Date of Award

Spring 5-1-1979

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Communication Disorders and Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology

First Advisor

Merle M. Ohlsen

Second Advisor

John C. Jessell

Third Advisor

David A. Gilman

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the relationship, in a counseling session, of an initial guided meditation by a counselor to presence, a core condition of counseling and psychotherapy as defined in psychosynthesis. Presence consists of two variables--the quality of the therapeutic relationship and the ability of the counselor or therapist to disidentify from his or her personality and become identified as a 11 Self. 11 The quality of the therapeutic relationship was measured by the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory. Counselor disidentification-"Self"identification was assessed by the number of distracting thoughts, feelings, and body sensations experienced by the counselor during the counseling session. The sample consisted of two counselors and four clients from the Texas Tech University Counseling Center. One counselor worked with two clients matched on anxious symptomatology, while the other counseled two clients matched on depressed symptomatology. Symptomatology was assessed by the Hopkins Symptom Checklist. The study consisted of three phases: a training phase, an experimental phase, and a follow-up phase. During the training phase data were collected on the demographic characteristics of the counselors, their levels of selfactualization as measured by the Personal Orientation iv Inventory, and their counseling orientation as measured by the Counseling Orientation Scale. Counselors received training in the guided meditation technique five days a week for three weeks. Their level of meditative ability was assessed by the Response Patterns to Meditation Scale. In the experimental phase, clients were seen for a total of six sessions. The treatment of meditation was randomly assigned to sessions 2, 4, and 5. The other three sessions were designated as a baseline measure. Counselors used a behavior counter to record the number of distracting thoughts, feelings, and body sensations during each session. After each session, counselor and client completed forms of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory. Scores from each inventory were added together to yield a total relationship score indicative of the quality of the therapeutic relationship developed in each session. In the follow-up phase, a questionnaire was administered to counselors to determine if the counselors were still using the meditation, what experiences they had while meditating, and what differences they experienced in their counseling after using the meditation. A randomization N of one design (Edington, 1967, 1975) was utilized with replication features across counselors, clients, and time. After completion of the six counseling sessions, data were analyzed with a randomization test. The two null hypotheses of this study, stating no significant difference between treatment and baseline on the quality of the therapeutic relationship and counselor disidentification-'' self"-identification, were upheld. The difference between treatment and baseline on the total relationship score as measured by the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory for each session was not significant at the .05 level. The difference between treatment and baseline for the number of distracting thoughts, feelings, and body sensations experienced by counselors in each session was not significant at the .05 level. Because of the lack of significant results, consideration of the replication features across counselors, clients, and time was not relevant.

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