Lecture
The personality of a consultant in almost all theoretical approaches is defined as the most important “healing tool”. Essentially, the main counseling technique is “a psychologist as a tool,” that is, the primary means of stimulating the improvement of a client’s personality is the consultant’s identity.
The required personal qualities are not innate, but develop throughout life. The effectiveness of the consultant is determined not only by the properties of the individual, but also by professional knowledge and special skills.
The National Vocational Guidance Association of the USA identifies the following personality traits:
showing deep interest in people and patience in
communicating with them; sensitivity to attitudes and behavior; emotional stability and objectivity; the ability to inspire confidence; respect for the rights of others.
In 1964, the committee for the supervision and training of consultants established the following 6 qualities of personality required by the consultant:
1. Trust in people.
2. Respect for the values of another person.
3. Insight.
4. Lack of prejudice.
5. Self-understanding.
6. Consciousness of professional duty (R. Kochjunasu).
Noting the ability to practically solve communication tasks as a special ability of psychologists, N.V. Bachmanova and N.A. Stafurina single out five main components in the structure of this ability:
the ability to fully and correctly perceive a person (observation, quick orientation in a situation, etc.);
the ability to understand the internal properties and characteristics of a person (penetration into his spiritual world, intuition);
empathy (empathy, empathy, kindness and respect for the person, willingness to help);
ability to manage oneself and the process of communication (self-control);
ability to analyze their behavior (reflection).
The inconsistency of the personality is incompatible with the work of the consulting psychologist; low ego power; authoritarianism; low intelligence; passivity and isolation; lack of empathy; inability to solve problems; excessive lethargy; low organization; poor stress resistance; need for hyper-care; high anxiety;
propensity to use customers to meet their needs; the inability to be tolerant of various customer motivations; neurotic setting in relation to money.
Qualities of an effective consultant (R. Kochunas)
1. Authenticity (authenticity). An authentic psychologist allows himself not to know the answer to all questions, if he really does not know them. He is himself both in his immediate reactions and in the behavior in general.
2. Openness to personal experience. Here, openness is understood as sincerity in the perception of one's own feelings. Social experience teaches us to reject negative feelings ("Boys do not cry!"). An effective consultant should not repress feelings, since repressed feelings become irrational, a source of uncontrollable behavior.
3. The development of self-knowledge. Deep self-knowledge increases the possibility of choices in various situations. The answer to the question about the possibility of helping another person lies in the self-esteem of the consultant, the adequacy of his attitude to his own abilities and to life in general.
4. Strength of personality and identity. The consultant should know who he is, what he can become, what he wants from life, what is important for him essentially. Leading your own inner position will allow the consultant to feel strong in interpersonal relationships.
5. Tolerance for uncertainty. The consultant needs self-confidence in situations of uncertainty, since it is impossible to predict which client you will encounter. Confidence in one's intuition and adequacy of feelings, conviction in the correctness of the decisions made, help to endure tension in situations of uncertainty.
6. Acceptance of personal responsibility. Many counseling situations arise under the supervision of a consultant, and he is responsible for his actions. Understanding one’s responsibility and sharing it with the client allows one to freely choose whether to accept the client’s position or engage in productive confrontation.
7. The pursuit of the depth of relationships with other people. The consultant is obliged to evaluate people - their feelings, views, peculiar personality traits, but do it without judging and labeling. An effective consultant is not afraid to freely express their feelings to other people, including clients.
8. Setting realistic goals. From the very beginning, the consultant should be aware of the existence of limitations, both objective, related to the external environment, and subjective, related to the personality of the client. If the consultant sets unrealistic goals, it can lead to frustration.
Thus, as summarized R.-AB. Kochiunas, an effective consultant, is primarily a mature person. The more diverse his personal and professional life style will be, the more effective his activity will be. In counseling, as in life, one should be guided not by the formulas, but by one’s intuition and the needs of the situation. R.-A.B. Kochiunas believes that the appearance of a mature personality trait listed above, which we would like to see in a consultant, can be considered as a weighty criterion for the effectiveness of counseling.
The system of values is most often defined as the most important factor in the organization of vital activity, the mechanism of activity regulation and the indicator of personality maturity.
