Counseling Theories & Helping Relationships Flashcards

A counselor working with a client from a collectivist cultural background notices the client defers to family consensus over personal preferences. Using a culturally sensitive approach, the counselor should first:

Answer: Explore the client's own meaning and experience of this value orientation

Culturally sensitive practice requires understanding the client's own experience of their values before imposing a culturally bound framework; the counselor should explore rather than pathologize collectivist values.

Erik Erikson's psychosocial stage of 'Intimacy vs. Isolation' is the developmental challenge associated with which life period?

Answer: Young adulthood (18–40 years)

Erikson placed Intimacy vs. Isolation in young adulthood, during which individuals work to form deep, committed relationships or risk experiencing isolation and loneliness.

The concept of 'transference' in psychoanalytic therapy refers to:

Answer: The client redirecting feelings from past significant relationships onto the therapist

Transference occurs when a client unconsciously displaces feelings, expectations, and relationship patterns from past significant figures (often parents) onto the therapist.

In strategic family therapy (Haley, Madanes), the therapist's role is best described as:

Answer: An active director who designs specific interventions to shift problem-maintaining sequences

Strategic therapists are deliberately directive, designing tailored interventions (including paradoxical directives and ordeals) to interrupt the specific behavioral sequences maintaining the presenting problem.

According to Yalom's existential therapy, which of the four 'ultimate concerns' most directly relates to a terminally ill client's fear that their life has been meaningless?

Answer: Meaninglessness

Yalom identified meaninglessness—the confrontation that the universe has no inherent meaning and humans must create their own—as the ultimate concern most relevant to fears about living an unfulfilled or purposeless life.

A counselor notices a personal emotional reaction of frustration when working with a particularly demanding client. From a psychodynamic perspective, this reaction is called:

Answer: Countertransference

Countertransference refers to the therapist's unconscious emotional reactions to the client, which can be triggered by the client's material or the therapist's own unresolved issues.

When a counselor paraphrases a client's statement and checks for accuracy, the primary purpose of this active listening skill is to:

Answer: Communicate understanding and encourage the client to elaborate or correct

Paraphrasing serves to communicate that the counselor heard the client accurately, gives the client an opportunity to correct misunderstandings, and encourages further exploration of the topic.