5. The Initial Interviews

The initial interview with each partner is of vital importance for the success or failure of the whole process of counseling, because it has a large part in creating the "rapport" between each partner and the counselor so essential for effective coun­seling. Each client, as we have seen, comes with very mixed, and often intense feelings, not only from the emotional strains of the marital situation, but also from the strains of seeking help from a third party. Each client will therefore be very sensitive to any failure on the part of the counselor to accept him and his feelings. If the client is skeptical about the ability of counseling to help he may well use any lack of acceptance as an excuse for refusing to come again. Any setback in the development of rapport may disturb his sensitive feelings, and will possibly drive him back into his shell to such an extent as to block the counseling process.

I. RAPPORT

As the whole counseling process depends on the establish­ment and maintenance of rapport some attention to this aspect of the counselor-client relationship is essential. The term rapport is borrowed from the French phrase "en rap­port," which means "in harmony" or "in accord." It implies for the client a deepening sense of "at homeness," and a confidence in the counselor's ability and readiness to accept him as he is, with any failings, and to give his full concentrated attention to him and his problems and difficulties. This of course is implied in the term "inter-view"—i.e., viewing be­tween.

Some of the foundations of rapport are established by the reputation of the counseling agency or of the private coun­selor, and by the kind of recommendation which induces the client or clients to come for help. The friendly atmosphere and genuine desire to arrange the most helpful appointment possible which may be shown by the receptionist, the person who answers the telephone or any letters, and any other mem­bers of the staff will also help greatly, especially when a client is nervous and apprehensive.

The main factors in the development of rapport, however, are the personality and the attitude of the counselor, and his total handling of the fluctuating interaction which goes on throughout the whole series of interviews. The client may feel it first as a natural simple sincerity, a spontaneous "warmth," and a genuine interest and desire to understand and to help. As the interview goes on the client will come to feel more and more clearly that he is accepted in a non-judgmental manner, so that any sense of humiliation at having to open up his life to another person is gradually replaced by a growing feeling that he can unburden even the worst things about himself without fear of being condemned or rejected. He will also come to realize that he can talk freely about sexual attitudes, and other subjects which are not so freely discussed in ordinary social conversation.

At the same time the client will begin to realize that some of his expectations about the counselor and about the interview will not be fulfilled. He may be disappointed because the counselor will not take his "side," or share his "righteous in­dignation" about the attitudes and actions of his partner or his "in-laws." This will sometimes disturb the rapport for a time, but the counselor is not setting out to establish "rapport at any price," and cannot allow himself to be the judge. But his acceptance of even the client's disappointment in him will gradually tend to overcome the client's doubts and misgivings.

It may actually provide the first real step towards more real­istic thinking on the part of the client, which may be a neces­sary part of his growth from a kind of childish dependency that may have been an important factor in the marital conflict.

In some cases the client will react with intense hostility to the counselor's failure to take his side, and such exaggerated feelings are generally an expression of deep repressed child­hood attitudes to some important person in the client's early life, generally a parent. This irrational attitude, and others of similar nature, are generally the re-enacting of such early attitudes, and are described under the term "transference." They happen much more frequently in deeper psychotherapy than in the more superficial counseling, and when accepted and handled adequately they form an important part of the healing process. This subject of transference will be discussed more fully in a later part of this section.

There are some other contributions which the counselor can make to the establishment and maintenance of rapport. The realization that everything the client says is kept in strict­est confidence and not disclosed to anyone without permission is of great value to him as he comes to face things about which he does not feel at all happy. Also the fact that he does not have to face the counselor except by his own initiative and desire. This may not always be the case, for example when a minister acts as counselor to one or two of his own parishioners with whom he may have continuing pastoral relationship. This is dealt with more fully in the section relative to the minister's assets and his hindrances as a marriage counselor.

