Debriefing for Interview 2

The primary culture-centered skills demonstrated in this interview were “Reducing the counselor’s defensiveness” and “Recognizing resistance in specific rather than general terms.” Although the counselor was repeatedly confronted by his being male and therefore unable to understand he did not respond in a defensive manner but accepted the client’s perspective. At the same time the counselor was able to include gender differences among those factors leading to client resistance and, by his acceptance, he was able to diminish that resistance. In T12 the counselor avoids being defensive. In T29 the counselor identifies common ground. In T36 and T53 the counselor uses self disclosure to find common ground on the problem and on A63 the counselor deals with accusations of becoming dependent on the client from the anticounselor.

The therapist later indicated that it was important to get immediate feedback from the pro and anti giving the counselor an opportunity to recover quickly. The counselor was able to internalize the pro and anti roles in his own thinking and through practice hoped to benefit from conceptualizing the anti and pro messages in an actual counseling interview.

The procounselor was encouraging and supportive throughout the interview both to the counselor and the client.
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The anticounselor was challenging confronting and criticizing throughout the interview to articulate the resistance.

Key words include: Control, Emotion, Cultural, Guy, Gender, Family problems, Guilty, Generation, Family obligation, Heaviness, Dependent, Collaboration