The general conduct of the initial interview

The initial greeting by the counselor should be simple, natural and spontaneous, neither effusive on the one hand nor indifferent and detached on the other. The counselor then sets out to encourage the client to tell his story in his own words and his own way by showing an attitude of “creative listening,” a readiness to listen with active keen interest and attention but not of over-curiosity.

Clients vary greatly in the amount of encouragement they may need. Some plunge without any hesitation into a veritable torrent of words and feelings which may go on without pause for most of the interview, and to which the counselor can only listen with as much concentration as possible. In some of these cases the narrative is direct and coherent, and the counselor quickly gains an accurate perception of many aspects of the complex problem. In others it is more or less disconnected and even incoherent, and the counselor has the difficult task of gaining a reasonable idea of the conflicting and distressing feelings which have so taken control of the client as to bring considerable confusion about the whole affair.

Other clients may need more direct encouragement to unburden their feelings and experiences. They may be reserved and diffident, suspicious or indifferent, helpless and despairing, antagonistic or hostile, rigid or prejudiced. Any initial encouragement should not be of such a kind as to give the client any feeling of being pushed, and for this the counselor needs to be able to accept any of these initial attitudes in the client without becoming anxious himself. This acceptance of the client’s feelings, whatever they may be, and however they may be expressed, may be communicated to him either by a quiet nod of the head, an encouraging “mmhmm,” or by a simple “accepting” type of comment, generally in questioning form.

For example if an extremely nervous diffident client begins with a prolonged silence, the counselor will probably sit quietly and patiently for a time, and then he might make some quiet accepting and understanding comment, such as, “You’re finding it a bit difficult?” with the implied question, “is that it?” expressed by the inflection of his voice rather than by words. If there is still a long silence it may be right for the counselor to go on accepting this too. Some people find it very difficult and embarrassing to talk about such painful matters, and to find the right words to make themselves understood, and the counselor’s acceptance will help to put them at their ease. If the silence goes on to the point at which it may be embarrassing the client further, some such comment as the following may be of help:-”I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what you’re feeling about this. Is it that you don’t know quite where to begin, or that things are in such a muddle that you can’t think for the moment?” This kind of comment, made slowly and quietly, may enable the client to communicate these “paralyzing” feelings.

As the client becomes launched on the story the counselor may help best by refraining from interruption until there is a favorable opportunity for a comment, such as may be provided by a reasonable pause in the narrative. In general his most important function at this stage is to encourage the client to keep talking and to tell his story in his own way and his own time within the limits of the counseling session. In this way he may gain some idea of what the client regards as important, and avoid the risk of missing some important “leads,” or of imposing his own ideas and attitudes on the counseling relationship. As the client talks the counselor is given many facts. Many feelings and attitudes are also communicated to him, by the client’s appearance and behavior as well as by his words and the intonations and cadences of his speech. The counselor sets out at this stage to catch as many as possible of the “undertones” of feeling as he allows the client to reveal himself progressively in an atmosphere of growing confidence.

This confidence will be most quickly established when the counselor can listen patiently and give the client a really good attentive hearing. When there is a pause in the narrative the counselor can help by making a simple brief “questioning” comment which responds to the feelings that have been expressed or implied rather than the facts which have been communicated. This is possibly the most important principle of this initial stage of the interview, and it also applies throughout all interviews. It encourages the client to progressive unburdening of feelings rather than of a long and involved series of facts. And it is essential to any understanding of the rationale of counseling to realize that this unburdening of feelings is a necessary condition for the client’s later achievement of insight.

Such response to the expressed feelings rather than the facts of the narrative will help the client to gain some idea of what his part in the counseling is. Many clients are very uncertain of what happens in a situation such as this, and are feeling their way and trying to gain some light to relieve their confusion. If the counselor responded to the facts of the client’s story the client would naturally conclude that the counselor was interested in and wanted all the facts that were available. He would then in most cases continue the story by giving a long and involved succession of facts, some of which might well be quite irrelevant, because the client in his confusion may not be able to arrange the large amount of material in any kind of coherent manner. As fact follows fact the counselor may well find his brain beginning to reel with confusion in the desperate attempt to take it all in and to arrange the complicated story in some kind of order. He will then find it very difficult to establish rapport with the client, because rapport is mainly an emotional relationship.

Tags: Counseling