Tag Archives: counseling skills

February 3, 2009 · 11:31 am

Improving Case Conceptualization?


For my counselor readers: What books or other helps have you encountered that improved your ability to conceptualize cases?

When we teach counseling skills we do the following (we do more than this but this is the general trajectory):

  1. Build basic helping/counseling skills (if you can’t connect with a person and build a trusting relationship, any knowledge you might have will be useless!)
  2. Expose students to a wide variety of problems (so they can understand and describe common problems in living or common pathologies–even if they are not sure of the causes of these problems)
  3. Explore human growth and development from a descriptive and biblical viewpoint (this at the same time as #2 so that they learn about common problems  and sufferings as well as what healthy and Godward lives look like in a fallen world)
  4. Teach case conceptualization (marrying client information (e.g., background info, presenting problems, attempts to solve the problems, etc.) with theoretical understanding of the person/problem/desired outcome.
  5. Build intervention repertoire during fieldwork.

#4 is the hardest, especially in a generalist program that doesn’t spend a great deal of time on theoretical models (we teach models as part of every course and our model of Christian psychology (biblical anthropology along with process oriented model) isn’t as defined as the old models (e.g., Rogers, Freud, etc.).

If you were teaching counseling to practicum students who needed help with conceptualizing cases, what resources would you turn to?

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April 21, 2008 · 5:43 am

Practicum Monday: Is conflict necessary in therapy?


In the latest edition of the Journal of Counseling Psychology (55:2, 172-184), Nelson, Barnes, Evans, and Triggiano have published an article on the inevitable conflict between supervisor and supervisee–what leads to it, how supervisors react to it as well as supervisor strategies for managing it.

But, these lines about therapy caught my eye:

It is likely that conflict is as difficult to manage in supervision as it is in psychotherapy. Yet addressing conflicts successfully can be a healing and educational venture. The work of “tear and repair” in therapeutic relationships suggested by Safran (1993) and Safran and Murran (1996, 2000) is thought to be critical to optimal outcome in psychotherapy. The capacity of therapeutic relationships to recover from relationship breaches is thought to enhance client trust that relationships can survive misunderstandings and disagreements as well as client confidence that he or she can successfully resolve them. A skillful therapist can guide a client through the process of accepting the therapist’s inevitable fallibility, thus enhancing client capacity to accept his or her own… (172)

What do you think? Is conflict necessary for healing? I think yes. Otherwise, the client and the therapist idealize each other and so become blind to reality.

However, not all relationship breaches are good and we don’t always respond well to them, making matters worse.

How do you feel about conflict with your clients? With your counselor?

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