HELPING AND HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS THEORY

ROBERT R. CARKHUFF
This page was last updated on 18-01-2010
---------------------------------------------------------------Introduction
When adults have reached full maturity, they can communicate fully, they have satisfied their
needs for fullness in all aspects of life and become full persons. They are now prepared to help
others to achieve their own levels of wholeness. They will not only communicate fully with
others struggling to grow and develop, they will also teach the others the skills they need to grow
and develop themselves. They will become the models and the agents for the growth of others.
They will give their lives meaning through their productivity in living, learning and working
arenas. They will create new life through their helping skills. The cycle of life continues.
Helping
Helping is a process leading to new behavior for the person being helped . An effective helper is
initially nourishing or responsive. This nourishment prepares the person being helped for the
more directionful or initiative behavior of the helper. Children as they become capable of both
nourishing and directionful behavior, they assume the mantle of adulthood and later perhaps
parenthood.
They can act constructively in the lives of their own and others thus we call them fully adults or
they are now helpers for they are capable of helping others as well as themselves. Persons who
are fully alive help other persons to become fully alive. Responsive and initiative behaviours are
the basic dimensions of helping and development.
Potentially all relationships are helping relationships. It depends upon the helping skills one has,
the effects of skills depend upon how we sequence them. Thus helping in real sense is a
developmental process like child rearing. Effective parenting involves both responsive and
initiative skills. Helpers who are fully responsive and fully initiative teach their helpees to be
fully responsive and fully initiative.
Human Relationships
Human Relationships may be facilitative or retarding effects. Like a marriage, the consequences
of all human relationships may be for better or for worse. Consequences may be constructive or
destructive, may produce persons and non persons; health care provider-patient; employeeemployer etc. The effects may be positive or negative or any of the degrees in between these
extremes. The effects are seen in physical, emotional and intellectual functioning. With
facilitative agents the recipients may be physically energetic, emotionally expansive and
intellectually acute; with retarding agents the recipients may be physically listless, emotionally
shallow and intellectually dull.
Power and human relationships

The effects of human relationships depend upon the power relationship. If the person is ceded the
power in the relationship is functioning at a high level, then all parties involved can benefit from
the relationship. Eg. Parents. Unfortunately power relations are developed for reasons other than
functionality like tradition, politics etc. It makes good sense that if people have not discovered
themselves they can only handicap others in finding their own way of life. The effects of the
power relationships depend upon the skills.
Skills
Most fundamentally, it is the powerful persons level of functioning in basic human relations
skills that determines the effects of relationships. There are two sets of skills which are the basic
ingredients of all human relationships in the areas of endeavor.
Responding and initiating skills
These skills are cycled in an individuals personal development before his or her interpersonal
development. A person must respond to understand himself before initiating an action program or
product. There is no effective action that is not based upon a depth of understanding.
Responsiveness
Responsiveness is the basic ingredient of human relations, which involves empathy.
Responsiveness is the most profound variable in the human condition. To know more than that
person does of her own experience, to be able to describe and predict and influence that
experience constructively, is the test of responsive skills. Responsive skills thus involve
experiencing anothers condition and communicating to her own experience. It involves the other
person in a process leading to her own self-exploration and self-understanding.
Initiative
Initiative is the basic ingredient of human functionality. It involves operationalizing the goal or
breaking it down into its components. It involves developing the steps and systems to achieve
the goal, it is more than a mechanical process. It begins with a vision of the possible, building
upon our own experience to see a goal, further it stimulates the other person to take action to
achieve the goal.

When people share their problems, what skills do you have to truly show that you are
responding to their experience?

How do you physically show this? Emotionally? Intellectually?

What do you do and say that will assure the people that you are sensitively attuned to
their experience? How do you show you heard them? What feedback do you give?

When you are wrestling with their problems, how do you share your experience to help
them to develop achievable goals that solve their problems?

Now that you have responded to their experience, how do you help them to initiate steps
to get to their goals.

New Behaviour
Before we can acquire the skills of helping, we must understand the goals of helping. New
behavior is the overall goal of helping. One must explore where she is, explore herself in relation
to herself and in relation to her world. We must know the problems before we can change the
behavior. In exploring herself, the person seeking help is attempting to understand where she is
in relation to where she wants to be. Self understanding is not real until the individual has acted
upon it. In acting the person acts upon how to get from where she is to where she wants to be.
The more accurately a person understands herself, the more constructively she can act for herself
and others.
Evolution of dimensions
Before we understand the dimensions, we must understand four things.
i. Helping Sources:
There are two approaches to helping -insight and action.