There are many factors which affect the quality of the rapport which are to be found in the client, and these deserve some consideration. In the first place the degree of motivation for coming will have a very profound effect. The client who only comes to please someone else and not from a genuine desire for constructive help will obviously need more delicate and sensitive handling for the establishment of rapport than will the client who is anxious for help and confident of the value of counseling as a channel of help. In some cases the second partner comes with considerable doubt and very much "on guard," wondering how much has been reported about him, and what the counselor may be thinking about him. It is interesting to watch the progressive relaxation of such people as they come to feel the counselor's non-critical acceptance.

An occasional handicap to the establishment of rapport is in the fact that the client has been referred by someone with whom he has built up a good relationship. Every attitude the counselor may show at the beginning may then be compared with those of the previous counselor, and it may need some pa­tience and tact for the new rapport to build on the previous one. The necessary repetition of some of the more painful or irritating parts of the narrative already given to the previous counselor may be distasteful to the client, and this feeling needs to be realized and accepted by the new counselor—or consultant—even though it delays the counseling process to some extent.

When clients are actually directed to attend the counselor, for example by the courts, there may be still more difficulties in the establishment of rapport. If the counselor is not an officer of the court, or an "official" of any kind, but a private individual working under an oath of secrecy which applies even to the courts, the situation is more workable. Such clients may have failed to come on their own initiative simply from lack of awareness of the availability of this kind of counseling or through passivity, or procrastination, or they may have beenindifferent, skeptical, or even actively hostile to counseling. They may have been determined to separate, even though the judge feels that there is some hope of possible reconciliation.

When clients come by direction in this way the helping attempt is called conciliation to distinguish it from counseling, which involves willing clients who come on their own initia­tive. In such directed cases the counselor has first to attempt to win sufficient confidence for them to become willing to make any effort to cooperate at all in the interviews. One of the first steps in this is to encourage the clients to express fully their feelings about being sent for conciliation in this way. The counselor's warm acceptance of such negative feelings, and the clients' growing realization that there will be no pres­sure put on them to stay together will do much to break down any hostility or to overcome any indifference or skepticism which they may have had. When this has come about the con­ciliation leads into normal counseling.

When these adverse feelings have been overcome the clients will have developed good rapport with the counselor, and it seems obvious that he is by far the most appropriate person with whom they should have the opportunity to go on in the counseling. To set apart some people as "conciliators" with the idea of transferring clients who come to accept further help to "counselors" would ignore or do violence to one of the most essential principles of counseling, the delicate rela­tionship known as rapport. Those who are given the respon­sibility of conciliation should be the most experienced and highly trained and sensitive counselors obtainable, and they should be able to give all the time necessary for continued counseling where that is accepted by the clients.

Rapport, then, provides the essential framework in which all aspects of the counseling process can go on. It enables the clients to become progressively less inhibited and defensive, and to allow deeply "bottled up" feelings to come to the sur­face and be dealt with. It also allows the counselor to suggest many things for their consideration which might otherwise have been quite unacceptable to them. As we have seen it is not something fixed or constant, but something which has to be maintained as well as established, and if possible progres­sively deepened. Rapport always tends to fluctuate at the be­ginning, and at some points in the counseling process when the counselor may feel that there is not sufficient understanding by the clients as to what is being attempted, he may help greatly by pausing to define the aims and even the methods of the counseling.

In particular at the beginning of any subsequent interviews it may often be necessary for the counselor to set out to re­store some of the rapport that is often lost during the period between the interviews for various reasons, such as the client's feeling that he has said more than he intended, the negative influence of well-meaning and sometimes "all-knowing" rela­tives and friends, or the attitudes of the marital partner. The first few minutes of all subsequent interviews are often very important for the improvement or lessening of the rapport.

2.  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 pausefor 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.

In many cases, even when the counselor responds to the client's feelings, there will be so many facts surging in the client's mind that he will be unable to avoid a long recital of them. The counselor can often perform some subtle redirection in such cases by taking advantage of any further pauses in the story and again responding to the feelings that have just been expressed, and keeping the general pattern of facts at the back of his mind for possible later attention when the client may need some help to clarify his attitudes.

In this way, as the counselor responds acceptingly and with genuine interest to the client's expressions of feeling, the client may gradually come to accept the "cue" that the counselor is interested in how he feels, and then he will feel free to go on to a progressively deeper unburdening of feelings. The in­terview will then come "alive," and counselor and client will achieve communication and rapport on a deeper and deeper level.

