Counselors’ Ethical Dilemma And Coping Strategies In Physical Contact Decision Making

There have been many controversies about whether physical contact should appear in psychological counseling;However,previous studies have shown that physical contact plays a special therapeutic role in psychological counseling.It is an important professional and ethical issue to know how to make decisions on physical contact and figure out what is the situation of the counselor in the face of physical contact decision-making.This study uses the method of questionnaire survey and qualitative interview to explore the problem.In the first study,165 domestic counselors were investigated by snowball sampling method about the physical contact with clients in counseling,and the data were statistically analyzed.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)physical contact is common in psychological counseling,but the frequency is low,and counselors tend to be conservative about physical contact;(2)The frequency of physical contact increases with the age of counselors;(3)The more experienced the counselor is,the higher the self-evaluation of the decision-making clarity of physical contact is;(4)School orientation affects counselors’ attitude,frequency and decision-making clarity on physical contact;(5)For physical contact issues,counselors get more support from ethics training than skill training.In the second study,8 counselors were selected from the questionnaire respondents by purposive sampling method,and semi-structured interviews were conducted on their physical contact experience during psychological counseling.Referring to the three-level coding process of grounded theory,this study analyzes the interview data by using the method of generic analysis,and finally obtains eight categories(special properties,cultural environment changes,professional development limitations,avoidance and resistance,complexity of physical contact process,coping strategies,physical contact results,unclear decision-making path)and one core category(“ethical dilemma of physical contact: the fault development of theory and culture”),and relates categories to form a theoretical model.