Showing papers in "Journal of Counseling Psychology in 1994"

Development of the Multicultural Counseling Inventory: A self-report measure of multicultural competencies.

Abstract: This article presents the Multicultural Counseling Inventory, a self-report instrument that measures multicultural counseling competencies in counselors.

Individualism-Collectivism, Social-Network Orientation, and Acculturation as Predictors of Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Among Chinese Americans

Abstract: Several culturally based variables were used to predict the patterns of help-seeking attitudes among a sample of Chinese-American students (TV = 219) in a large midwestern university. Cultural values operationalized by H. C. Triandis, R. Bontempo, M. J. Villareal, M. Asai, and N. Lucca's (1988) Individualism-Collectivism Scale, social support attitudes operationalized by A. Vaux's (1985) Network Orientation Scale, and the continuous variable of acculturation operationalized by the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale (R. M. Suinn, K. Rickard-Figueroa, S. Lew, & P. Vigil, 1987) were selected as predictors of attitudes as measured by E. H. Fischer and J. L. Turner's (1970) Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale. Each of the 4 independent variables were found to be significant predictors of attitudes towards seeking professional psychological help. The counseling and research implications of the results are discussed. Research on cross-cultural issues that have an impact on counseling and psychotherapy has gained an impetus only since the 1970s (Atkinson, 1985). Atkinson (1985) examined reviews that had critically summarized studies dealing with the relationship between cultural and counseling variables (Atkinson, 1983; Harrison, 1975; Sattler, 1977). Three important characteristics of the studies conducted before 1985 stood out. First, most of the research had focused on relations between African Americans and Caucasians and had not examined other racial and ethnic groups. Second, the settings in which a large proportion of the studies had been conducted were mental health outpatient clinics or psychiatric hospital inpatient units, not college counseling centers. Third, either a survey or an archival research design had been used in a majority of the studies. These observations can also be made about a large number of studies that have examined the role of ethnic and racial variables in areas of psychology other than those of counseling and psychotherapy. Atkinson (1985) recommended that researchers study a number of different ethnic and racial groups, investigate within-group variables, such as self-designated identity and cultural commitment, and do more research in college settings. These recommendations are valuable for studies on a number of psychological issues and processes. Some of these issues include attitudes, values, experiences, expectations, beliefs, and social-support systems of members of different ethnic groups (Root, 1985). These factors affect a number of behaviors, one of which is the act of seeking professional psychological help. Research has shown that members of non-Caucasian ethnic groups

Clients' deference in psychotherapy.

Abstract: In the present study, 14 psychotherapy clients were interveiwed about their recollections, assisted by tape replay, of an immediately preceding therapy session. A major category derived from a grounded theory analysis of the interview protocols was clients' deference to the therapist, constituted of 8 lower level categories: concern of the therapist's approach, fear of criticizing the therapist, understanding the therapist's frame of reference, meeting the perceived expectations of the therapist, accepting the therapist's limitations, client's metacommunication, threatening the therapist's self-esteem, and indebtedness to the therapist.

Client Retrospective Recall of Resolved and Unresolved Misunderstanding Events.

Abstract: Client retrospective recall of major misunderstanding events was studied in 19 cases of therapy. A qualitative methodology was used to describe the sequence of 11 resolved and 8 unresolved misunderstanding events. Results indicated that a good relationship, clients' willingness to assert negative feelings about being misunderstood, and therapists' facilitation of a mutual repair effort through maintaining a flexible and accepting stance typically led to resolution. In contrast, a poor relationship, therapists* unwillingness to discuss or accept clients' assertion of negative reactions to being misunderstood, or therapists' lack of awareness of clients' negative feelings led to unresolved misunderstandings and often to clients quitting therapy. The ability of clients and therapists to survive lapses in understanding and to put these critical moments to therapeutic use has been extensively explored from a theoretical perspective (Bordin, 1979; Luborsky, 1983; Safiran, 1993; Safran, Crocker, McMain, & Murray, 1990; Weiss & Sampson, 1986). For example, Kohut (1984) suggested that successive minor lapses in empathy enable clients to learn how to negotiate separateness from their therapists in tolerable doses. Growth, from Kohut's perspective, is evidenced when clients progress from experiencing the most minor misunderstanding as a near rupture to being able to tolerate the inevitable disappointments and misunderstandings that occur within the course of the therapeutic relationship. The ability of clients to communicate openly about their experiences to their therapists when they feel misunderstood is seen as a critical juncture because clients must assert themselves as separate from their therapists if they are to preserve and authorize their own experience. Similarly, experiential and interpersonal theorists acknowledge the importance of helping clients directly communicate their felt experiences. An important part of the change process in experiential therapy is for therapists to help clients identify and bring into awareness what they are feeling at a given moment, including suppressed or unarticulated negative feelings (Greenberg, Rice, & Elliott, 1993; Mitchell, 1988; Safran & Segal, 1990).

