Psychodynamic Counselling in a Nutshell by susan howard

Author:susan howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

The stages of counselling

All counselling interventions have a beginning, middle and end. This applies whether the counselling is short or long term. Each stage involves particular tasks, though there is significant overlap between them. The initial stage involves the counsellor and client assessing whether they want to work together, then building up a relationship in which the work of the counselling can be done. This stage can be quite protracted, and sometimes lasts several months, particularly when a client has real difficulties in establishing trust. So the client might, for example, come to sessions but not really engage with the counsellor or the work of counselling. During this time the client may talk about his uncertainty about whether to continue, or may seem to idealize the counsellor, thus denying any negative feelings about counselling. It is during this stage that he is most likely to drop out if he does not make emotional contact with her. During the sessions quite a lot of fire-fighting will probably go on, with the client focusing his emotional energies on the issues that brought him into counselling. Depending on the theoretical orientation of the counsellor and the needs of the client there might be less emphasis on the transference in this stage. If used, transference interpretations might focus on deepening the transference.

In order to enter the middle stage, trust needs to be largely established. The client feels grateful to the counsellor for the help she has given him with the problems that brought him into counselling. The focus of the work begins to shift more towards an exploration of the client’s internal world and the transference. This is when the bulk of the work will be done and in long-term counselling this stage can last from a few months to a number of years. The aims of counselling will often change as the client starts to understand his problems in a different way and take responsibility for bringing about the wished-for changes in his life.

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