Abstract

This study tried to identify clients' experience of dissatisfaction in counseling and it's resolution-course with the method of qualitative analysis. In all, forty clients answered open-ended questionnaire about their dissatisfaction. After completing the questionnaire, the clients were interviewed about their answers. The thirty-one cases were rated with Consensual Qualitative Research. As the result, clients reported that they had frequently experienced dissatisfaction at the following cases; when counselor showed reaction that client did not want, when client found no concrete solution, when counselor asked for disagreeable reaction to client, when clients felt that counselor didn't concentrate on counseling, when clients felt that counselor only listened to them. These events made clients experience negative thought and affection in counseling or about counselor. The typical resolution-courses of the dissatisfaction are as follows. The initial client-counselor relationships were unsatisfactory or ordinary. But when there happened to be dissatisfactory events, counselors showed reactions to them earlier than clients. So clients expressed their experience of the dissatisfaction to their counselors, and then counselors not only empathized and accepted the experiences but also explained the unsatisfactory event. Clients came to understand them, and have positive feelings. The events were settled through understanding, and clients experienced positive changes of themselves as well as their counselors. In the case of dissolution group, initial relationships were typically almost satisfactory but clients didn't expressed their negative experiences after the dissatisfaction event, or counselors were unaware or unresponsive about it. So the experiences were not addressed during the counseling sessions, and were not settled. As the results, clients came to have negative changes.