Evaluation and Description of Psychotherapy Sessions by Clients Using the Session Evaluation Questionnaire and the Session Impacts Scale.

Abstract: Clients' evaluations of their sessions were prominent in factor-based indexes of session impact derived from the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) and the Session Impacts Scale (SIS) in a large sample (n=2414 sessions with 218 clients).

Relationship between White racial identity attitudes and self-reported multicultural counseling competencies.

Abstract: This research tested a multicultural competency training model's hypothesis that counseling students' White racial identity development strongly influences their attainment of multicultural counseling competencies.

Counselor Content Orientation, Counselor Race, and Black Women's Cultural Mistrust and Self-Disclosures.

Abstract: Black women were exposed to Black or White female counselors whu used verbal statements reflective of either a cultural or a universal orientation. The effects of counselor content orientation, counselor race, and participants' cultural mistrust levels on the frequency and depth of participant self-disclosures, ratings of counselor credibility, and willingness to self-refer were examined.

Measuring the impact of sessions in process€xperiential therapy of depression: The Session Impacts Scale.

Abstract: The Session Impacts Scale (SIS) is a brief client-report measure of the experienced impacts of therapy sessions. Data were collected from depressed clients seen in short-term process-experiential treatment. Factor analyses were consistent with the expected hierarchical structure of the measure.

Role of Adolescent-Parent Relationships in College Student Development and Adjustment.

Abstract: In this study the hypothesis that the conjoint variance of psychological separation and parental attachment is more strongly related to college student development and adjustment than either set of variables in isolation was tested.

Cultural sensitivity in multicultural counseling: A perceptual schema model.

Abstract: A critical review of the multicultural counseling literature revealed 4 limitations of previous conceptualizations of cultural sensitivity: definitional variance, inadequate descriptions of indicators of cultural sensitivity, a lack of theoretical grounding, and limitations in measurement and research designs. The article proposed a model that contextualizes the construct in perceptual schema theory.

Comprehensive process analysis of insight events in cognitive-behavioral and psychodynamic-interpersonal psychotherapies.

Abstract: Comprehensive Process Analysis (CPA) is an interpretive, qualitative research method for analyzing significant therapy events. CPA was used to analyze 6 client-identified significant insight events in 2 treatments. Two events are presented in depth. The psychodynamic-interpersonal therapy event documented the existence of 2-part significant events and the value of key words. The cognitive-behavioral therapy event illustrated the role of context in transforming small therapy events into significant events. Events in both therapies involved therapist interpretations of recent difficult life events that were delivered in a firm but interactive style. Interpersonal therapy events were distinguished by links to themes from previous sessions and led to awareness of painful emotions. Cognitive therapy events were externalizing reattributions given to more clinically distressed clients. A revised 5-stage microprocess model of the insight is presented. What is insight? A key concept in psychotherapy theories since Freud, insight seems at once both simple and difficult to define. The sense of suddenly seeing a previously missed perceptual pattern, or the ah-hah experience of solving a difficult intellectual or personal puzzle, is a familiar one. Although insight is a central concept in the modern institution of psychotherapy and counseling, relatively little is actually known about it. For example, the defining features of insight have not been properly clarified, nor is it clear what factors give rise to therapeutic insight, how insight unfolds, or what its consequences are. An analysis of standard words, definitions, and usage, as well as client accounts (Elliott, 1984), suggests that insight may have four major elements. The first element is metaphorical vision, or seeing with figurative eyes (e.g., "It made me see I have a tremendous conflict there"). This element also includes the metaphorical illumination that makes the "seeing into" possible ("The light went on"). This visual metaphor is in keeping with the etymology of the word insight as "internal seeing" (The Compact Edition of

Qualitative Analysis of Clients' Subjective Experience of Significant Moments During the Exploration of Problematic Reactions

