counseling that seeks to effect lasting changes in and benefit to the client 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. Accordingly, a counselor treats the symptoms of the diseased spirit such as neuroses and obsessions of the mind. The counselor's therapeutic objective is in determining what the client knows (in his spirit) but does not know he knows, through dialogue, questions, and guesses. Making this determination of motivation and assisting the client to gain insight into it is the goal of career guidance counseling; it is also the way in which change takes place.
With respect to methods for attaining the foregoing goal, Ottens, Shank, and Long (1995) propose a method of empathy they call "abductive logic," wherein the counselor forms a hypothesis (guess) as to the client's motivation, based on the stories and incidents the client 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 may even be unaware of what they are able to do. Questions and dialogue through abductive logic may help the counselor help the client uncover what it is he actually enjoys as well as expects, by investigating the things revealed when the client expresses his mind.
Ottens, Shank, and Long further note (1995) that "advanced empathic responses are hunches the counselor has devised regarding the implicit or partially revealed meanings embedded in the client's messages" (p. 200). In other words, the client will, consciously or unconsciously, be trying to make sense of the confusion that sent him to the counselor in the first place. Consequently, he will say things that will indicate his own guesses as to cause or moti...