Initial Interview in Field of Counseling The purpose of this paper

The purpose of this paper is to review literature on the initial interview in the field of counseling. The reviewed material will emphasize assessment and measurement, intake skills and interviewing strategies and forms.

Egan (1975) has characterized counseling as a helping relationship which grows and develops in three concrete stages.

(1) a stage in which the helper responds to the client's presenting information in a manner that facilitates the client's self-exploration;

(2) a stage in which the helper identifies themes and patterns in the client's life with the objective of assisting the client to achieve a dynamic self-understanding; and

(3) a stage in which the helper moves the client to take actions associated with more effective and successful living.

However, before the helping relationship develops, Egan (1975) reports that there is a pre-helping stage during which, he states, the helper's goal should be:

. . . Attending: To attend to the other [the client] both physically and psychologically; to give himself entirely to "being with" the other; to work with the other. (p.30)

One element of this pre-helping stage is the initial interview. Of this stage, Benjamin (1969) has stated that the interview focuses on the matter(s) that bring together the client and counselor. The interview ends, Benjamin reports, when both counselor and client understand and agree on the areas which the

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it results in the focus of the session being more on the counselor and the effectiveness of his/her questioning skills than on the client. Moreover, the approach is said to create a model for following sessions, a model in which the counselor is set up as the initiator determining both the content and the nature of the therapeutic interaction while the client assumes a passive role of marginal responsibility for what occurs during the session. Other counselors tend to agree with Peterson and Nisenholz's views. For example, Patterson (1974) has stated that questioning by the counselor is of little or no assistance in the development of the helping relationship. While many counselors agree with the views of Peterson & Nisenholz (1987) regarding the form to use in the initial interview, other authors feel that when there is a strong need to determine the client's psychiatric status at initial assessment, the structured interview can be quite helpful (Siassi, 1984). Some of the measurement indices which siassi recommends as useful in terms of arriving at psychiatric assessments of clients include tests for children and adolescents such as the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents (DICA), the Interview Schedule for C

Category: Psychology - I