ABSTRACT
People enjoy working with those with whom they feel warmth, genuineness, and respect. The therapeutic alliance takes this everyday social phenomenon and makes it work in the clinical setting. Once the beginning counselor is adept at using the basic counseling skills, advanced skills and concepts can be added to the repertoire. These skills and concepts are more action oriented and allow the counselor to facilitate deeper client self-understanding, change, and eventual termination of the helping relationship. The advanced understanding and challenging skills include advanced empathy, self-disclosure, confrontation, and immediacy. The contributions of the therapeutic alliance are independent of the theoretical orientation or type of treatment. Specific procedures and techniques have been proven to be much less important than the alliance between counselor and client. The ending of a helping relationship can be either one of the most gratifying or one of the most difficult and frustrating aspects of the relationship.
