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Counselling and Psychotherapy Research: Linking

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Moments of empowerment: A qualitative analysis

of positively experienced episodes in brief personcentred counselling
a

Ladislav Timulk & Germain Lietaer

Research Institute of Child Psychology and Pathopsychology, Trnavsk cesta 112,

Bratislava, 821 02, Slovakia E-mail:
b

Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Katholieke

Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Version of record first published: 18 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Ladislav Timulk & Germain Lietaer (2001): Moments of empowerment: A qualitative analysis of
positively experienced episodes in brief person-centred counselling, Counselling and Psychotherapy Research: Linking
research with practice, 1:1, 62-73
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14733140112331385268

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Counselling and PsychotherapyResearch1(1) (2001) 62-73

ISSN: 1473 3145
Publishedby the British Associationfor Counsellingand Psychotherapy,1 RegentPlace, Rugby,CV2t 2PJ, UK

Moments of empowerment: a qualitative analysis of

positively experienced episodes in brief person-centred
counselling
Ladislav T i m u l ~ k I and G e r m a i n Lietaer 2

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'Research Institute of Child Psychology and Pathopsychology, Trnavsk~i cesta 112, 821 02 Bratislava, Slovakia.
E-mail: xvudpapa@savba.sk
2Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

38 positively experienced episodes in brief person-centred counselling with six clients were analysed.
The Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) method was used as the prime research tool. Clients were asked
to identify positively experienced moments in the counselling session during a post-session review interview. Clients and counsellors were invited to report on the feelings, perceptions and intentions they
recalled experiencing during these moments. Three analyses were used to categorise the meaning and
feeling quality of these moments, and a taxonomy of types of positively experienced episodes was also
created. The most frequently reported positive client experiences were associated with empowerment,
safety and insight. Other significant themes emerging from the analysis included: freedom in the relationship, shortcomings of the relationship, assurance of the relationship, unfolding of the client's personal meaning, and the importance of the counsellor's presence. Taxonomy of episodes revealed nine
categories: four of them focused on the strengthening of the therapeutic relationship, and five focused
on the empowerment of the client's self. These findings are discussed, and implications for theory and
practice explored.
Key words: client experience, person-centred, grounded theory, qualitative research, empowerment, process
research
An increasing amount of psychotherapy research
has focused on the question of how to identify,
understand and create 'good moments' in therapy
(Mahrer and Nadler, 1986). Based on their own
studies, which used teams of expert therapists to
rate video recordings of therapy sessions reflecting
a range of different therapy orientations, Mahrer
and Nadler (1986) generated 'a provisional list of
good moments' in psychotherapy. Their list contained the following moments: provision of personal material about self and/or interpersonal
relationships; description-exploration of the personal nature and meaning of feelings; emergence
of previously warded-off material; expression of
insight-understanding; expressive communication;
expression of a good working relationship with
the therapist; expression of strong feelings
toward the therapist; expression of strong feelings in extratherapy contexts; expression of a qualitatively different personality state; expression of
new ways of being and behaving; and expression
of a general state of well-being (Mahrer and
Nadler, 1986).

COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY RESEARCH, 2001, VOL 1, NO 1

These moments, together with the moment of

'learning about therapeutic process', were used
by Martin and Stelmaczonek (1988)in their study
of important moments in counselling. The results
of their study, based on client and counsellor ratings of recorded counselling sessions, revealed
that the most often marked events from the 'provisional list' were: expression of insight-understanding; provision of personal material;
descriptions and exploration of feelings; and
expression of new ways of being and behaving.
Martin and Stelmaczonek (1988) also found that
the clients' and counsellors' perceptions of
importance of specific therapeutic events were
in agreement in about 30 per cent of cases. They
concluded that client-identified important events
reflected "deeper, more elaborative, and more
conclusion-oriented information processing"
(Martin and Stelmaczonek, 1988). An interesting
finding of their study was the fact that the
clients remembered more than 70 per cent of
important events six months after the end of
counselling.