The professional activity of a psychologist is aimed at the knowledge, understanding of the identity of another person. Obviously, each person has his own unique system of value orientations and attitudes, which determines his ideas about the world and his decisions regarding each problem.
Personal and professional values are closely intertwined in the work of a psychologist.
For a psychologist, the following questions are of particular importance: to what extent should counseling be in the nature of value debate, and to what extent should the consultant’s personal values be presented in the counseling process? There are two polar points of view:
1. A consultant should be objective, value-neutral and not include his life philosophy and value system in consultative relations.
2. The consultant should openly and clearly demonstrate to the client his value position, since an attempt to be neutral in value situations leads the client to believe that the consultant considers socially, morally and legally harmful behavior to be justified.
If you really look at the situation of counseling, it is impossible to completely eliminate personal values from the consultative process. Based on his preferences, beliefs, values, the consultant has his own ideas about what is useful for his client. Every time he has to solve a dilemma: to work on the basis of their own values or customer preferences.
The value position of the consultant does not imply moral studies or moralizing. The value neutrality of the psychologist is a key point in the therapeutic relationship. Being “value-neutral” does not mean that the consultant must hide his true feelings from the client under a professional mask. In some cases, the presentation by the consultant of his value position can have a tremendous psychotherapeutic effect.
As G. Corry points out, a counselor, wishing to avoid value conflicts in the process of counseling, should have a clear position on some issues, in particular, family, sex, abortion, religion, drugs, military service. It is important for a consultant to know what impact his values have on the course of counseling so that he can be himself, and, nevertheless, avoid imposing his own attitudes on clients. In the process of counseling, it is important to help clients most fully identify the system of their value orientations and make an independent decision. Sometimes in the process of consulting not only the behavior of the client, but also its value changes. The consultant does not give ready-made advice - he only raises questions, and the client searches for and finds answers to them based on his own values.
R. Kochunas, analyzing foreign literature, formulated the following principles of ethical behavior in psychological counseling:
1. The consultant is responsible in his work:
1) in front of your client,
2) in front of the client’s family members,
3) before the organization in which he works, 4) in general before the public, 5) before his profession.
2. The client must make a decision about his / her entry into the process of psychological counseling conscious , therefore, before starting the counseling process, the counselor must provide the client with as much information as possible during the first meeting:
1) the main purposes of counseling,
2) about your qualifications,
3) on payment for consulting,
4) the approximate duration of counseling,
5) the advisability of counseling in this situation;
6) about the risk of temporary deterioration of the client in the process of counseling,
7) about confidentiality limits.
It is important to coordinate with the client in advance the possibilities of audio and video recordings, observations through a one-way vision mirror, and the presence of other persons at the consultation (trainees, students). Without the consent of the client is excluded.
Privacy policy
1. Customer information can only be used for professional purposes. This information should be used only for the benefit of the client.
2. The materials of advisory meetings in a form in which they can not harm the interests of the client, the consultant can use in their professional research or teaching activities. They are not subject to confidentiality.
3. Focusing on the client’s right to good name and secrecy, the consultant in certain cases may not provide information about the client to the law enforcement authorities if this does not violate the rights of third parties.
4. Confidentiality is limited by the right of the consultant to preserve his own dignity and the security of his personality.
5. Confidentiality is limited to the rights of third parties and the public.
R. Kochünas gives an approximate list of circumstances in which the requirement of confidentiality may be violated:
1. Criminal actions (violence, corruption, incest and the like) committed against minors.
2. The need for hospitalization of the client.
3. Participation of the client and other persons in the distribution of drugs and other criminal acts.
4. Increased risk to the life of the client or other people.
3. Professional competence of the psychologist . The level of professional training of a counseling psychologist must be in accordance with professional standards. The psychologist needs to adequately assess the level and limits of his professional competence, clearly understand the limits of his professional capabilities and not try to solve problems in areas where he may be incompetent. The psychologist should seek help from a supervisor or colleague in cases where he has encountered such unresolved problems or conflicts of his own that interfere with counseling; the problem of the client goes beyond his professional capabilities.