The insight approach was supported by many traditional therapeutic schools, emphasized
the clients insight as the basis for the development of an effective set of assumptions
about his or her world.

The action approach has been promulgated by the learning theory and behaviour
modification schools as well as the trait and factor school, which matches people to jobs
and vice versa, who emphasized the clients development and implementation of rational
action plans for managing his or her world.

In order to effectively help human beings to change behaviour the insight and action approaches
must be integrated into one effective helping process.
ii. Helping Process:
In order to demonstrate gain in behaviour, the helpees must act differently from the way they did
before. Thus they must have insights or understand accurately the gaols and ways to achieve
them; in order to understand their goals, the helpees must explore their world experientially.
Finally they must act to get from where they are to where they want to be. With the feedback
they can recycle the learning process
Exploration -----------Understanding------------Action-----------Feedback
Feedback-------further exploration----self understanding--------real understanding
Real Understanding-----------modification of action (effective action).

iii. Helper Skills:

The historic dimension of empathy was complemented by unconditional positive regard and
genuineness, which were then operationalized into accurate empathy, respect and genuineness.
These were in turn complemented by other dimensions including specificity or concreteness, self
disclosure, confrontation and immediacy; then factored into responsive and initiative dimensions.
The responsive dimensions (empathy, respect, specificity of expression) responded to the
helpees experience and thus facilitated the helpees movement towards understanding. The
initiative dimensions (genuineness, self disclosure, confrontation, immediacy and concreteness)
were generated from the helpers experience and stimulated the helpees movement toward
action. The initiative dimensions were later extended to incorporate the problem solving skills
and program development skills needed to fully help the helpee's to achieve appropriate
outcomes.
iv. Helpee Outcomes:
emphasized the emotional changes or gains of he helpee's. Since the helping methods were
insight oriented, the process emphasized helpee exploration and outcome assessments measured
the changes in the helpees level of emotional insights, which were restrictive because they were
assessing only one dimension of the helpees functioning. These were later extended to
incorporate the interpersonal functioning of the helpee's. The dimension of physical functioning
was added, to measure fitness and energy; intellectual dimension to measure the intellectual
achievement and capabilities.
Levels and styles of functioning
Carkhuff and Berenson(1967) described five levels of dimensions.
The dimensions are empathy, respect or regard, genuineness, concreteness, warmth. Levels:
1. First: no empathy is taking place( no evidence of the helper characteristic)
2. Second: Empathizing very little and at a level that detracts from helpee functioning(10%
of time)
3. Third: minimum level of feeling response necessary to be efective(50% of time)
4. Fourth and fifth: Higher levels of helper empathy(4th 75%; 5th consistently present)
The responsibility continuum:

Helping skills

The responsive and initiative factors of helping dominate the helping process facilitating E+
U+A
That culminate in the physical, emotional and intellectual helpee outcomes. As a result of
attempts to teach they are further refined into concrete helping skills (A+R+P+I). The attending
skills are transitional between responding and initiating.
1. Attending : Being attentive to to the helpee is made up of attending physically, observing
and listening to the helpee. The function of attending is to give them the feelings of security that
make their involvement in the helping process. By attending physically the helper communicates
interest in the helpees welfare, by observing and listening, helper learns from and about the
helpee. By communicating interest in the helpee, helper establishes the conditions for the
helpees involvement in the helping process.
2. Responding: Responding to the helpee s expression of her experience, involves responding to
content, feeling and feeling and content together. The function of he responding to the helpees
experience is to facilitate self exploration. T thus she signals her readiness for the next goal of
helping- understanding, which signals the helper to begin personalizing. They serve to stimulate
the helpees exploration of where he or she is in his or her experiences of the world and that the
helper is fully in tune with the helpees experience.
3. Personalizing: To enable the helpee to understand where she is in relation to where she
wants or needs to be, involves building a base of interchangeable responses before
personalizing the meaning, the problem, the feelings and the goal. The purpose is to facilitate
helpee self understanding in the areas of concern to her, thus she signals readiness for using
initiating. They are used to provide a transition from responding to initiating and from exploring
to acting. Personalizing skills culminate in the helpees personal experience of the problem as the
inability to handle difficult situations.
4. Initiating: Finding direction in life or acting in following the direction, bringing direction to
culmination giving life meaning in productivity and creativity. It involves operationalizing

