Archive for February, 2006

There are two important mental mechanisms which may often occur in the counselor apart from those already dealt with in connection with their occurrence in the client. These are “counter-transference” and “identification.”

Counter-transference. In common with all people the counsellor will inevitably have his share of habitual attitudes, prejudices and emotional needs. It is important for counseling that he should be as aware of them as much as possible, so to minimize the risk of their intrusion into the counseling relationship to its great detriment. Some of this awareness should come during the selection interviews and during the counselor’s training and his “in-service” training. But with human fallibility as it is there is always the possibility of emotional needs in counselors beyond their own awareness, which may be “resurrected” by the emotional interaction of counseling.

For example a counselor may have a deep emotional need to be loved and admired, and be unaware of its real strength in him. Supposing now that in the course of counseling the client begins to show love and admiration to him, touching this deep and largely unrecognized emotional need. The counselor will then feel a deep inner pleasure in the relationship, and if he is not careful he might respond affectionately to the client’s transference. This may lead to unhealthy emotional involvement which is bad for counselor and client, and even more destructive to the client’s marital relationship.

If, on the other hand, a client shows intense hostility to a counselor who has a deep need to be loved and admired, it may well stir up great hostility in the counselor against the client, which will be communicated to him even when the counselor thinks he is hiding his hostile feelings. The situation is complicated further in marriage counseling because such hostility to one client may easily lead to some identification with the other one, the results of this on the marriage counseling need no emphasis.

It is necessary for any counselor to try to define his own attitude to clients in this regard. Is it necessary for him to show no love to any client? The situation might be clarified by suggesting that the love that is appropriate for a counselor to show is the “parental” kind of love rather than the “lover” kind of love. At its best the parental kind of love (without the deep emotional attachment of the parent-child relationship) is a genuine goodwill “without strings,” a loving acceptance of the “child” for his own sake, a caring for his ultimate welfare without demanding any kind of return. This is what is meant by the Greek word “agape” and represents Christian goodwill and any other goodwill of similar nature to it. This “parental” kind of love has sufficient dispassion in it to prevent the natural compassion from becoming too involved emotionally in the client to prevent “empathy” from drifting into “sympathy.”

With this kind of accepting goodwill the counselor, whatever his own emotional need to be loved, can accept love or hostility from a client wi,liout allowing himself to use the counseling relationship for his own benefit or gratification. He can keep the counseling relationship as one that is between two people for the benefit of one the client! Apart from a possible need to be loved and admired, a counselor can have many other emotional needs, the need to be agreed with or understood, the need to assert himself, the need to manipulate other people and their lives, and even the need to prove to himself by suffering what a “devoted” person he is. How can these needs be perceived by the counselor if they have not been brought to light in his training? Firstly, by regular opportunities for the receiving of counseling of some kind himself. This may come through case discussions with supervisors or senior counselors or consultants, or through deliberate approach to someone of this kind for counseling. Any counselor who finds his own emotions becoming stirred up unduly in his counseling should consider seeking help in whatever way he can, so that he can “sort out” his own unresolved conflicts and his emotional vulnerabilities and needs.

In addition to this, and when adequate help is not available, he may assist in his own “sorting out” by asking himself some crucial personal questions. Here are some typical questions which may come up in the counselor’s mind about counter-transference or identification:

Why did I feel strained or hostile to that person? What did he do or say to stir up my feelings like this? Am I vulnerable there?

Why was I so keen to get my ideas across to that person? Do I want people to think that I know all the answers about marriage?

Why was I so protective with that client who felt so unloved and rejected? Could it be that I feel a bit that way too?

Why was I so averse to the idea of writing to the husband of this client? Have I felt so identified with her that I am rejecting him without wanting to get any idea of how he feels?

Why did I get so defensive when the client misjudged my attitude? Do I expect that people should always understand me?

Why did I keep on asking questions in that way? Is it because I am really curious about people’s intimate doings, or am I being anxious to avoid long silences and risk the client thinking I’m not adept at counseling?

Any intense emotional reaction that arises in the counselor’s mind in counseling should be at least the subject of some honest discussion with another counselor or a consultant. In this way the counselor can go on indefinitely with his own growth and improvement in counseling. It is highly probable that there are no counselors who are so competent that they cannot go on developing and learning.

