Page 176 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Guidance and Counseling

Notes The foregoing account will have indicated the importance of reflection as a counseling technique.
However, nothing has been said regarding the effectiveness or the conditions which affect the
effectiveness of reflection. First of all, it needs to be understood that reflection helps the individual
(client) to feel understood. People often experience this feeling of being misunderstood and yearn
for proper understanding. Through reflection, the feeling of being misunderstood is dispelled. The
effectiveness of reflection consists in not being misunderstood. Reflection helps to break the neurotic
cycle which is commonly experienced by clients. This is expressed in statements, such as “he will
not understand me and, therefore, there is no purpose in trying to understand him”. This vicious
cycle of reasoning is broken by the reflection technique. It was explained that the reflection of
feeling helps in self-understanding. The effectiveness of reflection consists in helping the client
understand that feelings determine his behaviour. Reflection, therefore, has a clarifying or simplifying
function. It helps the client to evaluate his feelings when once he is able to appreciate their significance
in contributing to self-understanding. This logically leads to the power of choice that reflection
gives the client. Reflection on several of his feelings will help him in knowing the significance of
each one of them. Thus the client is able to choose what would best serve his purpose. Finally,
reflection helps clarify a client’s motives. Often clients are tempted to say, “I feel” or “I feel like”.
Seldom does he say, “I feel like this because”. This power of reasoning leads to the core (underlying)
motive or experience.

Acceptance
The second relationship technique is acceptance. Rogers (1951) places great Importance on the
unconditional acceptance of the client by the counselor. The other approaches of counseling have
not made this one of the basic issues. Acceptance is based on the belief that the client has dignity
and worth. It is also based on such important assumptions as the right to make decisions and to be
responsible for one’s own actions and hence for one’s life.
Acceptance provides the necessary psychological climate for the counseling interview. It helps the
clients get involved in the counseling process and thus minimizes the possibility of the adoption of
defensive attitudes through rationalizations, denials, explanations, etc.
Acceptance implies neither approval nor a patronizing attitude. The client should not be under the
misconception that his expressions will be approved or disapproved by the counselor depending on
whether he is accepted or not. Again, acceptance is not a neutral attitude. It is positive in its response.
Acceptance is not to sympathize with the client or tolerate him. The counselor has to communicate
to the client the sense or feeling of acceptance, such that he experiences the warmth and friendliness
of the situation. Brammer and Shostrom (1968) state that there are three major observable elements
through which acceptance can be expressed by the counselor : (1) facial expression conveying the
genuine interest of the counselor, (2) tone of voice and its inflections, and (3) distance and posture
of the counselor. Actions, such as yawning, frequent movement of the hands and legs, changes in
the posture and other similar cues have negative significance and communicate lack of acceptance.
Special Relationship Problems
While the counselor may use and apply his chosen technique with all the wisdom and skill at his
command, it is often found that certain psychological phenomena aid or limit his efforts. More often
than not, counselors are baffled when they encounter such situations which usually hinder the
process of counseling. The phenomena, namely, transference, counter-transference and resistance
have been identified as special relationship problems. The phenomena have been recognized to be
of central importance in the psycho-analytic technique. It is recognized that counseling cannot ignore
the special relationship problems and they are considered to be as valid to counseling as they are to
psychoanalysis.
In psychoanalytical thinking, transference is a process by which the client’s attitudes, formerly
expressed towards one person (usually the parent of the opposite sex), are transferred or projected
to the counselor. Transference, for the existential therapists, does not mean the same as it does for

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