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THE CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE OF THERAPY: MOMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT

Other important contributions to this literature

have been made through studies of helpful events
(Eltiott, 1985; Llewelyn, 1988), helping processes
in therapy (Lietaer and Neirinck, 1986), significant
events (Llewelyn et al, 1988), significant moments
during the exploration of problematic reactions
(Watson and Rennie, 1994), and helpful experiences (Paulson et al, 1999). This body of research
has employed a variety of strategies of inquiry. The
studies by Elliott (1985) and Watson and Rennie
(1994) used the technique of Interpersonal Process
Recall (IPR) to gain access to client and counsel}or
moment-by-moment experiences of the therapeutic process. In these studies, audio or video
recordings of sessions are made, with research
participants being asked to review the tape and
report on what they remembered having thought
and felt during the actual therapy session. The
research by Lietaer and Neirinck (1986), Martin
and Stelmaczonek (1988) and Paulson et al (1999)
employed open-ended interviews or questionnaires administered at the end of therapy. Paulson
et al (1999) also applied the technique of 'concept
mapping' to categorise themes within client
accounts of what they had found helpful in counselling. Elliott (t985) has developed rating scales
through which clients and therapists can rate the
helpfulness of events on a number of dimensions.
The question of whether different helpful events
or 'good moments' are found in different types of
therapy has been addressed in a number of studies. Ltewelyn (1988) and Llewelyn et al (1988)
studied differences in significant events in cognitive-behavioural and psychodynamic therapy. They
found that, overall, the three most helpful kinds of
events in the perceptions of clients and therapists
were insight, reassurance/relief, problem solution
and personal contact. Awareness was the most
typically helpful event in psychodynamic therapy,
while problem solution the helpful event reported
most often in cognitive-behavioural therapy.
Lietaer and Neirinck (1986) investigated clients
and therapists' perceptions of helpful processes in
client-centered/experiential therapy. The authors
researched 325 sessions, and after each, ciients
and therapists were asked: Did things happen in
this session that you feel were really helpful to
you? Content analysis of therapist and client
answers led to the creation of 33 categories of
helpful processes, which the authors divided into
three larger clusters. The first cluster identified as
Relational Climate contained categories such as
warmth and interest; empathic depth; acceptance,
respect, and patience; confirmation, support, and
appreciation; inner comfort and openness (therapists' perceptions only); authenticity and personal
presence (clients only); and personal, mutual
contact (clients only). The second cluster identified as Specific Therapist Interventions contained

categories such as stimulation and deepening of

self-exploration; offering specific procedures;
therapist self-disclosure (therapists only); confrontation and here-and-now feedback; confirmation of feelings, ideas, plans, and behaviours; and
affirming progress/giving hope. The third cluster
identified as Client Process contained categories
such as having the opportunity to talk; taking the
risk to talk very personally; deep exploration of
experience; fruitful self-exploration (therapists
only); addressing the core issue (therapists only);
exploration of the therapeutic relationship; self
acceptance (therapists on}y); self-insight; insight
into situations and others; positive experience of
self; and experiencing progress.
Watson and Rennie (1994) inquired into clients'
subjective experience of significant moments
during the exploration of problematic experiences
using the technique of systematic evocative
unfolding (Rice and Saperia, 1984)in processexperiential psychotherapy. Watson and Rennie
(I 994) found patterns of client experiences of
this technique that were consistent with the theoretical framework of the model of therapy being
used.
Taken as a whole, the research into client and
therapist experiences of helpful or positive
moments during psychotherapy that has been
briefly reviewed above supports a number of tentative conclusions. First, in researching this phenomenon, it is necessary to compare client and
counsellor views of specific events in order to generate a comprehensive understanding of how
therapeutic moments are constructed. Second, it
is useful to employ iPR methodology, as a means
of gaining closer access to the actual experience of
participants during therapy. Third, in terms of
implications for training and supervision, as well as
theory development, it is valuable to concentrate
on identifying helpful (and unhelpful) experiences
associated with specific approaches to therapy.
The review of the research literature presented
above was a partial response to the first author (LT)
expressing interest in moments of experiential
shifts that he encountered in his psychotherapy
training during 'empathy lab' exercises that are
typically used in person-centred training. The
experience of participant and observer discussion
led him to an interest in IPR methodology.

"...it is necessary
to compare client
and counsellor
views of specific
events in order to
generate a
comprehensive
understanding of
how therapeutic
moments are
constructed"

Rationale for the present study

The study presented in this paper is similar in some
ways to the studies cited above. The intention was
to extend and deepen the understanding of 'good
moments' which had emerged from previous
research. The objective of the study was to explore
moments identified by clients as particularly positive within their experience of person-centred
counselling.

COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY RESEARCH, 2001, VOL 1, NO 1 ~t.