A question that may come up many times in the counselor’s mind when things do not seem to go as he had hoped is “Do I assume that I ought to be able to help everybody who comes to me? Can I accept my share of failure and try to learn from each one? Can I discuss my failures as well as my “successes” with my colleagues?

Of course it would be an impossibility for a counselor with any normal feelings to be completely unmoved by the tensions and sufferings of those who come for help. To keep one’s emotions “on ice” as has sometimes been suggested, would mean that the client would feel no warmth of empathy, and might even feel completely rejected by an apparently indifferent counselor. The counselor’s emotions need to be recognized and controlled rather than “frozen.” When they are in any danger of taking control of the situation the counselor needs to face the situation and either regain control or consider referring the client to another counselor.

If a counselor finds himself or herself feeling particularly happy at the prospect of a forthcoming session with a particular client this is also an indication for some careful honest self-evaluation. Such feelings can easily grow to the point at which they may endanger the counseling and when not dealt with they may gradually corrode the counselor’s personality and make for very faulty work. By its very nature counseling is difficult to supervise very closely, and the counselor can “get away” with many inappropriate inner feelings for a longer time than is healthy. Counselors are in positions of great trust and are under a solemn obligation to preserve an impeccable integrity in their inner attitudes as well as in their actual work.

Insight formation. The most important aspect of this mental process for the counselor to appreciate is that it is something that is achieved by the client, and not something that is communicated to him by the counselor or anyone else. Most people have a rather naive faith in the power of the spoken word, naive in the sense that it is extended to apply to people in emotional conflict and tension. In marital situations which come to the counselor the partners almost invariably have been the recipients of many wise observations, so obviously rational and appropriate to those who have offered them, but almost completely ineffective in the marital conflict. Such wise and well-meant homilies do not touch the deep unconscious elements in the situation, and however much the partners attempt to follow them, their efforts are superficial in this sense and have to be sustained continually by “will power” which inevitably breaks down after a time and in the face of unexpected provocations.

Intellectual insight in this sense does not necessarily involve a person’s emotional attitudes, and in such cases will not have any deep or sustained influence on behavior. But when through patient working through intense and conflicting feelings in the accepting, non-threatening atmosphere of good counseling, a person comes to awareness of his emotional needs and their effects on his previous attitudes, he is then able and ready to change from within. What we discover for ourselves is always more influential than what is communicated to us from without.

Insight formation then is something achieved by clients and it involves all aspects of the personality. The counselor’s task is mainly to facilitate the process by acceptance and by “reflecting” the client’s feelings and looking with him at their implications. It is to be a kind of psychic “mirror” in which the client can come gradually to see into his own personality and into the significant elements in the disturbed relationships, so as to be able to make whatever changes he may feel disposed to do.

Redefinition and “re-conceptualization.” These closely related processes are really part of the process of insight, or at least an application of insight to the many different aspects of the client’s personal attitudes and relationships. As new insights dawn the client will often begin enthusiastically to rethink these things with new interest and hope. This process will generally go on as much or more between the counseling sessions as within them, and it will often continue after the conclusion of counseling. The counselor may be asked to look with the client at many of his tentative conclusions, and to help in further clarification with either or both clients. Sometimes after an interval of some months after the conclusion of the main series of interviews some further matters may come up for clarification in an extra session, and the discussion is then likely to be on a very positive practical level and to result in further consolidation of the partnership.

Sublimation. When feelings of any kind are strong it may be harmful to the personality to try to suppress or block them. The mechanism of sublimation is one through which many such potentially destructive feelings can be re-channeled into socially acceptable attitudes. For example hostility is often strongly imbedded in the human personality, and men and women will always tend to feel angry under certain conditions. But this anger can be diverted into the socially acceptable channel of a vigorous campaign against the common enemies of mankind rather than allowed to cause useless and destructive family squabbles. The ability to sublimate feelings varies greatly with different people; it is almost absent, for example, in the psychopathic personality and strongly present in the saint. It can be developed by spiritual inspiration and discipline and helped by such activities as healthy cooperative sport and good hobbies in which enthusiasms can be shared. It can also be helped by education when the personal relationship with the educators is good. The marriage counselor may help firstly by his knowledge of the value of this mechanism, and secondly by his personal inspiration of the client and his willingness to go along with him as he works through the slow healing process.

