EMPOWERMENT AS A COUNSELING CONSTRUCT Introduct

EMPOWERMENT AS A COUNSELING CONSTRUCT

The purpose of this paper is to examine the construct of "empowerment" as it is used in both the theoretical and empirical counseling literature. The paper begins with a brief general definition of empowerment and a discussion of its importance to the field of counseling. This is followed by an examination of the various meanings attached to the term as it is used in the theoretical literature.

The next section of the paper explores the meanings given to the term empowerment in the empirical counseling literature as well as how the term is operationalized from study to study. The final section of the paper presents a series of conclusions derived from an overall critique of the use of the term empowerment in both the conceptual and empirical literature.

According to Peterson and Nisenholz (1994), in its most general sense, the term "empowerment" is used in counseling to refer to assisting an individual and or social collective (e.g., group counseling) to overcome either innate or societal factors contributing to their experiencing a psychoemotional and/or psychosocial disadvantage with respect to the rest of society. For example, if a counselor was facilitating a gay support group, the empowerment goal would be to overcome psychoemotional and psychosocial disadvantages associated with being gay in a basically homophobic society. On the other hand, if the counselor was working wit

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ives on healing. Moreover, it is a construct that is incorporated into models whose counseling goals are associated with genderrole concerns, ethnic/racial issues, and sexual orientation issues. Helping clients to overcome the psychosocial and psychoemotional pain associated with these issues is said to be the empowerment goal (Worell & Johnson, 1997). Moreover, the multicultural models address the need for considering this goal of empowerment in all phases of the counseling process including planning treatment, selection of treatment format, duration of treatment, and treatment setting. Counseling strategies and techniques that are used to help clients come to terms with the disadvantages associated with gender-role, ethnic/racial and sexual orientation issues are commonly referred to as empowerment strategies (Worell & Johnson, 1997). Using a notion of empowerment that is more related to multicultural and diversity issues, Westkott and Jordan (1997) characterized empowerment as a counseling process in which many of the conflicts arising over gender discrimination are used to help women discover their strength and capacity for dealing with others. The discovery of this strength and capacity is said to empower women in the

Category: Psychology - E