Counselor Roles and Relationships

Counselor Roles and Relationships

1. Empathy is viewed as an essential aspect of the counseling relationship. Discuss the difference between primary and advanced accurate empathy. What barriers exist to the development of empathy? How might these barriers be overcome?

The purpose of the counseling interview is to help a client or patient with a problem he or she is experiencing or a problem the referring agency defines. This is known as the presenting problem. The counselor must be in control of the interview and respond to the client in a professional way that is different from that of friends and neighbors. The rhythm and cadence of the interview requires that the counselor allow the client to lead, focus on his or her feelings, be open and honest in response to the client, and be reflective so that the client learns that this is his or her problem. Basic to the counseling process is that the client must learn to trust the counselor so that he or she will be open to seeing the problem differently and dealing with it more effectively. The variety of methods and techniques the counselor uses to achieve this end are described in detail in this article (Bartz, 2010, pp.1426-1428).

Campbell (1976) expresses the following in relation to consciousness and problems: We cannot think except in terms of problems. It is the growth of the conscious mind that we must thank of the existence of problems. Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature while consciousness surrounds itself with cultures and progress and confusion. This is no doubt in nature only in consciousness.

The essence of counseling can be found in a single term, empathy. The capacity by which one human being may gain an understanding of the inner feeling world of another is neither by happenstance or magic. The counseling relationship requires the utilization of a specialized domain of awareness in the same sense that for two persons to converse regarding history or mathematics, similar functions must simultaneously transpire within each of the participants. It is the rational function of feeling by which the concept of meaning is addressed within the individual and in society (Carr, 2010, pp.1411-1416).

Feeling is the function whereby people arrange the content of consciousness according to their values. People who live their lives according to the feeling function tend to be sensitive to what most to others, develop a need for affiliation, and a desire for the preservation of past values. In an effort to address the need for the compensation of thinking with the rational function of feeling, the development of counselors and counseling are those specialized individuals charged with the task of balancing thinking with feeling.

Early in the interviewing process, it is important to set goals for counseling and to discuss the means that will be used to achieve these ends. Agreement is reached with the client that must reflect both an understanding of the problem by the client and counselor and a way of dealing with the problem ...