Some other mental mechanisms, such as phantasy thinking and symbolic thinking, fixation and regression, may be found in the counseling of some people, but they are more appropriate to psychotherapy than to counseling and will therefore not be dealt with in any detail. If they show up to any extent in marriage counseling the counselor may well consider the advisability of referral to a psychotherapist.

Transference. This is a particular kind of projection in which any client might re-enact toward the counselor any kind of intense feeling which was, or is, really directed, but insufficiently expressed, toward someone else, such as a parent or sibling, the marital partner, or some other significant figure. For example the client who as a child was continually humiliated, taunted or teased by a parent or sibling, or possibly by a sadistic school teacher, may accuse the counselor quite seriously of humiliating him, in some such manner as, “You just sit there like God Almighty, nodding as if you knew everything. I hoped for a bit of help, not humiliation!” When the client’s parents were indifferent and cold to him as a child, and failed to talk to him, the counselor’s silence, designed to allow him a good hearing, may be misinterpreted as indifference and aloofness, and the client will show the same kind of hostility as originally felt (but not able to be expressed) toward the parents.

If the counselor reacts to such feelings and accusations as if they were unwarranted attacks on himself it will only deepen the client’s hostility and will probably ruin the counseling. This kind of emotional reaction to the client’s transference is called “counter-transference,” and it will be dealt with in a later part of this section.

It is the counselor’s task to understand why such feelings may arise in the client, and to accept them so that the client will have the opportunity to work through them to a positive relationship with his own feelings and with his marital partner and other people. In psychotherapy the handling of transference is one of the most important aspects of the whole treatment, and transference is almost inevitable as the therapist makes contact with the surging dynamics of the patient’s inner personality. Transference is less marked in the more superficial work of counseling, but with the intense emotional conflicts in marital disorders the counselor cannot avoid having to deal with some amount of transference.

Apart from the hostility already touched on there are other kinds of transference. A client may find in a counselor of the opposite sex an embodiment of the qualities looked for and not sufficiently found in the marriage, such as acceptance and interest, and may “fall in love” with the counselor. Even a counselor of the same sex as the client may quite unwittingly stir up some latent or actual homosexual feelings in the client with the same result. Almost any emotion, hostility and aggressiveness, romantic love, anxiety, cold indifference, and even deep morbid guilt, may be “transferred” onto the counselor without his deserving it in any way.

In most cases he can best show his acceptance of the transference by the kind of accepting “questioning” comment that has already been illustrated in earlier parts of this book, such as, “You feel very disappointed in what I’ve been able to do?” or “You’re feeling pretty sore at me?” An important exception to this is where the client shows any indication of “falling in love” with the counselor. If the counselor made such a comment as “You’re feeling in love with me?” it would almost certainly cause extreme anxiety in the client and upset the counseling beyond repair. The counselor’s best approach is probably a simple non-verbal acceptance of the feeling, unless it is verbally expressed directly by the client, and careful avoidance of any word or action that would possibly add to the client’s feeling.

One of the greatest services any counselor or psychotherapist can offer to any troubled person is to allow the person the opportunity progressively to express the less “respectable” aspects of his personality and to find that he is accepted in spite of them. Many such people have never felt really accepted “for themselves alone.” They have come to the deeply set conviction that they can never live up to what would be necessary for other people’s acceptance, without which they cannot accept themselves. The counselor’s simple acceptance of any such client, progressively tested and tried by more and more expression of aspects of his personality of which he is ashamed or apprehensive, will gradually release the client from many of these inner hindrances to naturalness and self-acceptance. Then there is no need for many of his automatic defensive reactions which had stirred up so much conflict with his marital partner, his “boss,” his children or others.

In doing this the counselor cannot avoid overlapping into the field of psychotherapy, but if he keeps the relationship between the partners as the central focus of his work he will not generally go far beyond his depth. The fact that he has good rapport with the client will often give him more chance for good therapy in such situations than the therapist would have in the absence of established rapport at this stage. But if the difficulty shows itself as mainly in the inner personality of any client the counselor should immediately consider the advisability of referral to a psychiatrist.

