增加具有伦理意识的决策。     

Counseling Regulations Regarding Sexual Misconduct: A Comparison Across States

Sexual relationships with clients, former clients, and supervisees are some of the most powerful and difficult clinical issues for counselors. These issues force counselors to examine the heart of the therapeutic process: the counseling relationship. The purpose of this study was to gather and analyze different approaches used by state counseling boards to deal with sexual relationships in counseling and supervision. This information affords counselors and state licensure board members a broader view of options and issues involved in this difficult area of ethical decision making.     

Gender and Infertility: A Relational Approach to Counseling Women

Much of the research on infertility reinforces differing effects for women and men, with women reporting more serious repercussions medically, psychologically, and socially. However, the unique counseling needs of infertile women have not been addressed through traditional counseling theory. The Relational Model (J. V. Jordan, 1995) of women's development is a theory that explains women's development in a context of relationships, specifically relationships that promote growth for self and others. This model is applied to counseling women who are experiencing infertility, and a case presentation is provided to illustrate the approach.     

Individualistic and Collective Approaches to Counseling: Preference,Personal Orientation,Gender, and Age

This study examined preference for an individualistic or collective approach to counseling and the relationship of preference to (a) personal orientation to individualism-collectivism, (b) gender, and (c) age. Sixty-six female and 47 male participants completed an individualism-collectivism scale and a counseling approach preference measure. Results indicated situation-specific preferences for a collective or individualistic counseling approach, no relationship between personal orientation to individualism-collectivism and preference for a comparable counseling approach, and inconsistent, perhaps situation-specific, relationships of gender and age to counseling approach. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

African-American Women and the Male-Female Relationship Dilemma: A Counseling Perspective

This article focuses on the historical origin of the African-American male-female relationship dilemma and contemporary forces that have an impact on opportunities for intimacy and marriage among African-American women. Specifically, loss, communication, and stereotypes are examined as counseling issues that are relevant to African-American women in relationships. Implications for counseling and research are also discussed.     

Core considerations in the process of evaluation for pastoral counseling

Conclusion We have been pointing to an essential fact of evaluation in pastoral counseling: the goal of the evaluation process is a decision regarding (a) the applicability of formal counseling in a given situation, (b) the readiness of the person to assume such a role and (c) the readiness of the pastoral counselor to offer a counseling relationship. As we have indicated, intellectual understanding and empathy are not enough if they stop short of answering the questions: what does this person want? and, can I offer it to him? In diligently pursuing the answers to these questions the pastoral counselor will not only fulfill his professional responsibility to meet the true needs of the person (s) seeking help but will in the long run enable himself to establish more fruitful and therefore satisfying counseling relationships with those whom he is called to serve.     

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.     

A Proposal for Researching Possible Relationships Between Scientific Theories and the Personal Theories of Counselors and Clients

Current views from the philosophy of science encourage speculation about the relationship between the personal commitments of scientists and scientific theories. Increasing numbers of psychologists also have speculated about relationships between the development of personal and scientific theories. The author describes several assumptions that link scientific and personal theorizing. A research program is outlined that might refine and test such assumptions in the context of counseling. The overall goal of the article is to argue that research into the scientific and personal theories of researchers of counseling and the personal theories of counselors and clients may answer long-standing questions about the relationship between scientific and practical knowledge in counseling. Scientists are people. (Source unknown)     

Counselors' Conceptualizations of Caring in the Counseling Relationship

Caring is a concept that has been studied in numerous helping professions but has yet to be researched from a counseling perspective. In this qualitative research study, 13 master's‐level counseling interns were interviewed to better understand their perceptions of caring in the counseling relationship. Results suggest that these interns perceive that supporting desired outcomes, a personal capacity for caring, maintaining therapeutic conditions, mutuality in the counseling relationship, and a dynamic flow of communication are important attributes of the counseling relationship when caring is present The findings suggest further research that explores the concept of caring in the counseling relationship may be warranted.     

Out-thinking about Not-words

Our key counseling words are ambiguous and misleading. There are a number of possible meanings that could be supplied for each. The words do not have identifiable agreed-upon relationships to significant events in real life. The result is miscommunication and misunderstanding. The negative effects on counseling research and training are discussed. The points are illustrated by reference to “counseling.” Words should clearly symbolize or describe identifiable events in real life. Writers should try to use words the reality of which can be verified. Readers need to stay reality-oriented instead of word-oriented, especially when the relationship between words and reality is unclear.     

