Essay - Summary in Their Article 'Person-centered Counseling: the Culture' Ann Shanks...

Summary

***** their article "Person-Centered counseling: The culture" Ann Shanks Glauser & Jerold Bozarth explore the conditions that are necessary for successful counseling, and focus especially on the specialty of multicultural counseling.

Published in the Journal ***** Counsel*****g ***** Development, the ***** argues ***** person-centered counselling is at the very heart of success in *****. Specifically, authors Glauser and Bazarth suggest that the relationship between the client and counselor, ***** ***** client's situational and personal resources (extratherapeutic variables), are the essential ***** ***** determine success in *****. Fur*****r, Glauser and ***** argue that the "specificity myth," or ***** concept that there are specific treatments for certain groups ***** people, can seriously damage the potential success of any counselling endeavour.

Glauser and Bazarth first thoroughly explore their thesis ***** the ***** of the therapist and client is absolutely essential to the success of counselling. They note that Rogers' postulates of "respect for the client (referring to unconditional positive regard), genuineness, empathic underst*****ing, and ***** counselor's communication of these three therap*****t conditions to the client" are absolutely ***** to successful counseling.

*****, the authors note that the failure of these postulates leads to reliance on the "specificity myth" in counseling.

Reliance on the "specificity" *****, or the idea that there ***** specific treatments for specific dysfunctions or groups of people, ultimately damages the ***** relationship. ***** provide statistical evidence for the relative unimportance of counseling technique, noting that only 15% ***** the success variance of the counseling relationship can be accounted for by technique, similar to ***** *****% accounted for by placebo. In contrast, Glauser and Bazarth note ***** fully 30% of the success ***** comes from the client-counsellor *****, ***** an impressive 40% ***** from extra*****rapeutic variables or chance occurrences.

***** authors then go on ***** explore the ***** of the client-therapist relati*****ship and the extratherapeutic variables of the client. They note that "most ********** consider the (client-therapist) relationship as critical." A ***** relationship is defined by the ***** empathy for the client, seen in h***** or her genuineness with the client, and the counselor's true ***** ***** value ***** the client. Glauser and Bazarth note, "Making judgments about *****'s humanity and its quality due to established criteria is to rely on tired but extremely powerful d*****courses steeped in oppression."

***** and Bazarth note that extratherapeutic variables *****clude the "internal and external ***** of the client as well as chance factors that influence the client." As such family support and individual abilities like optimism and problem solving skills are key extratherapeutic variables. These ***** variables should ***** determined ***** the client's frame of reference, ***** will ultimately impact both the counselor's actions and the use of external resources.

The authors ***** note the application of *****se ***** in person-centered multicultural counseling. They give several illuminating anecdotal examples of person-centered ***** in a multicultural setting. Ultimately, the Gla*****r ***** Bazarth warn of the danger of using cultural, gender or race-related stereotypes to guide counselling in a ***** setting "Assumptions ********** people (clients)