Abstract: In this study, 8 clients participated in interpersonal process recall interviews (N. Kagan, 1975) to review therapy sessions in which they explored problematic reactions. The reports of their recalled experience during the sessions were analyzed qualitatively by means of the grounded theory method (B. G. Glaser & A. Strauss, 1967). The analysis resulted in a model of the cognitiveaffective operations characterizing the clients' internal processes during the sessions. The model's main categories were client operations and session momentum. The 1st category subsumed the following lower order categories: symbolic representation of experience, reflexive self-examination, new realizations, and revisioning self. The 2nd category subsumed the positive and negative dimensions of the clients' experiences during the session. The theoretical and practical implications of the model are discussed. A recent development in psychotherapy process research has been the conceptualization of performance models of small episodes of therapy to identify the active ingredients of therapeutic change (Clarke, 1989; Rice & Greenberg, 1984). Rice and Saperia (1984) proposed a performance model that characterized the way in which clients resolve problematic reactions when therapists implement the technique of systematic evocative unfolding. Problematic reactions are emotional or behavioral reactions that clients feel in some way are puzzling or too extreme. For example, they might be surprised by the extent to which they feel rejected in response to casual remarks made by friends. Rice and Saperia (1984) identified four phases necessary for clients' successful resolution of problematic reactions. First, markers are identified that consist of clients' statements that they are puzzled or perplexed by their reactions to a specific situation. Second, the situations in which the clients experienced their problematic reactions are evoked through the use of concrete, vivid, and imagistic language. Third, clients identify the salient aspects of the situations that triggered their reactions and explore their affective responses or their perceptions of the stimulus situation to identify its subjective impact. Fourth, clients broaden and deepen their exploration to acquire a deeper understanding of their own mode of functioning. This last phase enables them to restructure the initial problem and gives them a sense of being able to change the situation. The method of task analysis has been used to explicate therapists' tacit knowledge of the change process and to describe clients' and therapists' performances as represented in therapy transcripts. However, the extrinsic enabling conditions, to borrow a phrase from Harre (1984), of therapeutic change have not been addressed. Consequently, clients' intrinsic enabling conditions—such as their internal operations, subjective experience, and intentionality— remain covert. A primary objective of this study was to use interpersonal process recall (IPR; Kagan, 1975) to obtain clients' reports of their subjective experiences during the exploration of problematic reactions in order to illuminate the internal cognitive-affective operations that clients engage in to resolve problematic issues and effect changes in their behavior. This model of clients' subjective experience was then compared and contrasted with the performance model (Rice & Saperia, 1984) in order to increase understanding of the change process during the change event.

Problem-Solving Appraisal, Hopelessness, and Suicide Ideation: Evidence for a Mediational Model.

Abstract: This study extended the research on Schotte & Clum's theory of suicidal behavior by using structural equation modeling involving latent variables to evaluate whether the construct of hopelessness mediates between the constructs of problem-solving appraisal and suicide ideation.

Expectancies for Negative Mood Regulation, Coping, and Dysphoria among College Students.

Abstract: Participants (N=222) completed measures of negative mood regulation expectancies, negative life events, coping responses, dysphoria, and somatic symptoms. After 6 to 8 weeks, they completed the same questionnaires except that daily hassles in the previous month were assessed instead of negative life events.

Interracial and intraracial quasi-counseling interactions when counselors avoid discussing race.

Abstract: Dyadic interactions composed of Black clients and White or Black race-avoidant counselors in 1-time quasi-counseling sessions were influenced by myriad factors, including how these clients responded to influential purveyors of a race-neutralizing climate. 24 interactions were analyzed to identify significant patterns in the counseling process. The following core categories related to interactional quality were uncovered: smooth, exasperated, constricted, and disjunctive.

Clinical judgmental biases: the moderating roles of counselor cognitive complexity and counselor client preferences

Abstract: This study found that counselor individual differences in cognitive complexity, but not preferences for client problems, moderate the cognitive processes that lead to bias in clinical judgment. A particularly robust and unambiguous clinical bias, known as diagnostic overshadowing, was selected for the study.

Trends in psychotherapy process research: samples, measures, researchers, and classic publications

Abstract: Psychotherapy studies published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology and the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology between 1978 and 1992 were examined.

Goal continuity as a mediator of early retirement adjustment: testing a multidimensional model

Abstract: From a self-psychology perspective adaptation to cvhanges in life depends on the ability to maintain stable and meaningful life goals and purpose, or goal continuity. Goal continuity was hypothesized to be a mediator of early retirement adjustment, being a variable between personal and social resources and life adjustment.

Predictors of client implementation of counselor recommendations: Match with problem, difficulty level, and building on client strengths.

Abstract: Three variables were used to predict whether clients would implement a treatment recommendation suggested by their counselor. The 3 predictor variables were (a) the match between the problem and the recommendation, (b) the difficulty level of the recommendation; and (c) the degree to which the recommendation was built on the client's strengths.