Projection. This is another of the reactions to repressed ideas and feelings, in which painful or unpleasant ideas and feelings are rejected from awareness automatically, but the discomfort arising from their inner “festering” seeks relief by irrational displacement onto some other person or external agency. As previously noted in the discussion of repression we tend to criticize in others the very faults to which we are most prone and most averse to recognizing. In many cases this is an automatic unconscious mental device, and our criticisms do not appear irrational to us. When the victim of our accusations reacts to what he feels a rank and unwarranted injustice we accuse him of hypocrisy or dishonesty and the emotional conflict is away to a vigorous beginning.

Many of our projections are harmless enough, even if not at all helpful to our growth in realistic thinking. We ascribe our failures to such agencies as “bad luck” or “kismet” or to some other invulnerable agency, or to such influences as “the Government,” “The Opposition Party,” “The Church” or to some “Board” or other, which are large and invulnerable enough not to worry about it. But our projections may be more serious for ourselves when we blame “the job” or “the neighborhood” for something we are unable to recognize in ourselves and begin to act on such an irrational assumption by changing the external situation. Then the inner and unfaced difficulty still continues to haunt our minds, and we look for another “scapegoat,” and perhaps go from job to job looking for what cannot be found in that way. Well could Shakespeare observe in “Julius Caesar,” “The fault … is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

In marriage counseling many of the accusations made by either partner toward the other are of this nature, and they may arise from many sources. Apart from the unjust accusation about something of which the accuser is really guilty there may be projections of hatred or other destructive emotion from earlier unsolved relationships with a parent or other significant figure. A wife whose childhood was continually harassed by a drunken father may easily react with bitter accusations when her husband has taken a very moderate and harmless amount of alcohol, and the husband’s indignant response to this “injustice” will make things worse. A husband who has had an irritating and frustrating day at the office, and has been unable to express his feelings about it there for fear of losing his job, may come home and be bitterly cruel to his children who have done nothing to deserve any condemnation. The range and variety of manifestations of projection is infinite.

In some cases the mechanism of projection may have still more serious effects. When the repressed material is particularly painful and persistent, and sometimes when it is only partially repressed, it may appear in a person’s consciousness as a complete distortion of reality, as a delusion or an hallucination. It is important for the counselor to recognize this possibility, but it is not his function to attempt to treat such conditions. Such cases where there is any possibility of this kind of distortion are appropriately referred to a psychiatrist, if possible through the person’s own doctor. The counselor may have an important function in helping the other partner to cope with the difficult and most distressing situation, by recognition that the irrational partner cannot help being so, and by refraining from fruitless argument about the distortions while standing quietly firm on his own autonomy.

Before leaving the subject of the initial interviewing of the two partners we may consider some important mental processes which may occur in either client and some which may occur in the counselor during the first or any subsequent interviews. How these are handled will make a profound difference to the success or failure of the counseling, and they are therefore worthy of consideration at this stage.

In the client some of the more common mental processes are the emotional unburdening which is called catharsis and the expression of “contrary” feelings described as ambivalence, which have already been dealt with to some extent. Other common mental processes in the client are repression, rationalization, suppression, compensation, abreation, anxiety, resistance and “blocking,” projection, transference, insight formation, redefinition and “reconceptualization,” and sublimation. In the counselor many of these processes may be evoked by the emotional interaction of counseling, and two others, “counter-transference” and identification are worthy of some attention.

a. Repression. It is clear that unless people’s consciousness were freed from the infinite number and variety of memories of unimportant things, any intelligent living would be impossible. This process of automatic “forgetting” is called repression, and it is essential to realize that it is an unconscious and not a deliberate process. As many obsessed people find to their dismay the harder they try to push any thought out of their minds the more it will keep on intruding. Repression therefore is a universal and healthy process in this sense. But it can also be unhealthy in that some of our most painful and distressing unresolved experiences are automatically “forgotten,” and when that happens the emotional tensions associated with them are apt to go on “festering” below the level of awareness and to produce all kinds of apparently irrational feelings and ideas, and even disturbances of bodily function. Many previous attitudes and actions of which we feel ashamed are automatically repressed in this way from our awareness, but they may be clearly remembered by those with whom we live.

