THE COUNSELLING RELATIONSHIP

Introduction
The actual contact between a counselor and a person who is seeking help lies at the heart of what
counseling is about. Although a counselor may be able to use theory to make sense of the clients
difficulties, and may have a range of techniques at his or her disposal for revealing and
overcoming these difficulties, the fact remains that theory and technique are delivered through
the presence and being of the counselor as a person: the basic tool of counseling is the person of
the counselor. An interest in the nature of the therapeutic relationship represents a common
concern of all therapy practitioners and theorists.
Even if different approaches to counseling make sense of the client therapist relationship in
different ways, they all agree that effective counseling depends on how this kind of relationship
operates, what happens when it goes wrong and how to fix it. The relationship between a client
and patient and their therapist is probably unique for the majority of people who enter
counseling. Even in short-term counseling, the person is exposed to a situation in which another
person will listen to him or her for several hours, will make every effort to see issues and
dilemmas from the speakers perspective, will treat what is said with extreme respect and
confidentiality and will abstain from seeking to gratify any of their own needs during this time.
There is a deep caring, and sense of being special, that is unusual or even absent from the
experience of most people in Western industrial societies. Of course, such an experience may be
hard to accept: can the counselor really be trusted? Is he or she genuinely interested in what I am
saying? How can I take so much without giving something back?
The intensity with which many therapy clients experience their relationship with their therapist is
captured well in a study by Lott (1999), who interviewed women around their feelings about
their therapists, and by Wachholz and Stuhr (1999), who found that, 12 years after the end of
therapy, clients still held vivid memories of their therapist and the qualities of their relationship
with him or her. The importance of the counselor client relationship has been reflected in the
findings of many research studies. Research that has invited clients to describe what has been
helpful or unhelpful for them in counseling has consistently found that clients identify
relationship factors as being more important than the use of therapist techniques. In the eyes of
the client, it is the quality of their relationship with their therapist that has made the largest
contribution to the value of therapy for them.
McLeod (1990) has reviewed this research literature. Another line of research has involved
measuring the strength of the client therapist relationship early in therapy, and looking at
whether a strong therapeutic alliance predicts a subsequent good outcome. This research, which
has been reviewed by Orlinsky et al. (1994), repeatedly demonstrates a high positive correlation
between the quality of the therapeutic relationship and the amount the client gains from therapy.
These research findings have been interpreted as providing support for the role of non-specific
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factors in therapy, which were discussed in Chapter 3: the relationship between client and
therapist is a core non-specific factor existing in all forms of therapy (Hubble et al. 1999). Why
is the therapeutic relationship so important? There are several ways of making sense of what
happens in the relationship between a counselor and a client. There are some counselors, often
influenced by the cognitive behavioural tradition, or by ideas about professional client
relationships in occupations such as medicine, teaching or social work, who regard the building
of rapport to be an initial step in counseling, of significance mainly as a platform from which
structured therapeutic interventions can be made.
In contrast, there are other counselors, working within the psychoanalytic tradition, who see the
relationship as an arena in which the client acts out dysfunctional relationship patterns, thus
enabling the therapist to observe these patterns and set about remediating them. Finally, there are
counselors operating within the humanistic tradition who regard authentic contact or encounter
between persons as intrinsically healing. Some counselors move between these types of
relationship, depending on the client with whom they are working, or the stage of the work. The
aim of this chapter is to examine the different images of the therapeutic relationship that have
been proposed in the counseling and psychotherapy literature, and to explore the ways in which
these ideas have been applied in practice.
IMAGES OF THE THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP
It is useful to think about the different types or style of therapeutic relationship in terms of
images, rather than as lists of attributes or theoretical models. By reflecting on images of
relationship, it is possible to consider a wide array of cultural images that lie behind, or may fuse
with, the approach to the counselor client relationship advocated by different theorists. For
example, images of the counselor or helper as confessor, priest, healer, shaman or friend are also
present in contemporary theory and practice, but are generally referred to in an implicit rather
than explicit fashion. The notion of image also reminds us that the ideas of Freud, Rogers and
others arise from their imagination. Any relationship between two people is played out at a
number of levels: social, emotional, linguistic, physical etc. Theories of what goes on between
counselor/therapist and client are inevitably a partial representation of the relationship, one
among many possible versions of reality. It is important to recognize that ideas such as
transference and empathy are ways of describing some of what is happening in therapy, rather
than constituting objective truths. Finally, the idea of image also reminds us that the intensity
and focus of an image can vary. In short-term counseling, there may not be time for an intense
relationship to become established. In longer-term counseling, the relationship may become
stronger and more sharply defined, but may at the same time begin to be overlaid by other
images, as counselor and client get to know each other in different ways.

