| The purpose of this study was to provide an in-depth description of the development of novice family counselors as they progressed through a nine month internship in a counseling graduate program. Six novice family counselors provided videotapes of their counseling sessions with "real life" families as well as written responses to questions concerning their conceptualizations, perceptions and therapeutic interventions. Qualitative methods were used to describe, analyze and interpret the novice counselors' growth and development over time. The counselors began the year with relatively strong generic person-centered counseling skills. They added a greater number of structuring and restructuring strategies, increased the dialogue between family members, attended more closely to the parental subsystem and generally became more aware of the need to focus on patterns of interactions. The course of the counselor's development was influenced by the interaction of the following factors: the nature of the family's problems, the number of sessions with the family, the counselor's ability to connect with the family, the amount of instruction and supervision the counselor received, the counselor's personal approach, the nature of the referrals, as well as the counselor's prior experience with theories of individual counseling. |
