CLIENT COUNSELLOR RELATIONSHIP

Client Counsellor Relationship

ABSTRACT

Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate the fit between Inuit conceptions of effective helping and Western counselling.

Study Design/Methods: The essential components and value foundations of effective Western counselling, including multicultural counselling, were identified from primary and secondary counselling texts. Inuit traditional values and helping practices were identified from the transcripts of interviews with Inuit elders. Interviews with 5 younger Inuit provided information about the counselling needs of contemporary Inuit. Grounded theory analysis of all texts and interview transcripts was used to determine each informant group's conceptions of the elements of effective counselling. A comparative chart was then constructed of the important relationship factors, strategies and process, and effective interventions identified by each informant group.

Results: The values and relationship factors of effective counselling are similar in traditional and Western helping, and these same factors are important to the contemporary Inuit interviewed. Affective, behavioural and cognitive interventions were used traditionally; modern generic counselling also uses a variety of strategies from these three primary categories. Cognitive and cognitive-behavioural approaches to problemsolving were traditionally of primary importance, with expression of feelings also seen as essential.

Conclusion: Western and traditional Inuit helping correspond, and cognitive/cognitivebehavioural approaches especially complement Inuit cultural practice.

Client Counsellor Relationship

Introduction

This research was the result of a decade's experience as a non-Inuit counsellor and counsellor-educator with Inuit students in Nunavut. In the professional literature and in conversations with researchers and others interested in counselling, the political, professional and popular perceptions were generally that culturally-specific strategies are necessary for effective counselling, and that the helping strategies of Inuit and other indigenous cultures and Western-based counselling are different in fundamental ways and therefore incompatible (1-6). Inuit also wish to retain the best of the old and learn the best of the new. There did not, however, seem to be empirical research that investigated the similarity or dissimilarity of Inuit values and helping behaviours and those of contemporary counselling. Neither was there an organized body of knowledge about Inuit traditional values and strategies related to helping.

Thus it was difficult to know what specific traditional strategies were; nor was it possible to know which modern counselling practices are suitable or unsuitable in working with Inuit who wish to retain some degree of traditional practice in helping situations. Assumptions in either direction can result in inappropriate and unhelpful practice.( Corey, 285)

Conclusions about appropriateness and incompatibility could only be drawn from an empirical, evidence-based comparison. It was therefore necessary to identify the practices and values of both modern counselling and traditional Inuit helping, in order to assess their relationship.

A counselling framework grows out of worldview and beliefs about human nature and behaviour. Western counselling values have been identified and codified (9-11); it thus seemed necessary to identify both the worldview and values that informed traditional Inuit helping, and the practices that arose from that foundation. Multicultural counselling is perceived as different from conventional models; it was therefore also necessary to identify the elements of multicultural counselling in order to determine strategies that could ...