One result of this is that often in counseling one partner may admit no recollection of some aggressive act of which the other one complains bitterly, and he is accused of deliberate lying. It helps greatly if the counselor realizes that in fact the incident may have been genuinely “forgotten,” particularly if it originally occurred in a quarrel that was highly charged with emotion. Some clarification of this with the aggrieved partner may help to reduce the tension.

Some of the mental processes about to be discussed are results of repression or reactions to it, and these aspects of repression will be dealt with when these processes are considered. It is not the counselor’s function to attempt to bring deeply repressed material to the “surface.” That is for the trained psychotherapist to carry out in individual psychotherapy. But many of the client’s partly repressed experiences in the recent or more distant past may come into memory as the counseling proceeds, and may emerge in the emotional unburdening. The counselor accepts the feelings expressed in the setting of his attention to the relationship, and does not set out on any attempt at deep dynamic interpretations, for which of course he is not equipped. But without some attention to the underlying, at least partially repressed elements in the situation, marriage counseling, and counseling in general, would fail to meet most of the disorders for which it is sought.

b. Rationalization. Like repression, this is a universal mental process, one of the automatic “protective” devices for human self-regard. It is an outcome of repression in that the real motives for many of our feelings, attitudes and actions are conveniently “blotted out,” and we bluff ourselves into the plausible belief in a more “respectable” reason for what we have felt and done. This is often quite unconvincing to many other people, who may “see through” our apparent hypocrisies and shams, and may make no secret of their doing so, even though they will almost certainly be rationalizing many similar things in their own lives.

When such accusations are made or implied all our defenses become mobilized and we tend to react emotionally, which brings further emotional reactions in the accusers, and the battle is on. It seems that most people tend to criticize in others the very things to which the critics are unconsciously prone. “The pot calls the kettle black,” well could the poet Robert Burns observe hauntingly, in his poem, “To a Louse”:
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, And foolish notion.

In marriage counseling every narrative of each client tends to be filled with rationalizations, and most of the necessary insight is concerned with the ability to “see through” some of one’s own rationalizations. Since any attempt at “frontal attack” on most rationalization will only tend to stir up more defenses, the counselor restrains himself from any such temptation and accepts the client’s expressed feelings in the manner already described. As the counseling sessions proceed he will help the client to “clarify” his feelings and attitudes, and possibly those of his partner. This will be discussed in the section dealing with the subsequent interviews.

c. Suppression. This term is used to describe the deliberate withholding of possibly significant elements in the marital conflict from discussion, generally as an attempt to preserve self-regard. In this way it is differentiated from repression which is an automatic unconscious process. Suppression is to some extent inevitable and quite natural in counseling, because the client generally will feel the need to “try out” the counselor before he can risk the disclosure of anything which might incur the risk of rejection or condemnation. This again has much to do with repressed fears of childhood parent figures by whom the client may have felt rejected at a “helpless” time when such rejection was a “life and death” matter.

The counselor, realizing this, will always keep the situation open and allow for many deeper elements to emerge in their own time as the client “tests him out” by guarded tentative admissions, progressively gaining confidence through the counselor’s acceptance of all of them. It is often found that these previously suppressed elements prove to be the most important keys to better insight and better relationships. In some cases important suppressed material can be brought into the open more quickly through a joint interview when certain safeguards have been established. This will be discussed in more detail in the section which deals with the arranging and handling of joint interviews.

d. Compensation. As it applies to the mental processes found in counseling compensation is an unconscious mental process by which the discomfort and humiliation of some defect in character, ability or behavior are relieved by the
over-emphasis on an opposite quality of personality. Self assertiveness, for example, is often an unconscious automatic compensation for deep and puzzling feelings of inferiority, which in their turn may be the products of repressed humiliating experiences. Many such compensations are of healthy positive value, as Adler has repeatedly emphasized in his psychological writings. But many others are productive of strain and conflict in the individual and in his personal relationships, and these may have great significance in the counseling process.

For example a husband who seems bent on taking every possible opportunity to humiliate his wife in all kinds of unjust and even irrational ways will generally be found to be suffering from a deep sense of inferiority, failure or guilt, but this may take much time and patience in counseling for it to become clear to this husband. But when the counselor sees the signs of it he is more ready to keep the door open to the client’s gradual achievement of insight.