Some alternative kinds of responses on the part of the coun­selor may be illustrated by an actual example. Here, for her first interview, is Betty Brown, and in the course of an intense outpouring of indignation about Frank, her husband, goes on to say "The other evening when my mother was visiting me with my husband's knowledge and was invited to stay for the evening meal, Frank just didn't come home when he'd prom­ised to do so, and when I got in touch with his office there was no answer. I felt deeply humiliated, and we just had to go on with the meal after giving him an hour's grace. Then at about ten o'clock he arrived with three of his objectionable friends, all of them the worse for alcohol, and they took pos­session of the lounge and went on with their rough party there, demanding that I bring them drinks from the refrigera­tor. I started to do that to keep the peace, but my mother started to tell Frank what she thought of him, and he savagely pushed her right into the sideboard, so that she got a bad cut in her head. And all Frank and his friends did was to laugh at her!" What kind of comment could the counselor make at this point?

a. "What happened then?" This would encourage Betty to rake up all the facts about Frank's conduct that she could think of, and the whole interview would be cluttered up with a mass of detail that would make the counselor's work almost impossible from the point of view of helping Betty to clarify her feelings and to achieve insight into the deeper aspects of the situation. A succession of facts would be appropriate in a legal action for divorce or for custody of the children or for maintenance, but not for the healing activity which is the aim and purpose of counseling.

b. "Frank had no right to do that!" However true this may be, it would not assist the counseling process at all to make such a comment. It would only add to Betty's resentment, and she would almost certainly throw the counselor's statement at Frank in their next conflict. When she tells Frank "The coun­selor said you had no right to do that!" one can well imagine how hopeless any attempt to gain Frank's confidence and cooperation in the counseling would be. The counselor is in no position to judge this issue, or indeed any issues, because he has no chance of assessing all the varied and complex factors which combine to induce any person to think and act in any particular way. He has not even any way of making sure that a client is telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

c. "You should have told him off properly and refused to have anything to do with the affair." Or "You should have re­alized he wasn't responsible for his actions at that time, and stopped your mother from interfering. She got what was coming to her!" Here again we have the entirely unwarranted judgment of the situation in two quite opposing ways, pre­sumably dictated by the emotional prejudices of the "coun­selor," together with some quite superficial and prejudiced advice. No such attitude as this would do anything but harm to the whole counseling process. Betty will have had plenty of such advice from many quarters, to her increasing confusion, because either the different suggestions are irreconcilable, or she would feel them impracticable or futile. This kind of com­ment will only increase her resentment against Frank, or stir up some quite natural resentment against the counselor. Any chance of better insight and understanding would be ruined.

d. "Are you sure you haven't done anything to Frank to make him want to stay out and get drunk?" It may well be that Betty has had some part in the conflict and has been "needling" Frank in some way as to make him "fed up" with things, but this is certainly not the time or the way to ap­proach that possibility. Betty in her indignation at Frank's conduct will be quite unable to see any part that she might have played in the conflict, and will resent the counselor's suggestion to the point of breaking the rapport, possibly be­ yond repair. She will not be at all likely to develop insight through such external suggestions until her pent up feelings are fully unburdened, and even then insight is much more likely to arise spontaneously from within than to be "injected" from without.

e. "You poor little girl, you shouldn't have to put up with such cruel treatment!" Here again such a statement may be quite true, but it will not be likely to help in the healing process for the counselor to identify himself with Betty in this way. It will tend to increase her self-pity and her indigna­tion, as many other comments of this kind that she has received will have done. It is also likely that she will throw this comment at Frank next time there is an argument, "The counselor said that I shouldn't have to put up with such cruel treatment!" This will almost certainly ruin any chance of making good contact with Frank, and of being a healing influence in the marital situation.

