The Influencing Model: Proposing A Counseling And Psychotherapy Model Suitable To The Chinese

With the rapid development of Chinese economy and societal modernization in the last two decades, Chinese people have been shouldering increasingly heavier pressure to survive during the unprecedented societal transition period. More and more Chinese people seek some sort of psychological counseling help. Not surprisingly, the last two decades also saw a parallel rapid development of the field of counseling and psychotherapy. However, one dominant, yet unsolved issue, in this field has been: Do those established counseling theories and techniques developed in individualistic western societies generalize to the Chinese societies often thought of as collectivistic?The primary purpose of this research is to propose and empirically examine a counseling and psychotherapy model suitable within the Chinese societies, referred to as the "Influencing Model." Almost opposite to many western counseling models which emphasize the initiative taken by the client and tend to shy away from influencing opportunities during the counseling process, the Influencing Model explicitly argues for the dominant and proactive role of the counselor in influencing the counseling process.I start with reviewing the development of counseling and psychotherapy in both western and Chinese societies. I then critique major western counseling and psychotherapy schools. Next, I lay out the major components of the Influencing Model based on my own counseling experience, including the view of human nature, major theories, and common techniques. In the second part of the thesis, I report several survey-based empirical studies. The major findings are: 1) Chinese counselors more strongly endorse the view of human nature specified by the Influencing Model than those by western models; 2) There is substantial disagreement between Chinese counselors and Chinese clients in major desirable personality traits possessed by counselors; 3) However, the two parties agree on important traits possessed by counselors; 4) The two parties take quite similar positions on evaluation criteria of counseling effectiveness, and 5) There is high agreement between the two parties in issues related to how to solve Chinese people's psychological problems. In addition, I present several case studies to complement and corroborate the above quantitative findings.The major contribution of this thesis lies in proposing a systematic counseling and psychotherapy model suitable to the Chinese. The implications of the Influencing Model in counseling practice and research within the Chinese culture and directions for future research are discussed.