4. Payment issues . There are centers in our republic where the client can get free psychological help. At the same time, the market for paid psychological services is developing. A psychologist can enter into financial agreements with clients, taking into account both his qualifications and the solvency of the client. The cost of a psychologist is negotiated at the beginning of counseling. A psychologist-consultant should not overstate the cost of his services, and also demand a fee for referring a client to colleagues or other specialists.
5. Advertising professional activities . The psychologist must objectively inform employers and clients about themselves and the nature of the services provided. In the characteristic (summary) it is necessary to indicate only the knowledge, skills and abilities that the psychologist received in accordance with the approved educational programs. In case of inaccurate information, it is necessary to make corrections corresponding to the real state of affairs. Advertising of professional activity in periodicals, booklets, business cards should reflect the level of qualification and experience of the psychologist, his coordinates, hours of admission, the cost of services.
As an alternative, it is convenient to use metaphors to describe clients. Thus, in the Soviet consultative psychology for a long time, clients were described on the basis of a motivational orientation .
1. Clients with a business orientation, motivated to solve their problems and share responsibility for solving them with a psychologist. This category of clients is the most "favorable" for the work of a psychologist. They are divided into two subgroups: with adequate and inadequate orientation. Clients with an adequate business orientation are ready to cooperate, trust the psychologist, realizing that not every problem has a solution. Clients with inadequate business orientation tend to idealize a psychologist, ascribing to him over-competence, magical abilities. This is not conducive to the effectiveness of counseling: in case of failures, clients can just as easily devalue the “debunked idol.”
2. Customers with consumer orientation, interested in solving the problem, but completely shifting responsibility for the result to a psychologist. Their very fact of turning to a psychologist is regarded as some kind of investment (capital, time, emotions), and in return, customers with consumer orientation want to receive, and sometimes require, “goods” - a ready-made recipe for solving a problem. The greatest difficulty in working with them lies in reorientation in terms of responsibility: until a client accepts responsibility for changes in his life, no psychologist will help him.
3. Clients with a game orientation, whose motivation to visit a psychologist is not connected with the desire to solve the problem. Often, their arrival at a consultant begins with a listing of psychologists who the client has already visited and who could not help him. Having given such a vote of confidence to the psychologist, the client, at the slightest doubt of the psychologist's competence, begins to devalue him. A client with such an orientation can play with a psychologist in a number of games described by Eric Bern (for example, in the game “I am so poor and unhappy”). The forecast for this category of clients is the most unfavorable, since it requires a deep analysis of the client’s personality, the transfer of such an often unconscious game into a conscious layer, which, rather, is the task of not psychological counseling, but psychotherapy.
A.F. Kopiev tried to work out adequate criteria for assessing the state of the client on the basis of his dialogic intention . Dialogic intention means "more or less seriousness in the intention to solve your problems and discuss them in this particular situation with this particular consultant." A.F. Kopiev divides clients from the point of view of their readiness for dialogue into two large classes: open and closed .
“Closed” clients block the dialogue with the psychologist. They are not inclined to open and sincere interaction with the consultant, in every possible way avoid dialogue, controlling the genre and topics of communication, trying to impose them on the consultant. The client has practically no attempts to fight his defenses, and he maintains internal “stability” despite the declared intention to “change his life”, “solve the problem”, “understand what is happening to me”. A.F. Kopyev identifies three subgroups of a closed type:
1) "psychological intoxication . " In a state of psychological intoxication, with the client’s seeming desire for self-change, in fact, serious consultative work is impossible. Most often, the clients of this subgroup are clinically healthy people with a pragmatic interest in psychology, which is an effective means of justifying any of their actions with concepts from various psychological concepts.
Even very intimate stories about oneself are not a personal message, but information about the characteristics of a certain object - one’s own soul, recognized as an external object - the psyche. Contacting a psychologist plays an important protective role: on the one hand, it reflects dissatisfaction with one’s own life, on the other, it allows one not to change anything in it.
2) “aestheticization of personal problems” As in the previous group, there is a hiding of one’s own self behind a “smoke screen”. But the first subgroup has a psychological justification, and here it is an aesthetic one. Adversity and problems add depth and significance to the client's personality. The state of aestheticization is quite widespread in everyday life and is one of the most “popular” psychological adaptation mechanisms.