goals and initiating steps, schedules and reinforcements to achieve these goals. These goals
resolve helpees problems. Fosters the development and implementation of the mechanical steps
required to achieve the personally meaningful goals that the helpee has developed. Initiating
skills conclude the first cycle of helping process in which helper facilitate helpees acting to get
to where he or she wants to be in the world.
If you have attended to to the helpees needs and responded to her experience, you have
facilitated her exploration of where she is. If you have personalized your understanding of the
helpee, you have facilitated her understanding of where she is in relation to where wants to be. If
you have initiated to help the helpee achieve her goals have facilitated her acting to get from
where she is to where she wants to be. Thus you have helped her solve her problems and achieve
her goals. You have seen her grow and develop. But growth is not static, is life long learning.
Life long Learning is recycling exploring, understanding and acting. A growing person is
constantly involved in the learning person.
Growing is more than learning and helping. It is helping others to learn, which means to explore,
understand and act plus recycle. E.g. All people can do with each other in their daily contacts,
first and foremost by attending and making an effective response to the other.
Having begun by attending and responding, over an extended period of time each person can
learn to personalize and initiate with the people with whom they are involved
At the highest level people communicate with immediacy, which means understanding and
interpreting in the moment what is going on between you and the helpee (highest levels of
responsive and initiative behaviour). It means being simultaneously aware of both the helpees
and ones own experience.
A less than whole person is never actually talking about what she seems to be talking about, may
talk in comparison or relation to other people. A whole person is always talking about what she
seems to be talking about, communicates fully. As helpers our tasks is to become whole people.
Thus helping is a process of teaching people who do not communicate fully to communicate
fully with themselves and others. Whatever the effective helper or the whole person is doing, she
is always checking back with the helpee accuracy of the responses. She makes this by making
responses that are interchangeable with the feeling and content expressed by the helpee, no
matter how advanced is the stage of the helping relationship. The helper is fully alive, concerned
and capable of communicating thierliving energy, concern and capability to those who are most
in need.
In fully alive communication each person may be helper to the other. But one must initiate the
helping process by communicating her openness to understanding the other. In doing so she
establishes the model for the other to imitate, Mutual problems are resolved. There is no edge in
helping. The helpee informs us that she is ready to function as a helper by her behaviour. One
clear demonstration of the helpees readiness to terminate the helping process, to go out on her
own is her ability to respond to the experience of the helper.

THE CLEAR DEMONSTRATION OF THE ABILITY TO FUNCTION AS A HELPER WILL BE

ONES ABILITY TO RESPOND AND INITIATE EFFECTIVELY.
The Assumption
The only assumption made in developing the helping skill programs involves ones motivation.
Other assumption is that one wants to grow, want to be like the facilitative helpers and teachers
one has experienced, one wants to become involved in a life long learning process.CARKHUFF
Brammer and Macdonald

The basic interpersonal communication processes implied by the specialized helping

relationships are similar

People know their needs

Basically it is a process of enabling the person to grow in the directions that person
chooses, to solve problems and to face crises.

Voluntary quality of the helping process is a crucial point since many persons wanting to
help others have their own helping agenda and seek to meet their own unrecognised
needs.

The act of helping people with the presumed goal of doing something for them or
changing them in some way has an arrogant quality too.

The aim of all help is self help and self sufficiency.

Each individual behaves in a competent and trustworthy manner if given the freedom and
encouragement to do so.

Helper must assume some responsibility for creating conditions of trust whereby
helpeescan respond in a trusting manner and help themselves.

Helper must be alert to the impact on the helpee of other people and of the physical
environment.

Helping takes place over the lifespan. Each developmental period and the transitions
between usually require some form of outside help to make life more effective and
satisfying. .

The nature of the informal agreement implies a growth contract, that helpees will try to
change under their own initiative, with minimal helper assistance.

Basic Helping scale

I + E + U + A = New learning (behaviour)

5.0 Initiating steps
4.5 Initiating goal operationalization
4.0 Personalizing problem, feelings and goal
3.5 Personalizing meaning
3.0 Responding to feeling and content
2.5 Responding to feeling
2.0 Responding to content
1.5 Attending
1.0 Non attending
1. Non attending covers all behaviours, both verbal and non verbal that are unrelated or
irrelevant to the helpees situation or expressions.
2. Attending: includes the verbal and non verbal behaviours that are directly related to
involving the helpee, but do not respond to what the helpee has shared about where she
is.
3. Responding to content: involves summarising what the helpee has shared concerning
her situation.
4. Responding to feeling: involves accurately identifying a feeling word that is
interchangeable with the helpees experience of the situation.
5. Responding to feeling and content: involves the clear communication of helper
understanding of both the content and feelings expressed by the helpee.
6. Personalizing meaning: involves responding to identify the personal significance or
implications of the expressed situation for the helpee.
7. Personalizing problem, feelings and goal: involves responding to identify the personal
deficits (assets) of the helpee that are contributing to the problem or situation, the feelings
that the helpee is experiencing about her deficits (assets) and the goal that the helpee
wants to achieve.
8. Initiating goal operationalization: covers responses that express a clear understanding
of the helpees personalized problem, feelings and goal in behavioural terms.
9. Initiating steps: involves responses that identify specific steps toward accomplishing the
operationalised goal.
Ingredients to secret of success

