Feedback in Counseling, Immediate

Counseling is a professional and dynamic relationship that requires clinicians to integrate and demonstrate their intellectual and interpersonal skills. This expectation may well have originated with Sigmund Freud, who required all who studied with him to submit to personal psychoanalysis as part of their academic and clinical training. Today, counselors and psychologists prepare for their professional responsibilities through a series of academic and field-based experiences at the graduate level of study. This preparation focuses on an integration of the intellectual, personal, and interpersonal capabilities of individuals.

Counselors-in-training (CITs) receive instruction in a number of subject areas, including, but not limited to, counseling and personality theories, treatment approaches, human life-span development, cultural competencies, research, appraisal and assessment, clinical issues, and treatment. At different points in their education, CITs will treat clients under the supervision of university faculty or other professionals in order to demonstrate a level of competency in providing clinical treatment.

These hands-on or real-world experiences are identified by many terms: practica (plural of practicum), internships, clinical rotations, or field-based placements. Practicum, the common term used here, describes the initial clinical training CITs experience and may take place in a variety of settings utilizing a variety of training formats. Counselors-in-training may see clients in a university-based clinic or training center. Clients and counselors are viewed either in real time through one-way mirrors by an instructor and the counselor's training group or in the previously described setting but with a videotaped rather than live supervision component. Some CITs will treat clients in a community or school setting where sessions may be audio- or videotaped for feedback at a later time. Although the titles, location, and technologies may differ, the common expectations are that CITs will provide counseling services to clients; receive feedback, instruction, and supervision on those interactions; and integrate that information into their future treatment of client concerns.