THE PRACTICALITIES OF RELATIONSHIP COMPETENCE: HOW TO DEVELOP

AN EFFECTIVE THERAPEUTIC ALLIANCE
Although the images of the therapeutic relationship that have been reviewed above offer a
valuable range of different ways of making sense of what happens between a client and a
counselor, they tend to be fairly silent on the question of what a counselor should actually do to
establish a robust alliance with a client. Some of the more recent theory and research around the
topic of the therapeutic relationship have focused on identifying and developing practical
strategies that can be applied by counselors to build and maintain constructive relationships with
clients
It is helpful to realize that, on a moment-to-moment basis, congruence can be expressed in the
way the counselor talks. Most of the time in counseling, both counselor and client talk in a
manner that refers to the topic of the clients problem. By also including talk that refers to the
process and activity of talking, it becomes possible to weave in to the conversation a continual
flow of statements about aspects of the relationship between counselor and client.
This talking about the process of talking has been discussed by Rennie (1998) as the skill of
metacommunication: the act of communicating about communication . . . stepping outside the
flow of communication to appraise it.
Examples of therapist-initiated metacommunication would be when the therapist:
talks about his or her own plans, strategies, assumptions;
asks the client to focus on his or her plans, strategies, assumptions;
shares his or her assumptions about what the client thinks and intends;
invites the client to share his or her assumptions or fantasies about what the counselor thinks or
intends;
reviews the relationship in all these ways when stuck, or in a therapy crisis;
explores the impact of the client on counselor (the feelings, action tendencies and fantasies that
are evoked by the clients behaviour);
explores the impact of the counselor on the client.
Each of these ways of talking opens up a layer of the unspoken or implicit relationship between
counselor and client, and makes it possible for both participants in that relationship to reflect on
what is happening between them, and if necessary change it. The use of metacommunication
represents the application in therapy of the relationship framework developed by Laing et al.
(1966). On the whole, counselors do not engage in metacommunication to any great extent
within therapy this is a neglected skill. Kiesler (1988) concluded, as a result of his research into
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this topic, that therapist interventions incorporating metacommunicative feedback have been
almost universally overlooked in the individual psychotherapy literature.
Repairing ruptures in the alliance it is seldom that a therapist and client meet form a good
working relationship and then continue through several sessions of therapy without any
challenge or disruption to the bond between them, or their agreed goals and tasks. This kind of
ideal relationship (in therapy as in any other area of life) is a myth. What is more usual is for
the relationship, and the therapeutic work, to hit the buffers now and again. Participants in
counseling both clients and counselors may report that they have reached an impasse, or
that there has been a rupture in the relationship.
In these circumstances it is necessary for the counselor to be able to call on strategies for
repairing the relationship. A significant amount of recent theory and research has begun to
address the question of how best a therapist or counselor can repair or retrieve the therapeutic
relationship when it goes through a bad patch. The work of Jeremy Safran (Safran 1993a, b;
Safran and Muran 1996, 2000a, b, 2001) has been at the forefront of attempts to investigate the
processes and implications of ruptures in the therapeutic alliance. For Safran, the single most
important strategy for the therapist in such situations is metacommunication it is necessary to
stand back from what is happening, name and discuss the problem, and then negotiate around it.
Safran has identified a series of steps or stages that can be observed in the effective repair of a
therapeutic alliance. First, the therapist needs to be sensitive to the presence of rupture in the
alliance. Typically, a client will express confrontation (anger with the therapist or criticism of the
progress of therapy), withdrawal (disengagement from the therapist or the therapeutic process) or
a combination of these two responses. The task of the therapist at this point is to draw attention
to what is happening within the here-and-now relationship, for example by asking What are you
experiencing . . . ? or I have a sense that you are withdrawing from me. Am I right? The
acknowledgement by both the therapist and the client that there is a difficulty moves the repair
process on to the next stage, which involves helping the client to describe their negative feelings,
or what it is they believe is blocking them or hindering progress. The therapist may need to
acknowledge at this point, in an undefensive way, how he or she might be contributing to the
rupture. The final stage involves encouraging the client to access their primary feelings (typically
anger or sadness), and to express to the therapist their underlying needs or wishes. One of the
tasks of the therapist at this stage is to affirm the importance of these needs and wishes.
Successfully resolving a rupture in a therapeutic alliance can have a number of benefits for the
client. Clearly, it strengthens the relationship, and makes it possible to continue therapy in a
productive direction. But it also gives the client an opportunity to learn about how to sort out
relationship difficulties in general, and how to ask/demand what they need in a relationship.
Finally, for people who may be more familiar with rivalrous conflict-ridden relationships, it
provides a model of collaborative, give-and-take relatedness

