ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights some of the basic concepts associated with the part of the counseling process. Utilizing empathy and a spirit of curiosity, counselors can enter the lives of individuals to facilitate change. Personality instruments are designed to assess personal, emotional, social, and behavioral patterns of the individual. These tools are most often self-report–based, that is, taken by the client from the client’s perspective. Diagnosis is a criteria-structured system that corrals commonly co-occurring symptom-clusters into labels that describe types of psychopathology. Quality information comes from the ability of the counselor to connect with the client and enter the client’s world. During rapport building and pattern search, the counselor learns that the parents typically “crack down” on all their children when they reach middle adolescence. The counselor must be willing and able to “see” beneath the client’s goal, which can be accomplished only through empathic understanding.