f. "Don't worry about that, I've seen many cases much worse than that which do very well with counseling!" This also may be quite true, but such a comment is completely in­ appropriate in counseling. The counselor is in no position at this point to give any reassurance, and such a comment is  much more likely for the purpose of relieving the counselor's anxiety than of helping the client. The client will know quite well that any such reassurance cannot be warranted at this stage, and will lose faith in the counselor's ability, and even his honesty and integrity, very quickly. Every counselor owes it to all his clients to be scrupulously honest in his comments and his attitudes.

g. "You felt pretty upset and humiliated about it?" Here is a simple accepting response to Betty's feelings, which will encourage her to go on unburdening them in a way that she will probably never have had a chance to do before this. To accept her feelings in this way does not mean that the coun­selor is judging the situation in any way. He is not saying that she ought to feel like that, or that Frank ought not to have done it, but simply that he realizes that she felt that way. The counselor has registered the facts in the back of his mind, but he has responded to the feelings, and in this way he is communicating to Betty that he is interested in the facts mainly for what they mean to her. He is inter-viewing, looking at her situation with her, feeling into her feelings without being in­volved in them. In that way he can provide a firm reliable support and can help to "lift" her spirit in a way that would be impossible if he were identified with her in her feelings as her own relatives might be.

This attitude of "feeling into" the client's feelings is gen­erally called "empathy." The word comes from a German word "Einfiihlung," which in its turn came from two Greek words which can be translated "In" and "Feeling." It differs from sympathy ("I feel as you do") and from antipathy ("I can't see why you should feel that way") and apathy ("I couldn't care less!"). It is trying to say something like "I'm beginning to realize how you feel." There is compassion in it, but also sufficient dispassion to prevent emotional identification which would deprive the counselor of the necessary objective perspective to help the client help himself.

Empathy in this sense would seem to be the counselor's most important contribution to the establishment and main­tenance of healthy rapport, and it is therefore one of the founda­tions of counseling. It is an expression of the counselor's unconditional readiness to "feel into" the client, to look at his difficulties and problems, and his efforts to deal with them, through the client's eyes, and thus to provide him with a kind of new dimension in which he can come to consider his prob­lems and their possible solutions. Above all, and whether there may be any adequate solution or not, the counselor provides the renewed encouragement of a healthy accepting personal relationship for the client's growth to greater maturity and understanding.

Empathy is not an easy quality to achieve or maintain. The counselor, being human, will have his share of emotions, prej­udices, needs, and habitual attitudes, many of which may be evoked by the client's story and expressed feelings. It is all too easy for the counselor to respond in any of the ways al­ready mentioned, fact-finding, moralizing, advising, criticizing, sympathizing, or reassuring respectively. Or he may plunge prematurely into the "practical" question, "What are you going to do about it?" To give genuine empathy any counselor needs to be aware of most of his own emotional needs and habitual attitudes and prejudices, so that he can allow for them, and be on guard against their intrusion into the counseling process. Even the most "accepting" words can be said in such a manner as to convey indifference, criticism, and even hostility, and the counselor needs constantly to ask himself the honest ques­tions, "Am I being too protective to this person?" "Why did that remark stir up these feelings in me?" In this way, and by regular frank discussion of his work with other counselors, he may be helped to greater emotional steadiness, and the abil­ity to offer genuine warmth without sentimentality.

To return to the counselor's response to Betty, "You felt pretty upset and humiliated about it?" This will give Betty the chance to confirm his impression of her feelings, or if she wishes to modify or extend it. It will certainly give her the feeling that here is someone ready to look honestly at her difficulty with her, and not to try to argue her out of her feelings or pat her condescendingly on the back. She will have the growing feeling that at least she can take the risk of being her real self. As this happens she will feel freer to talk about many things previously regarded as too threatening to her self-respect, and as she finds even these things accepted by the counselor, and herself accepted in spite of them, her de­fenses will go down and she will become, possibly for the first time, able to "come to herself," as the Prodigal did. Of course this may not all happen in the initial interview, but when the counselor handles the initial interview well the insight-gen­erating process will become well established.