The concept of boundary may be an useful way to begin to make sense of the relationship
between a therapist and client is to consider the way in which the boundary between the two
participants is created and maintained. Although the concept of boundary was not used by any of
the founders of therapy (e.g. Freud, Jung, Rogers), it has become widely used in recent years as
a means of describing important aspects of the therapeutic relationship. In common-sense terms,
a boundary marks the limits of a territory, and the line where one territory or space ends and
another one begins. In counseling and psychotherapy, the concept of boundary is clearly a
metaphor there are no actual boundary posts, markers or lines laid out in a therapy room.
In a therapy situation, boundaries can be identified in reference to a range of different
dimensions of the relationship. For example, boundaries can be defined around:
Time. The beginning and end of a therapy session.
Physical space. How close (or far apart) should the client and counselor sit; how extensive is
each participants personal space?
Information. How much should the client know about the counselor?
Intimacy. How emotionally close should the counselor and client be? Does the level of intimacy
within the relationship extend to touching, or even to sexual contact?
Social roles. How does the counselor acknowledge the client if they meet in another setting?
How should the counselor respond to a clients request to form a relationship outside of the
therapy room? The idea of boundary also allows other significant aspects of the therapeutic
relationship to be discussed. Boundaries can be rigid or permeable.
Counselors differ in the personal style, with some favoring strictly regulated boundaries, and
others being more flexible. Some counselors may loosen their boundary in the later stages of
therapy with a client. Many different forms of behavior (the client being late or forgetting to
pay the fee; the counselor touching the client) can be interpreted as boundary violations or
transgressions, and links can be made with other boundary issues reported by the client in his
or her everyday life.
The concept of boundary has been particularly widely used within contemporary psychodynamic
and psychoanalytic thinking. The psychoanalytic psychotherapist Robert Langs (1988) has been
prominent in arguing for the strict imposition of clearly defined boundaries in therapy as a core
principle of therapy. Langs believes that definite boundaries create a strong therapeutic frame
within which the client will be safe to explore painful and threatening personal material. Many
humanistically oriented counselors and psychotherapists have had reservations about the way in
which the idea of boundary is used within therapy as a justification for a distanced, detached
stance in relation to the client. For example, Hermansson (1997: 135) has argued that the very
nature of the counseling process demands a measure of boundary crossing . . . counselor

aloofness, often promoted by boundary rigidity, is in itself potentially abusive. Jordan

(2000:1015) acknowledges that she has: trouble with [a] boundary language . . . anchored in
[a] view of separation as safety.
CONCLUSIONS: THE COMPLEXITY OF THE THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP
The theory and research discussed in this chapter reflects the importance of the client counselor
relationship in all approaches to therapy. It is clear that counselors trained in the use of different
theoretical models employ quite different ways of understanding the therapeutic relationship. It
also seems clear, however, that there are fundamental truths about the client counselor
relationship, relevant for all approaches to counseling, captured in the ideas of Rogers (1957) and
Bordin (1979), and in Freuds concepts of transference and counter-transference. It also seems
likely that some clients respond better to some types of relationship than others, depending on
their own personal history and needs. The therapeutic relationship makes a difference in
counseling the quality of the relationship has been shown to contribute significantly to the
eventual outcome of counseling, and to the ability to help distressed people to stay in counseling.
It is essential, therefore, for any counselor to be aware of where his or her strengths lie, in term
of making and maintaining helpful ways of relating to clients, and also to keep striving to
become more responsive to the endless variety of relationship patterns that may be presented by
clients. Therapeutic relationships are complex, and operate at a number of different levels at the
same time. It is difficult to decentre sufficiently from ones own viewpoint to develop an
accurate understanding of how one behaves in relationships. For any counselor, building an
understanding of how he or she engages in relationship with clients is greatly facilitated by the
use of opportunities, such as training groups, or supervision, which provide feedback and
challenge on his or her way of being with others.