Counselor Candidates' Journey of Self-Awareness: Personality Theories

Abstract

Self-awareness is one of the main characteristics of effective counselors. However, there is no course to help increase the level of self-awareness of counselor candidates in the Guidance and Psychological Counseling (GPC) curriculum in Turkey. The present study aimed to discover the opinions of counselor candidates about the course of personality theories in the GPC undergraduate program in the 4th semester on the contribution of their selfawareness. The phenomenology design was used in this qualitative study. Forty-five counselor candidates who took the course of personality theories during one semester (14 weeks) participated in the study. A semi-structured interview form consisting of open-ended questions was used to collect the data. As a result of analyzing data with descriptive and content analysis, the themes of the awareness of personality traits, awareness of personality development, self-discovery, situational awareness, predisposition to being a counselor, and categories under these themes emerged. These results revealed that the course of personality theories contributes to the counselor candidates to know themselves better and increase their level of self-awareness. The findings were discussed in light of the relevant literature, and recommendations were provided for counselor educators.

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“…Self-awareness is also established as necessary for effective counseling (Abney, 2002;Baştemur & Uçar, 2022;Campbell & Christopher, 2012;Fauth & Williams, 2005;Glenn et al, 2015;Hernández et al, 2010;Pieterse et al, 2013;Şimşir, 2021;Yontef, 1993). Self-awareness is defined as conscious knowledge of personal feelings, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and actionsthe cohesion of which improves congruence and subsequent awareness of identity, motivation, strengths, needs, weaknesses, and goals (Şimşir, 2021).…”