The Helping Relationship: Healing and Change in Community Context

VII. The Helping Relationship: A Context for Learning

138 David is a 29-year-old man who has come in for counselling because he is having difficulties maintaining a long-term relationship . He has had numerous relationships. He reports that he is receiving a consistent message that he is distant in the relationship , and his partners find it difficult to feel close to him. Susan and James have been married for 7 years. They have one daughter, Hanna, 18 months old. They have come in for counselling because they “seem to argue about everything these days.” These common presenting issues elicit a variety of therapeutic responses, such as solution focused, cognitive behavioural, or psychoanalytic theory, to address unresolved issues from childhood or family of origin patterns that are influencing the client’s current relationships. More recently, therapists have looked at client issues from a systemic perspective, especially narrative and constructionist , and in particular have worked to build on client strengths to address current concerns. What if counselling is simply about learning? What if the presenting concerns that clients bring to counselling are more about opportunities for learning than about indications of dysfunction, VII The Helping Relationship: A Context for Learning Kristine Lund Lund 139 pathology, or problems to be solved? How would that change our approach to counselling? Would our perceptions of the counselling process be different? Would we change the way in which we engage clients? As a result of my experience as both a pastoral counsellor and a pastoral counselling teaching supervisor, I believe that the therapeutic relationship is central for client healing and change. I also assume that those who come for counselling have been unsuccessful in their attempts to effect change and healing for themselves. Clients have been unable to integrate environmental or developmental challenges that they encountered in their lives. So they come to counselling hoping that the counsellor will be able to help them. Counselling as Hermeneutics To understand counselling as learning, it is important first to understand that counselling is essentially hermeneutical. In short, hermeneutics is the art of interpretation. Smith (1991) observes that hermeneutics has a long history. We know that there was a school of interpretation in ancient Alexandria and that Aristotle used the term in one of his writings. Etymologically, the word hermeneutics is derived from the name and character of the Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the gods. His character was also one of a trickster. Therefore, hermeneutics carries within it a sense of wonder or revelation, of recognizing new understandings of the previously perplexing and paradoxical. Hence, hermeneutics is cautious of becoming overly certain. Hermeneutics recognizes the importance of understanding what it means to be human as we share it relationally with not only other humans but also all of creation. It recognizes that truth is not fixed once and for all and that no one method can predetermine the location of truth or one authority say the way things “really are.” As Weinsheimer (1985, p. 9) suggests, a motto for hermeneutics might be that “truth keeps happening.” 140 The Helping Relationship Davis (1996) observes that hermeneutics has historically been concerned with the “text.” Initially, the text was a sacred writing. Later the notion of text was expanded to include literary and legal documents. More recently, the concept of text has come to mean life itself. This reveals a shift from biblical and literary hermeneutics being concerned with uncovering the truth in a written text to more recent branches of hermeneutic thought. Included in this shift of the meaning of text is noted philosopher Martin Heidegger’s (1975) conviction that being and interpretation are inseparable. As rhetoric specialist Timothy Crusius (1991, p. 5) states, “Interpretation ... is human being, our mode of existence in the world.” An etymological understanding of the term “text” expands our wisdom beyond the contention of text as simply referring to written works. Davis (1996) notes that originally, however, “text,” like “web,” was used to describe things woven, and so the metaphor of “life as text” does have a particular richness. Considered alongside the more popular “literature as text” metaphor for example, the image of intertwined linguistic threads forming a tightly woven narrative fabric foregrounds the roles of language, of storytelling, and of rereading in the construction of our respective understandings and identities. The textual metaphor also offers an image of the interweaving of our selves in the fabric of our culture. To engage in hermeneutics—to interpret—then, is...