ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the complexity of inter and intra-personal dynamics that can occur in the cross-cultural counselling encounter. To understand the complexity of the cross-cultural client-counsellor relationship, the chapter explores the concepts of therapeutic alliance/working alliance, empathy, personal distress, cognitive dissonance and issues of transference. E. S. Bordin paper attempted to expand the concept of therapeutic alliance by focusing on specific components which need to be considered when viewing the significance of the bond between counsellor and client. In an early attempt to assess the facilitative components of empathy T. Reik described four aspects of the empathic process in counselling. They are: identification, incorporation, reverberation, and detachment. L. Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory has been an influential account of how individuals seek to achieve consistency in their behaviour and beliefs. The transference reaction was said to be an attempt to structure and define the present via the past or an attempt to maintain the status quo.
