The purpose of this paper is to discuss two concepts of counseling described and explicated by Arnold A. Lazarus (19 ) and David E. Hutchins (1984). These concepts are those of:
(1) counselor adaptation; and (2) bridging.
Counselor adaptation refers to the ability of the counselor to adjust or accommodate his/her personal interaction with the client in a manner that fosters a therapeutically useful client-counselor relationship (Hutchins, 1984). Counselor adaptation is said to be directly related to the counselor's degree of therapeutic experience with experience being a factor that allows the counselor to "intuitively" know what adaptations are correct for a given patient (Hutchins, 1984).
As noted by Hutchins (1984), one of the primary implications to be drawn from the notion of counselor adaptation is that adaptation calls for an eclectic approach to interaction style. Lazarus (19 ) expands on this notion by stating that true counselor adaptation also calls for an eclectic approach to the therapist's selection of counseling model and technique.
Indeed, Lazarus' (19 ) explication of the idea places far more emphasis upon pragmatism as the guiding philosophy of the counselor using the eclectic approach. In other words, the counselor selects a particular theory or a particular technique or a particular style of interaction with a given client solely because doing so effects therapeutic objectives.
Looking at Hutchins (1984) and Lazarus' (19 ) notions of counselor adaptation, I find that I agree that the counselor should be open to making accommodations in style of interaction, theory and techniques if doing so effects therapeutic goals. However, if one carefully reads both articles, it can be seen that both Hutchins and Lazarus believe that healing power is solely dependent upon such things as the counselor's choice of techniques, selection of theory, etc. for a given client.
For example, if a client...