Study on Ethical Situations and Decisions Molds about Multiple Relationship of Counseling in University

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2021, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (4) : 1004-1011.

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PDF(1815 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2021, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (4) : 1004-1011.

Study on Ethical Situations and Decisions Molds about Multiple Relationship of Counseling in University

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Abstract

In China, a counselor in university may work both as a teacher and an administrator at the same time, which makes the multiple relationship ethics issues stands out, especially in university. In this study, qualitative research methods and in-depth interviews were used to explore ethical awareness and decision-making molds on multiple relationship issues of 17 counselors who have engaged in counseling in university for more than five years. Among the 17 counselors, 4 of them are males and 13 are females, aged around 43.5±9.3. Their average years working in university are 10.2±2.9 and 8.6±3.1. After the interview, we made the recording into transcripts and completed coding analysis .The results are as following: The multiple relationships of counseling in university mainly includes new relationship established through gift-giving; teacher-student relationship besides client-counselor relationship; counselors have relationships with third parties of the clients; clients encounter counselors outside the counseling room; clients have personal contacts of the counselors; clients have physical contact with counselors. The counselors in this interview did not mention their experience of sexual relationship. We found that the multiple relationships in university can be divided into explicit and implicit ones. The explicit multiple relationships are difficult to avoid, such as the relationship between teachers and students and the relationship between supervisor and supervisees. Other than this, implicit multiple relationships are not uncommon either. For instance, the same counselor provides counseling for lovers, classmates, roommates, etc. According to the stepse of the decision process and the content of the decision, we found that counselors usually have two molds of decision-making on multiple relationship ethical issues: the “experience-oriented” mold that first considers the empirical factors in the decision-making process and the “ethics-oriented” mold that first considers the ethical factors in the decision-making process. Furthermore, the “experience-oriented” mold is divided into “experience-intuition” mold and “experience-rational” mold. Counselors adopt “experience-intuition” mold make decisions based on the emotions, social experiences, personal habits and daily morality caused by situations, and make decisions on the level of intuition. Counselors adopt “experience-rational” mold make decisions based on genre theory or university regulations. The “ethics-oriented” mold is further divided into “ethics-intuition” mold and “ethics-empiricism” mold. Counselors adopt “ethics-intuition” mold make decisions based on ethical intuition, decision-making choices are often ethical, and counselors adopt “ethics-empiricism” mold make decisions based on genre theory or university regulations. We found that the first considered by most counselors are experience factors rather than ethical ones in the decision-making process. In this study, we found that counselors are less likely to refer to the code of ethics or seek for supervision when it comes to ethics issues . This shows that the ethical awareness of counselors is still insufficient and the ethics training system and related legal regulations in our country still needs improvement. Interestingly, counselors think that their ethical decisions are affected by training and supervision, even if they rarely ask for supervision when they are faced with the multiple relationship situations. It may indicate that the supervisors in our country may actively looking for ethical issues and guide the ethical decision-making of the counselors during the supervision process, so it may be a feasible way that add ethical supervisions to help counselors better at decisions-making dealing with ethics. We also found that most counselors do not inform the clients on multiple relationships, they are more passive when the multiple relationships are unavoidable, they do not actively manipulate the potential impact of multiple relationships on counseling. All of these reflect the inadequate current situation of counseling ethics in our country. The ethical awareness of the counselors is far from sufficient, it is necessary to strengthen ethics training. More compatible laws and regulations should be make as well.

Key words

Psychological counseling / Multiple relationships / Ethical situations / Ethical decisions / University

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Study on Ethical Situations and Decisions Molds about Multiple Relationship of Counseling in University[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2021, 44(4): 1004-1011
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