In many cases it is found that as the unburdening goes on the initial expression of mainly negative feelings, and reports about the partner's misdeeds will be gradually replaced by more positive expressions. At the beginning the positive ex­pressions may be mixed up with the negative, love and hostil­ity, independence and dependence, confidence and anxiety or doubt. This is called "ambivalence," and it is present to a considerable extent as "mixed feelings" in everyone. When it comes out in counseling the client may feel that there must be something abnormal in having such "contrary" feelings, and the counselor can best handle this situation by a simple accepting response to the ambivalent feelings.

For example, in the course of her further narrative Betty may say something like, "And yet with all those beastly things he's done I know he is good at heart and I still can't help loving him. There must be something peculiar about me!" The coun­selor's response might be something like, "Even though you can't bear a lot of his behavior you still feel he's lovable deep down?" The counselor's simple "matter of fact" acceptance of the ambivalence will generally do more to help the client than any vigorous assurance that "everybody has mixed feel­ings like that at times."

When the counselor makes the first response, "Even though you can't bear a lot of his behavior, you still feel he's lovable deep down?" it is quite likely that Betty will go on in some more positive expressions, such as "Yes, he's a good man at heart, I think he must have been going through a pretty worri­some time. If we could only get some of these horrible squab­bles cleared up I'm sure we could be very happy, as we used to be." From being almost entirely dominated by her sense of humiliation and hostility, Betty has now come quite spon­taneously, through the counseling relationship, to a much more objective and positive view of her situation, and a readi­ness to move ahead towards growth and healing of the marital relationship. She will go home from this interview much more relaxed and restrained, not approving Frank's crude and ill-mannered actions any more than she did, but ready to accept him and to see that he may be struggling with himself and not always able to cope adequately with his feelings.

Whatever may happen with any counseling with Frank, Betty will still have a lot more to do if she is to achieve suffi­cient understanding of her own vulnerabilities to work towards a lasting marital harmony, and Frank too will need to do the same. It takes two to make a partnership, but only one to de­stroy it. But even if Frank were unwilling to come it is possible to do something quite worthwhile through Betty if she can grow in maturity and learn to handle Frank's childish outbursts with dignity, with sustained acceptance of him coupled with a frankly expressioned disapproval of his uncooperative behavior. Many marital disorders are very greatly healed by the ability of the more far-seeing partner to rise to the chal­lenge with the help of a good counselor, and develop the mature capacity to accept other people and their feelings even though disapproving of their conduct. Here surely is the es­sence of personal relationship in society as well as in domestic life.

At some point in the interviewing, often towards the end of the initial interview but not necessarily so, it may be helpful for the counselor to make some attempt to define the goals and purposes of the counseling. In this way it may become clear to the client that he or she may through it be helped to greater understanding, greater growth to maturity, and greater ability to deal constructively with personal relationships. This may correct any assumption that the counselor will "do something" to bring peace and concord, or that he may "bring the partner to his senses" or "make him see that." Then it is more likely that counselor and client will work toward the same end.

The client will often provide the opening for such defini­tion of the aims of counseling by some question or remark. As the unburdening of the first or a later interview seems to be nearing its end a client will often ask some such question as "Now I've told you about the sorry affair, what you going to do about it?" This question may be implied rather than asked directly, but in either case it provides the counselor with the opportunity to deal with a misconception which may lead him and the client to work at cross purposes unless it is corrected.

The definition is generally best carried out tactfully, so as not to give any feeling of rejection. An example of the coun­selor's response might be, "You are hoping that I might be able to offer a solution to your problem? What kind of help were youhoping I might be able to give?" The client may either convey any underlying expectations regarding the coun­seling, or may throw it back to the counselor with some such remark as, "I really don't know, but I thought you'd have some ideas to suggest," or "I hoped you'd be able to do something to help."