Future Colleague or Convenient Friend: The Ethics of Mentorship

Student mentoring is a common and often encouraged practice within graduate psychology and counseling programs. Although both mentors and protégés typically report multiple benefits from the practice, the mentoring relationship is also subject to a variety of ethical issues. The author presents a brief overview of professional literature regarding mentoring relationships, including key features and stages of development of these relationships, and then addresses potential ethical concerns. Guidelines and implications for ethical mentoring practice are also presented to encourage more specific attention to this vital component of counselor training.     

Does psychopathology predict counseling duration?

Many university counseling centers have adopted case management policies in an effort to conserve limited resources. Fearing that students with more severe problems will consume too many clinical resources, many counseling centers have decided to refer such students to external agencies or providers for mental health services. However, this fear might be unwarranted because empirical research has not shown a substantial relationship between psychopathology and counseling duration. This investigation examined whether a new treatment-planning inventory, the Butcher Treatment Planning Inventory, might be useful for better understanding the relationships between various problem areas and counseling duration. Participants were new clients (students and staff members) at a university counseling center in the southeastern USA. Professional staff members and graduate students in counselor education, clinical psychology, and clinical social work provided counseling services to the participants. Lower scores on several scales predicted counseling duration. In other words, clients with lower scores on these scales (representing less psychopathology) attended more counseling sessions than clients with greater psychopathology. Therapists' background also predicted counseling duration; clients who worked with either a professional staff member or graduate student in counselor education attended more sessions than clients who worked with a graduate student in clinical psychology. The results of this study, combined with previous research, suggest that measures of psychopathology are not very useful for identifying which clients will complete long-term counseling. Until better information becomes available, actuarial tables remain the most efficient means for predicting counseling duration.     

Emerging Practices of Counseling and Psychotherapy in China: Ethical Dilemmas in Dual Relationships

A qualitative study was conducted with 48 Chinese counselors and psychotherapists who were interviewed in 2006 and an independent sample of 50 participants who responded to a survey in 2014. This study aims to explore how the new emerging expansion of mental health practice is related to issues and challenges of dual role relationship and how the well-engrained values and social characteristics of Chinese culture influences perceptions and resolution of ethical dilemmas. The participants identified similar dual relationships in 2006 and 2014: (a) Incidental boundary crossings, a sexual or romantic relationship, a dual social relationship, and a professional dual relationship were the most frequently reported types of dual relationships encountered by Chinese practitioners, and (b) the socioeconomic and cultural context and the development trajectory of counseling and psychotherapy in China play a significant role in shaping practitioners’ behaviors. The comparison of the data in 2006 and 2014 indicated that practitioners in psychotherapy and counseling have an improved awareness and understanding of ethical issues, evidenced by the decreasing cases of romantic and sexual relationships and increasing cases of social dual relationships influenced by the interrelatedness of traditional Chinese culture.     

Mattering to Others: Implications for the Counseling Relationship

Although first conceived in the 1980s, mattering to others has only recently earned well‐deserved attention in social science research and literature. Subsequently, it seems that mattering may serve as a powerful dynamic in strengthening counseling relationships. This article reviews the empirical validation study of mattering recently conducted by G. C. Elliott, S. Kao, and A. M. Grant (2004), which was published in the journal Self and Identity. Implications for counselors, the counseling relationship, and counseling research are considered.     

心理咨询过程-效果研究现状及展望

心理咨询过程-效果研究考察咨询过程变量对咨询效果的影响。以人为中心流派、认知流派、行为流派、精神分析流派等都为该研究领域提供了理论基础。主要研究内容有咨询师的反应方式、会谈中的当事人行为、工作同盟、会谈中的重要内容等过程变量与效果的关系。该领域积累的成果还不多,这可能与过程-效果关系本身的复杂性有关,同时研究方法尚有许多欠缺,如考察复杂关系时使用的研究设计过于简单、测量工具不统一导致结果难以比较,有些测量工具不成熟信效度不高。未来的研究除了努力克服这些问题外,还应多考虑理论构建、内隐变量的调节和中介作用、当事人变量,在研究方法上应更为综合和多样化     

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.     

Using Hope in the Counseling Process

This article presents a framework for the development of hope in the counseling relationship. Although hope has often been viewed as an impediment to growth, the authors believe that realistic hope is an effective tool in a counseling relationship. The authors also examine the role of the counselor in the formulation of hope.