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THE CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE OF THERAPY: MOMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT

Central to person-centred counselling is a process The research was carried by the first author (LT)
"As personcentred counselling of clients becoming more congruent. Rogers (1959) with the second author (GL) serving as an auditor,
puts emphasis on
defines 'congruence' as a match between the self consultant, and supervisor, Both authors are of a
the felt, bodily
and organismic experience. The goal of person-cen- person-centred/experiential/humanistic orientation.
experiencing of the tred counselling is to provide interpersonal condi- Our expectations regarding the phenomenon are
tions under which the client can initiate a process presented in the introduction above. We also
client, we were
interested in
of precisely symbolising and assimilating an experi- expected that our findings would be similar to the
moments during
ence into the self without defensive distortions, studies mentioned above.
counselling which
Rogers says that in well-working counselling the
the client found on client's "self-structure will be a fluid gestalt, chang- M e t h o d
an experiential
in9 flexibly in the process of assimilation of new Participants
level, to be
experience" (Rogers, 1959, p. 234; italics in origi- Six counselling dyads were studied. Three different
somehow positive. nal). Gendlin, another person-centred/experiential Stovak counsellors (we labelled them X, Y, Z)
We expected them theoretician, sees as crucial for assimilation to worked with six Slovak clients (A, B, C, D, F, F).
to be moments of
happen the attending to one's own experiential Clients were offered three counselling sessions
experiential
process, specifically to the 'felt sense' of the prob- (except the first client who was offered four seschange, and thus,
lematic experience (Gendlin, 1996), This attention sions), which they could use to explore their current
also moments
can lead to a 'felt change', 'felt shift', and 'referent problems. The problems brought by clients
when a new selfmovement' which is recognisable in one's experi- included: relationship issues, misunderstandings
structure, based on ence (Gendlin, 1970; 1984; 1996).
with parents, interpersonal problems in general,
that experiential
As person-centred counselling puts emphasis on work problems, life meaning issues (God), and
change, may occur" the felt, bodily experiencing of the client, we were doubts about the future. For all clients except one
interested in moments during counselling which
the client found, on an experiential level, to be
somehow positive. We expected them to be
moments of experiential change, and thus also
moments when a new self-structure, based on that
experiential change, might occur. Our intention was
to explore these moments by taking into account
the perspectives of clients, counsellors, and independent observers. Before undertaking the
research, we expected that positive experienced
moments could be of two kinds, each corresponding with the two dimensions of the counselling
process: one, the interpersonal which has to do
with the creation of a good therapeutic relationship
(e.g. the client's trust toward the counsellor); the
second, intrapersonat, which has to do with
progress in the meaning-making process out of
problematic experiences - a shift in the client's selfstructure (Rice and Greenberg, 1991).
In comparison with the studies reviewed earlier,
our intention was to focus more attentively on
client feelings, while also being more sensitive to
the interactional processes taking place between
therapist and client. We believed that these dimensions had not been sufficiently considered in previous studies.Our main research questions therefore
were:
1. What kinds of feelings does the client report at
positively experienced moments?
2, How do clients perceive their experiences and
therapeutic interaction around positively experienced moments?
3. What kinds of therapeutic interactions lead to
positively experienced moments?

~ COUNSELLINGAND PSYCHOTHERAPYRESEARCH, 2001, VOL 1, NO 1

(A), it was their first experience of counselling~ All

counsellors were psychologists with training in
person-centred counselling and psychotherapy as
described in Mearns and Thorne (1988) and
Mearns (1997), and had between 3 and 13 years of
experience as therapists. Clients were recruited
through counsellors, the researcher, or through a
colleague at university. Clients were university students or university graduates. Three clients were
men (B, C & F), and three were women (A, D & El.
They ranged from 20 to 28 years of age (M=23.33;
SD= 3.77). All clients were screened {)sing the
Eysenck Personality Inventory (Stovak version; Ruisel
and Mullner, 1982; Vonkomer and Miglierini,
1979). They did not show severe pathology and
provided a low lie-score, which was convenient for
the study.

Measures
After the final session, all the dyads completed
the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (BarrettLennard, 1986) which serves as a measure of four
relationship qualities (level of acceptance, empathy,
unconditionality, and congruence). In four cases
(A, C, D & E) the client and counsellor agreed that
positive levels of these core conditions had been
achieved. The perceptions of two clients (B & F)
were lower than the perceptions of their counsellors in all four relationship qualities. In post-counselling evaluation interviews, all the clients (except
client B) described counselling as helpful and
meaningful. Client B reported no benefit from
counselling except that it was a new experience.
Interpersonal process recall
Every counselling session was videotaped (14 sessions) or audio taped (6 sessions). Immediately after

