The personality and the attitudes of the marriage counselor

We have discussed the different “kinds” of people who might be involved in marriage counseling, and mentioned some of the personal and professional qualities that are generally required for the work. It is the universal experience that the quality of the counselor’s own personality is the most influential factor in any form of genuine counseling, and it is therefore of some value to consider and to try to formulate the most desirable qualities of personality and the most helpful attitudes of the counselor in counseling.

We may remind ourselves at the beginning that interviewing and counseling are, or should be, reciprocal relationships between two people “for the benefit of one.” Counselor and client will each have their share of the universal endowment of conscious and repressed feelings; of prejudices, vulnerabilities, uncritical assumptions about life and about people, habitual attitudes and emotional needs. Any of these may be stirred up in the emotional interaction inseparable from counseling. Unless the counselor has some awareness of his own inner qualities and vulnerabilities and a reasonable control of them, his own emotional reactions may well intrude into the counseling relationship to such an extent and intensity as to ruin the counseling.

Many people are attracted to counseling for quite unworthy reasons, of which they are mostly unaware. In some cases they have a deep need to assert themselves, to control other people’s lives and destinies, and in this and other ways to satisfy a “will to power,” as Adler called it. Others may be anxious about prestige and status more than they realize, and not really open to the needs of others. Others again are over-curious, and seem to gain some kind of satisfaction in hearing about the intimate details of people’s private lives. Others again have deep suppressed hostilities which all too easily become projected onto a “helpless” client who unwittingly touches a vulnerable part of the counselor’s personality. Others again are seeking flattery and adulation, and tend to be over-ingratiating in the counseling, and some are openly seductive, with a deep need to induce clients to “fall” for them. It is obvious that any such qualities will do much more harm than good to the whole project of counseling, and may induce an inept counselor to reverse the whole aim of the counseling and use the client for the counselor’s benefit or satisfaction.

These and similar underlying distortions of personality are not generally realized by those in whom they exist, and who may well offer themselves for the work of counseling. Fortunately such qualities can often become obvious to a competent counselor or psychiatrist in an introductory interview or series of interviews, or to many other people when they have fairly close contact with the person in a discussion group or week-end conference in which they live together. Such methods are therefore generally adopted as part of a good “selection” procedure. A good description of the present selection procedure in Great Britain for prospective counseling trainees is given by J. H. Wallis in “Marriage Counseling,” by J. H. Wallis and H. S. Booker (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1958) pages 45-56, and an account of their training is given in the same book, pages 57-73.

Tags: Counseling