The counselor might then respond in such a manner as, "I imagine you've already had quite a bit of advice, and been rather disappointed that it hasn't helped very much. Most of us find that in such complex things as the intimate personal relationships of marriage the best help we can give is to look with each person at his or her problems so that we can come to understand something of how they feel about it, and then to see if together we can come to understand better why they feel as they do. By talking the situation over as fully as possible in this way we find that people can come to see their situation and that of their partner more clearly. They are then better able to look at the various alternatives and decide what they can do about it without being confused by their upset feelings. I think you can see that this would be likely to need a few more sessions, and if you would like to go on I shall be glad to hear more of how you feel about it, and to look with you at any­thing you feel able to talk about." This might not be offered at such length in one "speech," but it represents the kind of definition that many clients may need in their unfamiliarity with the aims and methods of counseling.

A similar kind of definition may be given in response to another type of question by the client, "What do you think I should do about this?" The counselor's response might be, "What alternatives had you in mind? Perhaps we could look at them for a minute so that we could think about them be­tween now and the next session." If they are given by the client, the counselor might then say, "Do you think it might be best to look more deeply into these so that we can find a really worthwhile answer to the problem?" Then he can go on to define the counseling aims as before.

At some point in this discussion it is generally important for the counselor to emphasize that everything discussed in every session of counseling is held in sacred confidence and not dis­closed to anyone, even the marital partner, without the client's permission. There may be many kinds of natural openings for this, for example when the client expresses the feeling of some kind of disloyalty in discussing a marital partner or a parent or parent-in-law; or when the client seems diffident about dis­cussing matters of immorality or possible mental illness. Such assurances will often overcome the client's reticence and greatly assist in the establishment of rapport.

3.  TERMINATION OF THE INTERVIEW

As a general rule it is found that about fifty to sixty min­utes is an appropriate time for any interview, unless there are special circumstances that make variation necessary. The client will generally be unable to profit sufficiently by any longer interview, and the counselor will generally have other re­sponsibilities to discharge. There are some dependent types of client who seem to have a need to prolong interviews, and when the time is approaching for the termination they will bring up some new and important matter for discussion. Even at some expense to the rapport it is generally wise for any counselor to hold his clients tactfully but firmly to the realities of time; this is probably good for the client's education in "reality thinking." If the counselor allows the client to dictate the time of interviews there will come a time when the coun­selor is actually unable to spare extra time and this will cause great feeling of rejection to a client who has been allowed to be the "spoiled child" in this way previously.

It is generally important to leave the client with some more positive hopeful ideas at the end of any interview, and the counselor needs to prepare for this, beginning at about ten minutes before the termination. He tries to avoid matters which are heavily charged with feeling at that time, and he also tries to lead up to a simple summary of what has been expressed and what has been planned, if anything. The general intro­duction to this terminal stage of the interview may be some­thing like this, "I'm afraid we're coming near the end of our time, and I can see that you still have some important things to work out. But perhaps we might try to summarize what we have managed to consider together and what may be worth thinking about before next time. Then we can have time at the next session to go more fully into what you may want to talk over." If necessary the counselor can bring up some en­couraging thing that has come up in the interview, so as to conclude on as optimistic a note as possible, but it would not generally be helpful to drag in any optimistic assurance which has not been warranted.

The client should always feel quite free to decide whether or not to make another appointment, and if no appointment is made he should be assured that he can always come again if he should feel any desire to make another appointment.

4.  THE INITIAL INTERVIEW WITH THE SECOND PARTNER

If the second partner doesn't come spontaneously it is gen­erally wise for the counselor, with the first partner's permission, to write to him in some such terms as previously described.

"Dear Mr., Your wife has been to see me for help in the marital situation that has arisen between you. I think I could be of more help if I could have the opportunity of hearing how you feel about it. If you can manage to come for a talk I would be glad if you would make an appointment at a mutually suitable time. Yours faithfully,." To ask or allow the first partner to invite him may fail because he may say "no" on principle because of the conflict with his wife. To call him on the telephone would be asking him to make an immediate decision, which is not fair, and might block his acceptance. He can carry a letter around in his pocket for some days, and think it over carefully before deciding, and his deci­sion is then more in line with his real feelings.

The actual initial interview with the second partner will often begin more cautiously than that with the first as we have seen but with adept sensitive handling the rapport will generally come quite quickly.