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THE CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE OF THERAPY: MOMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT

the session the main researcher (LT) interviewed
first the client and then the counsellor. The interview was conducted as an interpersonal process
recall (IPR; see Elliott, 1986). The interview with
the client started with general questions: How did
you feel before the session? How did you feel
during the session and after the session? These
questions served only as a context for further, primary questions. After these preliminary questions
the client was asked whether she or he could
recall moments that were experienced to be
somehow positive during the session. If the client
could recall such moments the client and
researcher both searched for it on the tape and
briefly replayed it. Then the client was asked the
following questions: What kind of feeling did you
experience at/around that moment? What was
on your mind? How did you perceive that
moment and the counsellor at/around that
moment? The emphasis was put on recall, not on
interpretations of the moment. The interview was
conducted in a non-directive way to let the client
lead. The whole interview was audiotaped. If
the client remembered more than one moment
per session, we repeated the same interview
procedure for each moment, After the client,
the counsellor was interviewed in a similar way,
starting again with general questions about his
or her feelings before, during, and after the session. Then the client-identified moments were
replayed for the counsellor and a research interview was conducted separately for each. The IPR
interview with the counsellor contained the following questions: What did you have in your
mind at/around the moment? How did you perceive the moment and the client? What did you
want to communicate to the client? The manner
of interviewing was similar to the one used with
the clients.

Research sample
The research sample consisted of the 38
moments that clients experienced to be positive,
together with information about the context of
these moments taken from research interviews
with the clients and their therapists around their
experiences of these moments, The identified
moments together with their session-context
are called episodes. By 'episode' we mean "a
meaningful sequence of interaction that forms
a unit" (Greenberg, 1986, p. 715). The centre of
an episode was a client's identified moment.
The average number of identified moments in
one session was M=2.0 (SD= 1.0). Client A
reported 8 moments in four sessions; the rest of
the clients had three sessions with 5 moments
(client B), 8 moments (client C), 4 moments
(client D), 7 moments (client E), and 6 moments
(client F),

Gathering and preparing the data

Before analysing the data, all IPR interviews and
parts of the counselling sessions (around the positive moments) were transcribed by the main
researcher and then checked by an independent
reader. The transcripts of IPR interviews were
transformed into protocols, which were a condensed form of the interview itself. In the protocol, the verbatim transcript was divided into
separate 'meaning units', which were then condensed into an abbreviated form while keeping
the meaning of the unit.

"The analytic approach

...was informed by the
principles of grounded
theory method
described by Giaser
and Strauss (1971) and
Rennie, Philips, and
Quartaro (1988)"

Data analysis
Analysis consisted of interpretive readings
of the material across three domains each corresponding to the research questions which had
informed the study. We analysed (i) the quality of
the client's felt experience; (ii) the client's recollections of positively experienced moments in the
context of the therapeutic relationship; and (iii)
episodes containing positively experienced
moments, taking into consideration the totality
of the event and its context (i,e. episode transcript, client's perspective, counsellor's perspective, external evaluation of episode, etc.). In more
detail, these three analytic stages comprised the
following activities:

Quality of the client's felt experience. The

main researcher (LT) looked for similarities and
differences between the feelings in different
moments. Several experienced qualities were
tocalised and a mutually exclusive category
system was set up. When the category system
was established by the researcher, an independent judge tried to sort the clients' experienced
qualities to the prepared category system. There
was an agreement between the two in 95 per
cent of category allocations. All examples of
non-agreement categories were sorted after
discussion.

The client's recollections of experiences of

positively experienced moments in the context of the therapeutic relationship. The anaLytic approach during this phase of the study was
informed by the principles of grounded theory
described by Glaser and Strauss (1971) and
Rennie et al (1988). Abbreviated meaning-units
were considered to be coding units and compared each with each. Constant comparison of all
the data was used to search for commonalties. All
coding units were grouped according to their
meaning in clusters. Every coding unit was placed
in as many clusters as possible according to its
meaning. Thus the different clusters consisting of
similar coding units were created and then
named taking into account meanings of

COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPYRESEARCH, 200t, VOL 1, NO 1 ~

THE CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE OF THERAPY: MOMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT

"...the quality feeling

of empowerment was
present in every client
and in 50 per cent of
episodes"

coding units. Thus we formed categories

encompassing generalisations and essentialities
in the data. The next step was to look for commonalties between categories. Through that,
higher order categories were created, which
captured more general contours of the data.
This step was repeated until a hierarchy of two
main categories was established. The analysis
was first done by the main researcher (LT) and
then repeated by an independent judge. The
final version of the hierarchy was made after a
discussion between the two. A part of the analysis was also checked by and discussed with the
auditor (GL).