One suggestive indication by which over-compensation can be suspected is a kind of compulsive quality in the attitudes and behavior of the client, as if he were possessed by the particular need. This is found most typically in the neurotic personality, but it is also found to a variable extent in many immature people and in others who show no other evidence of neurotic traits. As long as the counselor keeps in his mind the possibility of compensatory attitudes he is less likely to be bluffed into taking his clients’ feelings and attitudes and their behavior at their face value. At the appropriate point a deeply understanding comment, “Could it be that your need to humiliate your wife comes from a deep sense of failure in yourself? ” might bring a flash of insight to the client. But of course such comments will only be appropriate when the counseling has gone beyond the initial stages of catharsis and the development of rapport.

e. Abreaction. This is a process, more commonly found in psychotherapy than in counseling, in which the unburdening of emotion gathers such “momentum” that the client is completely possessed by it for a time. His speech may be quite unrestrained in content and in emphasis, and the outpouring of emotion may be accompanied by all kinds of bodily movements and expressions. In some cases of psychotherapy this kind of release of feeling is encouraged by free association, by hypnosis or by certain sedative drugs, but this requires considerable professional training and experience if it is to be handled without the risk of harm.

In counseling abreaction is not generally encouraged, and when it begins to appear the counselor needs to consider carefully whether to allow it to proceed or whether to offer the client the opportunity to defer the interview. When abreaction appears in a joint interview it is particularly important to consider the risk of unduly wounding the other partner, and to be ready to terminate this part of the interview if this appears to be possible. The abreacting partner may be given the opportunity to unburden his intense feelings to the counselor when the other partner has been allowed to withdraw for the time, and that may be of considerable help to the “inflamed” client.

f. Anxiety. We are here concerned with anxiety as it may develop in the counseling process, and it may do so in the counselor or the client, or in both. Many clients feel some anxiety at the idea of coming for help, and this anxiety should gradually diminish as they come to feel the counselor’s acceptance. The kind of anxiety which the client may develop in the actual counseling is something every counselor needs to be ready to perceive and to deal with. This is most likely to occur when the client suddenly comes to feel that his emotions are taking hold of him and that he is getting “out of his depth.” He may show this anxiety either in facial expression, bodily restlessness, inflection of speech, or by suddenly withdrawing into his shell. Sometimes he may even terminate the counseling abruptly. It is essential for the counselor to try to perceive this before it becomes too intense, and to avoid any “pushing” in his attitude or in his comments. When the anxiety seems to be increasing it is often well to offer the client a rest from the counseling. If he wishes to go on he is allowed to do so, but in many cases an anxious client accepts the offer of a rest quite eagerly, and can then return more easily to the anxiety producing material in a later session.
Anxiety may arise in the counselor when a client seems to be uncooperative or resistant to the counseling, especially when the client indulges in prolonged silences. The anxious counselor is then tempted to resort to a succession of questions rather than to show complete acceptance of the client’s possible feelings, and that will tend to delay or divert the counseling and may even spoil it altogether.

g. Resistance and “blocking.” These processes may commonly occur in counseling and need to be understood by the counselor. In some cases the “blocking” may be due to the unconscious identification of the counselor with someone in the client’s early or present life, of whom the client has been frightened, or felt hatred, distrust, or some other negative emotion. In other cases it may be due to growing anxiety in the client, and it is then a very useful automatic “delaying mechanism” which secures for the client some time to become adapted to the new situation.

If the counselor jumps to the conclusion that resistance is a deliberate act of the client he may well become hostile or anxious. These feelings will inevitably be communicated to the client, however much the counselor may think he has hidden them, and the client’s anxiety or hostility will be increased. When the counselor understands that these processes are generally automatic and necessary he will find it easier to accept them and to show his acceptance, and then the client will be better able to work through them. In some cases in which a prolonged “blocking” seems to be due to the client’s identification of the counselor with a significant figure in his background it may be most helpful for the counselor to refer the client to another counselor, possibly one of the opposite sex or one in a different age group. In many cases this has freed the client from the blocking and enabled him to work through the earlier relationship to a healthy acceptance. In some cases of such identification it may be found that the same negative feelings were projected onto the marital partner, and then the working through them will greatly help the marital relationship as well as the actual counseling process. Resistance and blocking therefore are important processes for the counselor to accept and to use constructively in the later clarification.