This interview might begin with a simple understanding kind of comment after the formal greeting, such as, "I'm glad you were able to come, I imagine you've had your share of worry in all this." In the case of Betty and Frank already men­tioned, the interview with Frank might then open up in some such manner as this:

f. Yes, it hasn't been very pleasant, we seem to get more more and more in each other's hair, and I don't seem to be able to make the grade in Betty's expectations.

c. Would you like to tell me how you feel about the whole business; where you think the conflicts seem to be be­tween you?

f. I suppose the main conflict comes because I constantly feel that Betty is trying to mold me into a kind of pat­tern that isn't me at all and couldn't be me. I'm supposed to be the good handyman and the good domestic help when required, and when I don't fit in with these quite rigid expectations there's a row. Not a momentary row either, it goes on sometimes for days, and if I ask her to stop picking at me she just gets more and more persistent with a kind of determination to wear me down. All I can do is to walk out and stay out for a time, I've even walked round the street for hours when there's nothing else I'd feel able to do. Betty little realizes what an effort it sometimes takes for me to come home, knowing that the strife is going to be on, and wonder­ing whether I'll be able to control myself and avoid violence. I've managed it mostly so far, except for an unfortunate accident with her mother when she started to pick at me, but I can't feel sure that I'll always be able to restrain myself.

c. You feel pretty fed up with the pressure on your per­sonality, and you can't get Betty to realize that?

f. If she only knew, that sort of thing only makes me all the more determined to hang on to the little bit of free­dom I seem to be able to preserve. There are even times when I can't resist the urge to do things that upset her just to prove to myself as well as to her that I'm not going to be molded to her pattern. And that only seems to make her even more determined to organize me. Now she's getting more and more distant and even sulk­ing at times, as if I'm a sort of intruder in the house. When I try to make any loving approach as likely as not she'll just push me away as if she hated the ground I walked on. And yet I know that's not really how she feels, she used to be the most demonstrative soul. I've thought about it from every possible angle, and I can only think she's going through a lot of strife in­side herself. I know I've handled things pretty badly at times and at other times I've been so troubled that I've forgotten things I should have remembered. Do you think there's any chance that things between us can be straightened out, I've got pretty despairing about the whole business.

c. It looks to you as if Betty is struggling a bit too, and you're both ready to make a real effort to find a better understanding. Do you feel that there must be some real hope that two sensible adults who both want to do so will be able, with a bit of help, to find the way to better understanding and cooperation?

f. Yes, I feel much more hopeful than I did, I think this has only just come in time. I'm ready to give it all I've got, and if we can't work out something this time I'm afraid it's all up.

c. This is it. You're ready to get right down into the whole thing?

f. Yes, it looks as if we've got to go deeper than we've so far been able to do if we're to get anywhere, and I think we're both ready for a shot at that. If we could know why we react to each other in such stupid ways, and stir up more conflict when we want to improve the feeling between us, I think it would help tremen­dously. But it seems a bit too difficult so far. I don't feel very expert at what you call "getting right down into the whole thing," and I'll probably need some help in understanding the kind of thing you want. But I feel better for this discussion, I'm even beginning to feel interested in how this sort of thing works. I'm afraid I was a bit vague about what I was letting myself in for. After Betty had had an open go with you, and probably told you some hair raising things about me, I wondered what you'd think about me.

c. You'd thought I might do a bit of judging?

f. Well . . . yes, that's what everybody else she's talked to seems to have done, without much interest into any of my feelings about the sorry business. I've kept things pretty much to myself, I haven't felt that it would do any good to go talking and telling tales on

Betty to anyone, even to my mother. It seems a bit dis­loyal to me. I didn't even intend to tell you much about her, but somehow it came out and I'm glad I've been able to let off some steam. I suppose I'll have to look at some of my own less pleasant qualities too, and I think I can make a genuine attempt to do that.

It looks as if Frank is taking a little time to get down to the job and taking some temporary refuge in generalities, possibly helped to this by the counselor's response to his question about whether there's any chance that things can be straightened out. But the counselor has let him take his time to come round, and the rapport seems good at this point.