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Episodes containing positively experienced

moments. In this phase of the analysis, each

Results

The quality of the client's felt

experience
The analysis of the feeling qualities experienced
and remembered by the clients generated six
different categories of experiencing. The quality
feeling of empowerment was present in every
client and in 50 per cent of the episodes.
Examples of this category were: "it was such an
inner strength"; "1 was proud of myself"; "it
made me step further, it encouraged me, made
me be more brave". A feeling of safety was
present in five clients and in 38 per cent of the
episodes, Examples of client expression of a
sense of safety included: "I could open up";
"gradual coming of safety". A quality of feeling
of discovery was present in three clients and in
10.5 per cent of the episodes. Examples of this
felt quality were: "Aha, I hadn't seen that ... I
have started to be aware of it"; "it opened new
doors for me". A feeling of gaiety was present
in two clients and in 8 per cent of the episodes
(examples: "1 wanted to laugh"; "it made me
laugh"). Two other qualities were present only
once (in one episode): feeling of being moved
("as if my tears would like to come out") and
feeling of being interested ("1 want to know so I
listen ... [to] facts, which are interesting to me").

episode was first evaluated by the main

researcher (LT) as a whole while taking into
account the session transcript and also both
perspectives (the clients' and the counsellors')
from the IPR interview. Based on episode
description and its interpretation, clinical evaluation was made at four bevels: (1) the client's
experienced quality; (2) the client's process
(his/her communication, intentions and reflections as apparent from session transcripts and
the IPR interview); (3) the counsellor's process
(his/her communication, intentions and reflections as apparent from session transcripts and Client perceptions of positively
the IPR interview); and (4) the pattern of thera- experienced moments
peutic interaction. Short descriptions (one or Analysis of data related to the domain of the
two sentences), capturing the essence of the client's recollections of experiences of positively
episode at the specific level, were made on experienced moments produced 22 non-mutueach of four Levels. When similarities in the ally-exclusive first-order categories, 5 secondshortened level description of episodes were order categories, and 2 main categories (see
seen, the episodes were grouped under the Table 1). For economy of space we have omitted
same cluster of episodes. Then each cluster of here the description of each first-order category
episodes was briefly described in a more gen- and merely present abbreviated descriptions of
eral way on each of the above mentioned the second-order categories.
levels. The description on each level in each
The category freedom in the relationship
cluster was analysed to capture commonalties encompasses the client's experience of feeling
on each level inside the cluster. Furthermore, good in the presence of the therapist due to
each cluster was named according to the main mutual attunement, and because of being
characteristics of episodes it contained. Next, respected and valued. Examples include:
higher order clusters were made according to "...good was that I could be in charge... "; "...I
similarities between clusters. Thus a hierarchical wanted to laugh... ". The category reservations
taxonomy of different types of episodes was about the therapeutic relationship captures the
established. This taxonomy was then used for client's uneasiness in the relationship, tn the
exclusive sorting of all episodes by an inde- context of the positively experienced moments
pendent judge (psychologist) who used only recorded in this study, these client dissatisfacgeneral descriptions of clusters as a cue for the tions were mostly mentioned as having just been
evaluation. In 29 cases out of 38 her judge- overcome in a positively experienced moment.
ment was the same as that of the main Nevertheless, in a minority of the clients' reflecresearcher. Differences in the evaluation were tions, uneasiness was still present despite the
discussed and taxonomy was refined according positiveness of the moment. Examples of this
to the discussion. A part of the analysis was category included: "...I was not sure whether
also checked by and discussed with the second the counsellor was not tense about someauthor (GL).
thing..."; "...the counsellor is somebody who

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THE CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE OF THERAPY: M O M E N T S OF E M P O W E R M E N T

does not have to care... "; "...the counsellor started to

be defensive... ". Confidence in the relationship is a category which represents clients' accounts of the empowering effect of the therapeutic relationship. The
relationship with the counsellor was reported as being
safe, open, and potentially enriching (examples: "...1
could feel that I could trust him..."; "...he is no longer
a stranger to me..."; "..,before that moment I had not
been sure whether the counsellor was relaxed... ").
These three categories can be subsumed within a main
category (focus on relationship), because they depict
the clients' perceptions of aspects of the counselling
relationship which are important for the client in the
positively experienced moments of therapy.
The category client's pursuit of personal meaning
captures unfolding, creation, and discovery of the

client's personal meaning; its newness, connections

with self-structure; the client's satisfaction with the
process of its development; intimacy of the process;
self-acceptance, and inner empowerment of the client's
self. Examples: "1 was (privately) quickly sorting out situations when I reacted in a different way... (the client
was elaborating on a new discovery of reacting to interpersonal conflict in a more positive way)"; "...as if the
chaos was created and something new emerged, a new
knowledge, statement, word, discovery.,.; "...when I
was talking about the road (it is a metaphorical expression for the client's direction in his current life) 1had the
feeling that I am walking on it... "; "...when I said that
l had the feeling of being proud of myself...".
Importance of the counsetlor's presence for client's
pursuit of personal meaning refers to the influence

