Counselling in the Light of the Christian Gospel (3)

(*Acknowledgement below.)

A way of understanding the bond between counsellee and counsellor which I believe is fruitful is by using the notion of the caregiver-child attachment style.

According to attachment therapy, a therapy deriving from the work of John Bowlby, that style established in the family influences other important relationships as the child grows up.

More especially these styles or patterns of relating affect our adult relationships for weal or woe.

Attachment relationship styles have been classed as 'secure', 'anxious–preoccupied', 'dismissive–avoidant', and 'fearful–avoidant'. These attachment styles develop between between care-givers and children for a number of reasons. Temperament of child and caregiver will be at least one factor but others include past history of mother and physical health of mother and child.

What I find interesting is that these styles will emerge in relationships with God and also in relationships with counsellors. (Of course, they show up in romantic relationships so knowledge about these styles can be invaluable in suggesting possible ways to go in counselling married and unmarried couples.)

Importantly, we need to keep mind that God, the Lover of our souls continuously seeks our companionship through His Son the Lord Jesus, inviting us to believe 'into' Him. That's right! Not just to believe 'in' Him but to believe into Him which expresses more eloquently the full commitment that is asked of all Christ-followers.

No theory of relationship of relationship can adequately portray the full essence of relationship. (Theories are limited to generalisations about samples and don't have the ability to describe any specific relationship.) However, relationships are a vital factor in all counselling and various ways of describing and studying them deepens our knowledge of what counselling involves.

(*With kind acknowledgement for the graphic above to http://4.bp.blogspot.com/ )

Counselling in the Light of the Christian Gospel (2)

• A Rogerian Model for Counselling Others

According to Carl Rogers (1902-1987), the father of the 20th century counselling movement, counsellors should ensure that they provide the basic quality conditions of empathy, respect (towards counsellees) and 'congruence' (genuineness) in counselling sessions to ensure counselling effectiveness.

Rogers believed these three conditions to be both necessary and sufficient for effective counselling. If any one of these conditions is not provided then counselling will suffer but provided they are offered by the counsellor then they will be effective without the addition of any techniques.

Rogers' method grew out of his assumption that any person's true self is usually in conflict with the ideal self he is forced to be in public. The 'incongruence' or disparity between these two is reflected in tension between the true and the ideal self.

Rogers therefore understood people to be first and foremost individuals, autonomous individuals who Rousseau-like were forced to compromise their true selves in order to live at peace in family, school and society at large. However, this compromise led to neuroses because such a compromise entails tension at the core of the person.

At the religious level, Rogers' views cannot be accepted by orthodox Christians because people are not autonomous in Rogers' sense that each person has his own law within himself. That is blatant humanism and Rogers was well aware that it was.

One important criticism of the Rogerian therapeutic offered conditions model at the practical level is that it did not take into account how those counsellor offered conditions were received by the counsellee.

• A Pan-theoretical View of the Therapeutic Relationship: The Alliance in Therapy

Other models did arise to challenge Rogers' formulation. But the finding that comparisons among actual counselling informed by different theoretical models did not show any significant differences among the competing theory-practice models led researchers/theorists to look for a model that is not dependent on one theoretical framework.

From the fact about the non-significant differences among different theory orientations emerged the idea that common factors were operative under different terminology in all types of counselling.

Although the 'alliance' idea originally emerged from psycho-dynamic theory it was lifted out of that background in the 1970s and connected with the 'common factors' movement. (Note: the 'alliance' concept is also known by other names such as 'working alliance', 'therapeutic alliance' and 'helping alliance'.)

This 'freeing' of the alliance concept from a particular body of counselling theory has led to ways of trying to understand what this atheoreticising process means.

Adam Horvath, a major contributor to alliance studies, has developed the image of the 'psychological commons' as a lexical space for ideas to hang out for which we do not have strict definitions but rather descriptions. (To be continued.)