a. Skills of helping: Apply the skills then only you recognise the need for more skills.

The most of basic of all skills is learning how to learn. Next is the basic skill of teaching.

b. Discipline: Employ skills with discipline. The accuracy of the discriminations and
communications is the effective ingredient.

c. Work: Our real learning in life comes from working very hard, applying skills with
disciplines in a variety of human experiences. While working hard they must protect
themselves by receiving the maximum return for the minimum investment. e.g. Once you
understand the response deficits of the helpees they will tend to employ teaching in
groups as the preferred mode of treatment.

Evaluation of theory
i. 1960s: (Eysenk, 1960, 1965; Levitt 1963; Lewis 1965) stated that psychotherapy and
counseling did not make a difference. They discovered that both adults and children who were
in control groups that were not assigned to professional practitioners, gained as much on the
average as people assigned to professional counselors and therapists. About two thirds of the
patients improved and remained out of the hospital a year after treatment whether they were
treated or not. This research was updated in longitudinal studies in more than 50 treatment
setting by Anthony(1979) who studied lasting effects of counseling, rehabilitation and
psychotherapeutic techniques. Within 3-5 years after treatment 65-75% of the patients were once
again patients. The gainful employment of patients was below 20%. Conclusion was that
psychotherapy has lasting positive effects in 17-22% of the cases.
ii. Naturalistic studies: (Rogers et al 1967, Traux and Carkhuff 1967) The clients and patients of
professional helpers demonstrated a greater range of effects than those in professionally
untreated groups. But study revealed a very distressing conclusion that counseling and
psychotherapy have a two edged effect- they may be harmful or helpful. The effects could be
determined by the levels of functioning of the helpers on certain interpersonal dimensions such
as empathy/empathetic understanding. One who offered high level of core interpersonal
dimensions facilitated the process movement.
iii. Predictive studies: involved manipulating the levels of helpers functioning on interpersonal
dimensions such as empathy and its effects both within the helping process and upon the helping
outcomes. (Carkhuff and Alexik 1967, Holder et al 1967; Piaget et al 1968; Traux and Carkhuff
1967). Helpees of helpers functioning at high levels of these interpersonal dimensions moved
towards higher levels of functioning (explored their problems in meaningful ways)
iv. Generalization Studies: To study the effects of teachers levels of interpersonal functioning
upon learners development. The students of teachers offering high levels of these interpersonal
dimensions demonstrated significant constructive gains in areas of emotional, interpersonal and
intellectual functioning (Aspy and Roebuck, 1977) These effects have been generalised in all
areas of helping and human relationships where the more knowing person influences the less
knowing person, parent child relations (Carkhuff 1971, 1976); Student teacher relations
(Carkhuff 1969); counselor client relation and therapist patient relations

