Abstract

This study was performed by using real counseling cases to show that counseling is a reciprocal interaction process. Specifically this study had three purposes. The first purpose of the present study was to identify the pattern of counselor intervention in conjunction with the contextual process variables. The pattern of counselor intervention comprises counselor intentions and verbal response modes. The contextual process variables include counseling stages and the level of previous client experiencing. The second purpose of the study was to test the effects of these counselor intervention patterns on immediate outcome, that is, client reaction and the levels of experiencing. Finally, the third purpose was to compare the effect of counselor intervention pattern on session outcome with the effect of each of it's components i.e., intention or response mode. To perform this study, 24 sessions of 8 time-Emited counseling cases were analyzed. During audiotape review following each session, the counselors indicated their specific intentions by checking the appropreate items on the Counselor Intention List (Hill & O'Grady, 1985), and the clients also indicated their specific reactions on the Client Reaction System (Hill et al., 1988). Counselor response modes were ratecl on the basis of transcripts of the session by using the Counselor Verbal Response Mode System (Hill, 1978). Client's level of experiencing was rated from an observer perspective by using the Client Experiencing Scale (Klein et al., 1970; Klein, Mathieu-Coughlan, & Kiesler, 1.986). Counselor and client also rated session outcome after each session by using Session Evaluation Questionaire (Stiles & Snow, 1980). Main results are as follows：First., the counselor intervention patterns covaried with the contextual process variables. That is, even if counselors had the same intention, they used the different verbal response mode according to the counseling stage and clienfs previous experiencing level. Second, the client reactions following the same counselor intervention patterns varied according to process contextual variables. For instance, in early stage, the counselor 'assessment-open question' pattern following client low experiencing was followed by client 'therapeutic work' reaction. But in middle stage, the same counselor intervention pattern following client high experiencing was followed by client 'no response' reaction. Third, when clients previous experiencing level was low, client's experiencing level following most counselor intervention patterns was raised. And when clienfs previous experiencing level was high, client s experiencing level following most counselor intervention pattern was lowered. But most ot counselor intervention patterns including restatement' did not lead to the change of client's next experiencing level. Finally, the session outcome was more correlated with the counselor intervention pattern than each of it's components. This study showed empirically that counseling process varied over time, and that the same counselor's interventions had different meaning in different in-session context. It was suggested that fine grained process description of patterns in recurrent change episodes within specific context can enable us to grasp the essential nature of the mechanism leading to change.