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THE CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE OF THERAPY: MOMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT

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"...empowerment
arose from a

of specific counsellor interventions or behaviours

in the client's development of a healthy and
enriching personal meaning. Some examples of this
variety of
category were: ",..1 had the feeling that I could disprocesses.., the
close myself completely.._ "; "...i saw that the counclient's internal
sellor understands me, I could see it in his eyes.,, ";
work...the
counselJor's exact "...I had the feeling that the counsellor accepts these
feelings, and these feelings disappeared... "; "the
and affirmative
counsellor confirmed it and I have started to be selfsymbolisation of
confident, I have started to believe in myself more".
the client's
experiencing, and These two categories could be understood as constituting a more general theme or main category: focus
initiated by the
counsellor's
on the client's personal meaning, which represented
evaluation of the the importance of experiences of self-exploration and
client's .,.reality.., creation within these significant moments during the
experiencedby therapy.
the client as a
Taxonomy of episodes
confirmation of
In contrast to earlier studies of client and counsellor
his or her
experiences of "good moments' in therapy, which
experiencing,.."
have reported findings primarily in terms of categories, one of the aims of this study was to explore the
ways in which client and counsellor meaning-making
and action is interlinked and unfolds within specific
episodes. A summary of the analysis of episodes containing positive-experienced moments is presented in
Table 2. The reader can find an abbreviated description of the types in the table. Due to space limitations,
we have chosen to consider in most detail the episode
type which emerged most frequently: empowerment
o f client's self.
The category empowerment of client's self consists
of those episodes which resulted in the client's experience of empowerment. Empowerment arose from a
variety of processes: (i) as a result of the client's internal work (e,g. self-satisfaction, self-acceptance, plans
for the future, etc.); (Ji) following the counsellor's
exact and affirmative (hope promoting) symbolisation
of the client's experiencing; and (iii) initiated by the
counsel{or's evaluation of the client's (interpersonal)
reality that was experienced by the client as a confirmation of his or her experiencing a problematic
aspect of life. Some episodes were also characterised
by ambivalent empowerment of client's self, i.e. even
though the client felt empowered in the episode he
or she was at the same time embarrassed or otherwise vulnerable. The counsellor, here, was experienced as intrusive or not supportive enough.

Discussion
It is essential to acknowledge the limitations of this
study. It is always a problem in counselling research
to find an appropriate, representative sample of the
population, The method used (IPR) requires reflective,
motivated participants (Elliott, 1986), so the choice is
quite restricted. The size of the sample was also
restricted because of the time-consuming analysis.
The number of research participants is on the border

COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPYRESEARCH, 2001, VOL 1, NO 1

of what is recommended for qualitative studies

(Barker et al, 1994). However, one must be aware
that the research sample consisted of a substantial
number of positively experienced moments (N=38).
As the ctients had minor problems and were relatively
well functioning, they could represent the part of the
counselling clientele that is seeking to pursue personal growth, a better quality of life, or to cope with
the realities of life typical of young adults. The counsellors were also rather young (from 28 to 36 years of
age). What is advantageous is that all of the counsellors were psychologists who underwent exactly the
same kind of training, making them quite a homogenous group.
A limitation of the study was the intrusiveness of
the video camera and the researcher during the counselling process. It can influence both the client (his or
her vulnerability) and the counsellor (feeling of being
judged by the researchers). On the other hand,
according to Rennie (1990)it can also strengthen the
client's conceptualisations of his or her gains from
counselling. The number of counselling sessions is
another limitation; it is very probable that in a longer
counselling process there would be a different
number of episodes/moments of specific type. It is
also possible that different kinds of positively experienced moments than the ones presented here could
appear. Limitations also arise from the IPR procedure
(see e.g. Elliott, 1986). Specifically in the study clients
could miss some positively experienced moments.
There are also possible limitations concerning the
analyses and interpretations in this study.
Although we tried to put aside our preconceptions of
the phenomenon we are aware of the fact that our
understanding of counselling (which comes from our
person-centred/experiential orientation) led to the coconstruction of the categories in the study, and influenced the way in which we interpreted the findings.
Despite these limitations, we believe that this study
has made a useful contribution to understanding the
nature of positive moments and episodes in personcentred and other experiential approaches to counselling and psychotherapy. Our research, compared
with the studies reviewed in the introduction to this
paper, focused more specifically on the 'felt quality'
of clients' experience. Two major qualities were
reported: feeling of empowerment, present in 19
episodes, and in all 6 clients, and feefing of safety,
present 10 times and experienced by five clients. The
felt quality empowerment points at the experience
of self, recognisable on a felt and an awareness
level, which may be a sign of beginning therapeutic
change in the client's sense of self. The quality may
be showing some overlap with Gendlin's (1970;
1984) terms 'felt shift', and 'felt change'. But its
description, taken from the exact wording of clients,
shows its wholeness, i.e. the clients are not just
moving forward in some specific issue but their whole

