ABSTRACT
When students enter professional training in counseling or therapy they should not be regarded as a “clean slate” or tabula rasa. As cultural participants in a specific society at a given historical time, they bring with them into training experiences, beliefs, and everyday concepts of how to help others. The students will have had previous experience of helping others in roles such as friend, family member, colleague at work, neighbor, or school classmate. How they view helping practices when assisting people in distress is formed by their personal histories as well as by the cultural discourses of helping that exist in the society in which they have grown up and now live. During training, the students are socialized into a specific professional culture of psychotherapy and counseling with shared beliefs and technologies.
