Counseling Practice: In Defense of Passive Modes of Professional Engagement

Historically, passive ideologies of counseling have regularly morphed into active approaches. The author contends that professional power and status are the underlying motives for this ideological transition. Based on empirical findings and recent philosophical developments, a case is made for the counseling profession to revalue passive ideologies of helping. ********** The counseling profession has a fascinating history, which has regularly been punctuated by the rise and fall of various movements, trends, and ideas (Gladding, 2004; Neukrug, 2007). One particularly noteworthy feature of counseling history, I contend, is that passive ideologies of helping (i.e., systems of thought that advocate passive professional engagement) regularly morph into active approaches (i.e., orientations that direct counselors to play an active role in the helping process). Indeed, contemporarily, active approaches to helping arguably dominate the counseling profession. This consistent bias against passive professional engagement is certainly ah interesting historical trend, which, if subjected to analytic scrutiny, might conceivably shed light on a host of issues that are relevant to counseling practice. Nevertheless, this phenomenon has not been the subject of critical examination. The purpose of this article is to engage in a historical analysis of the factors that have caused the counseling profession to overwhelmingly endorse active approaches to helping in favor of passive ones. Unlike other historical accounts of the counseling profession, which ordinarily simply consider the raw facts and conditions that paved the way for particular occurrences (e.g., Gladding, 2004; Neukrug, 2007), this analysis views historical events as determined by both conscious factors and less conscious, self-serving motivations. PASSIVE AND ACTIVE MODES OF PROFESSIONAL ENGAGEMENT Admittedly, it seems absurdly reductive to categorize entire intellectual movements in the counseling profession as either active or passive. Nevertheless, as I demonstrate in this article, by sorting ideological trends into these broad categories, one can construct a conceptual ladder that will make it possible to climb up to some interesting conclusions. With this caveat in mind, orientations to counseling that place the primary responsibility for change on the client are referred to as passive. Counselors largely serve as facilitators in passive counseling orientations, not active advocates for change. Passive approaches are also characterized by the assumption that clients are not deficient or defective. That is, clients possess all the ingredients necessary for change within themselves. Humanism (Hansen, 2000) and derivative movements, such as existential analysis (Yalom, 1980), are quintessential examples of passive approaches. The Rogerian client, for instance, is a free psychological agent who has an intrinsic ability to heal (Rogers, 1951). The counselor, by passively engaging in deep, empathic immersion, creates a therapeutic environment that fosters psychological transformation (Rogers, 1957). Active approaches, alternatively, hold a set of assumptions that are essentially opposite from passive approaches. Clients, in active approaches, are viewed as defective, deficient, or having been oppressed to the point where they can no longer advocate for themselves or might not even know that they are in need of help. This conceptualization of clients in active approaches necessitates that counselors do something active to clients because clients are not capable of self-healing. The medical model is a good example of ah active orientation in the counseling profession (Hansen, 2007). In the medical model, clients are diagnostically tagged according to a classificatory system of particular deficiencies of defects (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Within this model, the counselor is obligated to take ah active treatment stance (e. …