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THE CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE OF THERAPY: MOMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT

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THE CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE OF THERAPY: MOMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT

"Episodes which
focused on the
experience of the
therapeutic
relationship showed
that the counsellor's
transparent
metacommunication
about goals and
strategies used in
the counselling ...
strengthened the
alliance between the
two. Explicit
metacommunication
of the counsellors'
therapeutic
intentions and ends
is a somewhat
neglected part in the
person-centred
literature .... Our
study shows that a
negotiation of the
therapeutic process
and its goals has the
potential of
empowering the
alliance"

sense of self is moving, in the direction of larger

internal empowerment. The category feeling of
safety has an interpersonal connotation. It was
safety in the presence of the counsellor that was
felt. It is a felt quality, which may indicate a
power of the therapeutic bond. It may be a sign
of the client's preparedness for fruitful engagement in the therapeutic process.
Our analysis of how clients perceive their experiences around positively experienced moments
resulted in the development of a conceptual]sat]on
dividing client experiences into two main categories. One focused on the therapeutic relationship
and the second one focused on the client's pursuit
of her or his personal meaning (Rice and
Greenberg, 199t). As far as the saturation of the
categories brought by the analysis is concerned,
only one of 22 categories covered expressions for
less than half of the clients. This suggests that the
categories were well represented. The use of the
grounded theory analysis in this study was similar to
Rennie (1990, 1992), although in his research
Rennie looked at the client experiences during the
entire psychotherapy hour. The analysis presented
here is thus a subgroup of Rennie's analysis.
Interestingly, the category reservations about the
therapeutic relationship corresponds with the findings of Rennie (1990, 1992) who states that the
clients can exhibit deference toward the counsellor
or therapist as a consequence of their inferior position in the therapeutic relationship. The important
thing here is that the clients can very thoroughly
examine the counsellor, arising from the uncertainty
about the relationship, and the counsellor can often
miss that fact. On the other hand, the category
confidence in the relationship depicts the client's
perceptions of 'secure' aspect of therapeutic relationship at positively experienced moments. The
therapeutic relationship can then be "a secure base
from which the patient [the client] may feel freer to
explore and confront warded-off and anxiety laden
aspects of his or her inner world" (Eagle, 1997, p.
226).
Rennie's (1990, 1992) conceptual]sat]on of the
client's private evaluation of his or her therapeutic
experience was found in categories covered by the
second order category, unfolding of the client's personal meaning. The client is aware of more things
and interconnections than he or she reveals and is
also aware of what the exploration invokes in him
or her. Another category focused on the client's
personal meaning, importance of the counselfor's
presence, captures not often fully recognised
aspects of the counsellor's presence for a new formulation of the client's personal meaning. This fact
is often forgotten when the term 'therapeutic
alliance' is used for the description of the relationship between the client and the counsellor. It is not
only the alliance that the counsellor can offer to the

~,~.,COUNSELLINGAND PSYCHOTHERAPYRESEARCH,2001, VOL 1, NO 1

client but also a specific growth-promoting interpersonal experience concerning problematic