What has been described so far is obviously a brief sum­mary of the main threads in the initial interview with Betty and the first part of the initial interview with Frank. Many of the invariable deviations from the main threads have been left out for purposes of clarity and length. But this account may illustrate something of the kind of attitude and method of handling the initial interviews in the attempt to achieve good rapport with each partner, and to prepare the way for some deeper exploration with them. It also illustrates some natural feelings of the second partner in coming for counsel­ing and the relief that comes from the counselor's acceptance of them, which may open the way, as with Frank, for the greater unburdening of feeling than he had previously felt able to do. The acceptance of these feelings helps to lay the foundation for a healthy rapport. Without this rapport, it might well be impossible for many men to risk baring their souls con­cerning matters about which they feel rather uncomfortable and even ashamed, but which have to be worked through if partners are to be freed for spontaneous relationships with each other.

5. SOME SIGNIFICANT MENTAL PROCESSES FOUND IN COUNSELING

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.

h. 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.

i. 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.

j. 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.

k. 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.

1. 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.

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."

m. 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.

n. Identification. It is very common for a counselor to be tempted to identify with a client whose feelings touch a sym­pathetic chord. This differs from counter-transference in that the counselor is responding to something experienced by a client rather than something experienced by himself directly from the client.

For example a female married counselor who has children of her own may be given a pathetic story by a female client of the husband's sadistic and sustained cruelty to their children. It may be that the counselor suffered from some such cruelty in her own childhood, and has been trying to give her own chil­dren a much better life than she received. Now the account of cruelty to the client's children, and the client's distress may well stir up very strong hostile feelings against the client's husband before she even sees him, coupled with considerable emotional identification with the client. She may either feel averse to seeing the husband at all, or if she does see him she may have a strong desire to let him know what she thinks of him.

If such feelings are strong it might be wise for her to arrange for another counselor to see the husband, and if necessary the wife too, because strong identification with the client will only add to her hostility against her husband, while the coun­selor's hostility would most likely spoil any chance of building rapport with the husband.

It is of course natural for such feelings to arise in the coun­selor under such conditions, but an important part of the inner resources of the counselor's personality is that she should be able to withhold judgment, and assume that there will be some set of reasons for the husband's cruelty. If she can control her feelings in some such manner as this and give full acceptance to the husband she may gain some idea of his feelings and his background, the uncritical assumptions and emotional needs behind his attitudes. Then, possibly in a joint session, the whole background conflict which contributed to the cruelty might come out in the only kind of atmosphere in which it could be constructively faced and dealt with.

Behind all such emotional reactions in any counselor there is a fundamental reality which sometimes needs to be recalled. We often allow ourselves to live in the unreal assumption that life should be always pleasant, and ignore the grim fact that suffering is a universal experience, an integral part of life as it has always been and as it will be as long as there is evil abroad in the world. Everyone who comes into any "helping" activity will come at some time to the realization so eloquently ex­pressed by St. Paul, "We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." (Ephesians, 6:12, R.S.V.) However they may regard it counselors need what St. Paul described as "the whole armor of God," .the ability and strength to fight constructively against all unnecessary suffer­ing, but to do so in such a manner as is most likely to over­come it "from the ground up," by inner healing of the dis­turbed personalities who in their bewilderment or despair would go on inflicting it. Contact with human suffering drives anyone with any regard for human beings back onto their own philosophy or their own religion, and constitutes a searching test of its adequacy and a challenge to continued growth and personal development.

Identification can occur in many other ways than that which has been discussed, and it is inevitable that a counselor will find things in the unburdening of his clients which resonate with his own inner feelings and his earlier and more recent experiences. But counselors are trained, and gain considerable practice in the art of keeping themselves out of the picture, and concentrating in genuine caring fashion on the welfare of the client in the long term more than the short term view.

This involves some real self-acceptance on the part of the counselor, without which it is very difficult to accept anyone else in any genuine fashion. There is always room for improve­ment in every counselor's inner resources of psychic strength and stamina, and counseling itself provides a very good op­portunity for such improvement to happen as long as the counselor is honest with himself and open to a genuine search for help when he feels any need for it.

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