v. Extension studies: Michelson and Stevic(1971) found that career information seeking
behaviour was dependent upon the helpers levels of interpersonal functioning in interaction with
their reinforcement program Helping dimensions were validated in predictive studies of both
helping process and outcome. The acceptance of the fundamental ingredients of helping has been
widely demonstrated in the professional literature.
The applications:
i. With credentialed counselors and therapists: Trained counselors were able to demonstrate
success rates between 74-91%. Aspy and Roebuck(1977) demonstrated positive effects of
helping skills upon student physical, emotional and intellectual functioning.
ii. Functional Professionals: Staff personnel, such as nurses, hospital attendants, policeman,
prison guards, dormitory counselors, community volunteers were trained and their effects in
treatment studied. Lay helpers were able to elicit significant changes in work behaviours,
discharge rates, recidivism rates and a variety of other areas including self reports, significant
other reports and expert reports.
iii. Indigenous personnel: They can work effectively with the populations from which they are
drawn. For example, new career teachers, drawn from the ranks of unemployed have
systematically helped others to learn the skills they needed in order to get and hold meaningful
jobs
iv. Helpee population: in the kinds of skills which they need to service themselves. Thus parents
of emotionally disturbed children were systematically trained in the skills which they needed to
function effectively with themselves and their children. Patients were trained to offer each other
rewarding human relationships. The results were significantly more positive than all other forms
of treatment. The concept of training as treatment led to the development of programs to train
entire communities to create a therapeutic milieu.
v. Science and art of helping: On implication of the research into helping is to select persons
as helpers who already possess the artful qualities and then quickly and systematically give them
basic helping skills and behaviour concepts.
vi. Self Help Groups: Hurvitz (1970) studied many groups as participant observer and
concluded saying much of their effectiveness was due to peer relationships, inspirational
methods, explicit goals, fellow ship and a variety of helping procedures. They use many sources
of help that are outside conventional helping methods.
Helping Relationship (Brammer)
The third component of the helping relationship is described as the working alliance, which is
the agreement of helper and helpee on the goals and tasks and the experience of an emotional
bond in this mutual act. The working alliance is considered equal in importance to helper
attitudes (Gelso & Carter, 1994). Helping relationship is dynamic at verbal and nonverbal levels,
the relationship is the principal process vehicle for both helper and helpee to express and fulfill

their needs as well as to mesh helpee problems with helper expertise. All authorities on the
helping process agree that the quality of the helping relationship is important to effective
helping(Sexton and Whiston 1994.)All agree that good working relationship established early,
yield a helping relationship. Its dimensions are (Brammer, Abrego and Shostrom 1993)
uniqueness-commonality and intellectual emotional content. However helping relationship is
different from friendship, is not a reciprocal relationship. The focus is on the helpees emotional
and intellectual issues, the helper must resist the urge to move the focus to his or her experience.

Helping affiliations
Helping affiliations can be classified into formal and structured (professional, paraprofessionals
and volunteer helper) to informal and unstructured (friendships, family, community& general
human).
Stages in helping process
There are eight stages contained in the two basic phases of the helping process.
Phase 1: Building relationships:

Entry: preparing the helpee and opening relationship

Clarification: state the problem or concern and reasons for seeking help

Structure: formulating the contract and the structure

Relationship: building the helping relationship

Phase 2: Facilitating Positive Action

Exploration: exploring problems, formulating goals, planning strategies, gathering facts,

expressing deeper feelings, learning new skills.

Consolidation: exploring alternatives, working through feelings, practicing new skills

Planning: developing a plan of action using strategies to resolve conflicts, reducing

painful feelings, and consolidating and generalizing new skills or behaviours to continue
self-directed activities.

Termination: evaluating outcomes and terminating the relationship.

Helping skills for understanding: of self and others

i. Listening skills

Attending noting verbal and nonverbal behaviours

Paraphrasing responding to basic messages

Clarifying self disclosing and focusing discussion

Perception checking determining accuracy of learning

ii. Leading Skills

Indirect leading getting started

Direct leading encouraging and elaborating discussion

Focusing controlling confusion, diffusion and vagueness

Questioning conducting open and closed inquiries

iii. Reflecting skills

Reflecting feeling responding to feelings

Reflecting experience responding to toal experience

Reflecting content repeating ideas in fresh words or for emphasis

iv. Confronting skills:

Recognising feelings in oneself being aware of helper experience

Describing and sharing feelings modeling feeling expression

Feeding back opinions reacting honestly to helpee expressions

Self-confrontation

v. Interpreting skills

INTERPRETIVE QUESTIONS FACILITATING AWARENESS

FANTASY AND METAPHOR- SYMBOLIZING IDEAS AND FEELINGS

vi.

Informing skills

Advising giving suggestions and opinions based on experience

Informing- giving valid information based on expertise

vii. Summarising Skills

Pulling themes together.

Ethical issues in helping relationships: Informed consent

Worker self care- recognise own weak spots and work on prevention
Dual relationships- recognise them and manage them Ask following questions.

Is there a a power difference between us?

What other role obligations do I have in this situation?

How will my knowledge about you change our relationship?

Physical contact with helpees: Sexual relationships of any kind are unethical. Touching clients
for support, out of compassion or to express care is controversial.
CONCLUSION
Our task in life is to improve the quantity and quality of human experience, our own as well as
others which is growth. Life is process, is growth and growth is learning skills. When we use the
helping skills effectively, we can be healthy and we can help each other to actualize our human
potential. The only meaning to life is to grow for growing is life.
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