3) “manipulation-biases”. The name of this subgroup reflects the main motive for seeking advice: searching for ways to achieve a set goal in relation to certain people. These clients are active, energetic and seek from the psychologist not sympathy and support, but specific knowledge aimed at successfully manipulating their environment.
“Open” clients make great efforts to overcome their own resistance. We can talk about the client’s openness when there is a struggle with extra-dialogical, defensive impulses, when the client, prompted by real suffering, need or a sincere desire to establish the truth about himself, is ready for serious, deep communication.
“Openness” and “closedness” characterize, first of all, the peculiarities of the client’s initial state of psychological counseling. They are not considered as some sustainable personal quality. In the course of counseling, the quality of the “openness - closedness” of the client may undergo a transformation.
According to the nature of the request, the following types can be distinguished among clients:
1. Not a confident client. Ponders a lot about the situation, weighs a lot, but can not make a decision, get rid of doubts. The goal of an appeal to a psychologist is to relieve yourself of the responsibility to make the necessary life decision. For such people, making decisions is a difficult process, they are not self-confident.
2. Confident customer. Обращается для подтверждения правильности своего уже готового понимания затруднительного положения. От психолога ему нужна информация, подтверждающая уже готовую, сложившуюся у него точку зрения. Возникает вопрос: если этот человек столь уверен в себе, зачем он тогда вообще обращается к психологу? Ответ может быть такой: несмотря на то что этот человек уверен в себе и не раз уже самостоятельно принимал жизненные решения, в последнее время он все более на подсознательном уровне ощущает, что что-то идет не так. Его деятельность не столь успешна, сколь могла бы быть. Его подсознание побуждает его к тому, чтобы обратиться за помощью. Но его гордое сознание отказывается это принимать. Обращение к психологу и характер запроса отражают сложившийся компромисс между сторонами внутреннего конфликта.
3. The client is all knowing and trusting only himself. The client of this type is all questioning, controversial, but at the same time he is convinced that he is right. Blind, but the problem is in the character. Inclined to run their problems. Such people, because of their resonant peculiarities, have a hard time finding partners in real life for themselves. An attempt to find an interlocutor often leads them to the consultation.
4. The client with the need to speak out, seeking sympathy, "outlet". Unlike the previous type of clients, the problem here is no longer in character. Very often these are people with a hard life, lonely, sensitive, kind and suffering because of their kindness.
When working with the types of clients listed above, a psychologist can use various role positions. N.V. Samukina identified and described five acceptable positions of a consulting psychologist in a consultative dialogue in relation to different types of clients:
1. A “neutral adviser” psychologist listens, asks questions, offers advice or recommendations.
2. Psychologist-“programmer”. The psychologist develops a program for the client: “What to do,” “How to do it,” “When to do it,” for example, the life schedule of a schoolchild.
3. Psychologist-“listener”. As a result of “a conversation with a good and intelligent person,” the client receives relief, satisfaction and, having calmed down, independently finds a solution to his own problem.
4. Psychologist - “mirror”. The psychologist explains what is happening objectively, draws an objective reflection of the event for the client, helps to understand his role in these events, as well as the positions of the people associated with him and influencing him. As a result, the client understands what is happening to him, he becomes calm and able to make a decision and take action.
5. A psychologist is a “catalyst” for people who understand everything, but do nothing, take on the role of losers. It is necessary to create an impetus for activating the attitude towards the situation, for the beginning of active involvement in the unfolding events of his own life, for example, through strengthening his self-confidence, in his “good powers”, his ability to manage the events of his personal life, and expect the desired positive result.
N.V. Samukina believes that the positions “neutral advisor” or “programmer” are suitable for cases when the client is a smart, strong, intelligent person. The “mirror” and “programmer” positions are more suitable for a person whose emotions usually prevail over the arguments of reason.
The position of a “listener” psychologist is suitable for a person who is excited or saddened by any sudden events. The “catalyst” psychologist position is suitable for indecisive or rigid clients prone to compulsive, stuck behavior.
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Individual and family counseling
Terms: Individual and family counseling