Self-Reference in Counseling Interviews.

Abstract

Successful counseling or psychotherapy implies that changes take place in the personality of the client or patient. The problem of the psychologist who seeks to analyze conscious, deliberate attempts to alter behavior in a clinical situation, lies essentially in determining specifically what changes take place during treatment and what conditions are necessary to produce them. Many things have been suggested as "essential changes" but so far there is almost a complete dearth of reliable evidence, aside from clinical interpretations, to bolster the constructs which have been advanced. Among the terms in common use which supposedly define such changes are release of feelings or tensions, emotional reeducation, making the unconscious conscious, modifying responses, reorganization or reintegration of personality, modification of goals or pathways to goals, etc.Such terms are so schematic, so indefinite or so circular that the very existence of the psychological events to which they refer cannot be determined by objective measures or else every event considered fits the theory. Changes in "needs" or in "attitudes" or in "traits" have also been suggested as occurring in therapeutic situations as well as in normal personality development. So far there has been little systematic application of these concepts to the artificially induced changes occurring during treatment. As for trait constructs, in clinical work these have usually been applied to manifestations of ability or capacity which the counselor is more interested in unmasking than in modifying.It becomes imperative to search for constructs which can be investigated with the usual safeguards of objectivity and reliability. When and where to apply available and plausible measures is at present a matter of feasibility rather than desirability. The methods of measurement are * A condensation of a portion of a Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the Ohio State University in 1943. Acknowledgments are gratefully made to Pro-

An analysis of the relationship between acceptance of and respect for self and acceptance of and respect for others in ten counseling cases.

“…Also, there is some objective evidence to support this belief [1,2,3,4] . In a study of fourteen nondirective counseling cases -seven successful, four unsuccessful and three doubtfully successful -Raimy investigated that "aspect of the self -concept revealed by a study of the relation between the selfevaluation uttered by clients in psychotherapeutic interviews and the immediate outcome of treatment at the end of the last interview" [3, p. 450] .…”

Similarities between Prescott Lecky's Theory of Self-Consistency and Carl Rogers' Self-Theory

“…Comments on Rogers' self-theory by Kirschenbaum (2007).-One finds these comments on Rogers in Kirschenbaum (2004), "Building on the Gestalt and the phenomological movement of psychology and on the works of his students, Victor Raimy (1943Raimy ( , 1948 and Donald Snygg and Arthur Combs (1949), he developed a 'self-theory' of personality. .…”

Measuring and Characterizing Unconditional Self-Acceptance

“…Although the focus in the beginning of the empirical study of self-acceptance was on understanding and measuring self-acceptance and its distinction from otheracceptance (e.g., Raimy, 1948 ;Sheerer, 1949 ), emphasis has shifted over time to studying how self-acceptance differs from other constructs (e.g., Shepard, 1979 ), and in particular, self-esteem. The relevance of this consideration is apparent in Ryff's ( 1989 ) test development research on the SPWB.…”

“…Empirical tests of this hypothesis began with a dissertation by Raimy ( 1948 ), who solicited judges' ratings of 14 therapy clients' verbalizations of positive and negative self-references during sessions. In the successfully treated cases, but not the less successful ones, the number and proportion of positive self-references increased as therapy progressed.…”