The guidance counselor must pay the closest attention to the spirit of the counselee, for it is there that the counselee's personality and motivation exists. The spirit of a person is the immaterial essence of the personality that continues to exist after the body dies. As Jesus related in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), the spirit of a man is able to "remember" (v. 25). Thus, the spirit is where true and lasting changes begin. Proverbs 25:28 says "He that [hath] no rule over his own spirit [is like] a city [that is] broken down, [and] without walls." A person who does not rule his spirit acquires habits and actions that are destructive. Conversely, one who does rule his spirit acts wisely, and builds up both himself and the people (or society) around him.
A method of counseling that will seek to effect lasting changes in and benefit to the counselee must therefore be willing to deal with the spirit of a person. However, most people do not know their own spirit well, even though it influences what they do. People can describe their actions, but some cannot even guess at their motivation. The secular counselor, ignoring the spirit, treats only the symptoms of the diseased spirit such as neuroses and obsessions. All of these, however, derive from a spirit that is sick with sin. The counselor's difficulty is in finding what the counselee knows (in his spirit) but does not know he knows, through dialogue, questions, and guesses.
Ottens, Shank, and Long propose a method of empathy they call "abductive logic," wherein the counselor forms a hypothesis (guess) as to the counselee's motivation, based on the stories and incidents the counselee tells. The importance of using abductive logic in career counseling is that many people who come in for career counseling are themselves unaware of what they really want to do, and even may be unaware of what they are able to do. Questions and dialogue through abductive ...