aspects of the client's self.
Our third research question (what kinds of therapeutic interaction lead to positively experienced
moments?) generated a taxonomy of episodes. As
with the other analyses we carried out, the taxonomy reflected two distinct dimensions of the therapy process: one concerning the therapeutic
relationship and one concerning the client's
progress in exploration of personal meaning.
However, what was not expected and what
stemmed from the clients' expressions as main
characteristics was that the central feature of the
episodes was the theme of empowerment.
Episodes which focused on the experience of the
therapeutic relationship showed that the counselIor's transparent metacommunication about goals
and strategies used in the counselling (see type
1.1.1. in Table 2), or self-disclosure when the client
is not sure about the counsellor's attitudes or persuasions concerning a specific client's issue,
strengthened the alliance between the two. Explicit
metacommunication of the counsellors' therapeutic intentions and ends is a somewhat neglected
part in the person-centred literature (the exception
is the work of Rennie, 1998; Watson and Rennie,
1994). Our study shows that a negotiation of the
therapeutic process and its goals has the potential of
empowering the alliance. Therefore, it seems suitable that Bordin's (1979) term 'therapeutic alliance'
can also be used in the person-centred context as it
depicts technical characteristics in the relationship
between the client and the counsellor. The counsetlor's self-disclosure - when the client genuinely
asks for it - also empowers the relationship because
the client assures him or herself that the counsellor
wilt not have specific prejudices against him or her.
The anatysis also generated new insights into the
'unspoken' relationship (Mearns and Dryden,
1989). For example (see type 1.1.2.) the client may
engage in a process of judgement concerning
the counseilor's intentions about his or her commitment to the client (this episode category must
be looked at cautiously, however, because it concerns only two episodes with one client). Another
aspect that it captures is the client's appreciation of
the counsellor's respect toward him or her, the
counsellor's adaptation to the client's needs, the
counseltor's giving up of his or her power and its
delegation to the client. These aspects are clearly
consistent with a person-centred model of counselling.
Episodes focused on empowerment of client's
self, based on exploration of a specific personal
meaning, show several interesting findings. For
example, clients can value the counsellor's gentle
confrontation or offering of focusing on experiencing (episode type 2.1 .) aimed at elaborating on the

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THE CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE OF THERAPY: MOMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT

understanding of one's experience that is sometimes controversial in this approach (Brodley,

1990). These counsellors' interventions bring the
client to a better focus on their experiences and
their cognitive representations. Another subtype
of episodes focused on the client's empowerment
revealed that during counselling the client can
experience significant moments privately, in these
moments the counsellor has no idea that something important is happening inside the client. This
fact corresponds with a mismatch between the
counsellor's and the client's perception of important moments in counselling as reported by Martin
and Stelmaczonek (1988).
The episode subtype empowerment of the
client's self foflowing exact and affirmative symbolisation of client experiencing consisted of 12
(out of 38) episodes with 5 clients which makes it
the most saturated and frequent type of episodes.
The clients in these episodes use the counsellors'
verbalisation to better understand their experience
and its consequences. The feeling of an empowerment of the client's self is promoted not only by
the exactness of the counsellors' labelling of the
client's experience but because it is formulated in
a way which brings hope and a meaningfulness
that is worth living for. In the context of personcentred counselling it is surprising that the counsellors are ahead of the client's conceptualisation
because it contradicts a myth that the counsellors
in this approach are non-directive. However, what
seems to be important is that the counsellor meets
the client in his or her momentary need for such
conceptualisation that the counsellor offers.
Therefore, it seems that it is not that important
whether the counsellor interprets or reflects but
rather whether the counsellor offers symbolisation
that articulates those aspects of the client's experience that represent potential for further development. As an example, if the client feels lonely
after separation from her partner, a counsellor's
verbalisation that captures the qualities of loneliness, and especially the sense of longing for the
other, is of more worth than merely verbalising
that the client had been left. Verbalisation of these
positive qualities in the client's experiencing represents a facilitative and empowering understanding
by the counsellor.
The episode subtype empowerment of the
client's self, based on the counsellor's evaluation
of the client's interpersonal reality pinpoints a
fact that the client felt empowered when the
counsellor disclosed his or her evaluation of the
client's interpersonal problem. However, in each of
these identified episodes the counsetlor's judgement supports a perception held by the client. For
example, the counsellor spontaneously agreed that
the client was really being abused by her colleague
at work. The client felt empowered because she

could see that the counsellor's thoughts are not in

opposition to hers, or because she could see that
the counsellor understands the deepness of her
despair, and that he is on her side in the interpersonal conflict. It seems that there are such
moments in the counselling process when the
client needs to hear the counseltor's disclosure of
his or her perception of the client's reality. And if
this perception is congruent with the client's experiencing the client feels empowered and supported
in further exploration and the effort needed to
change the situation. However, there was no case
of the client and counsellor disagreeing on the
client's interpersonal reality, as may happen in
working with family abuse or ethical issues (see,
for example, Bentovim, 1998; Tjeltveit, 1999). The
impact on the counselling process of such contradictions may be an interesting subject for further
resea rch.
The last category (episode type 2.3.) focused on
the client's empowerment and was characterised
by the fact that positiveness of the moment in
these episodes was experienced ambivalently.
Ambivalence was a consequence of the counselior's failure to support the client at the specific
moment or of the counsetlor's clarifying confrontation that was helpful and empowering for
the client to a certain extent but also somehow
embarrassing. The experienced ambivalence could
also be a result of the vulnerability of the client's
explored issue, which could make the client more
sensitive to the counsellor's interventions.
The episode types presented in this taxonomy
certainly do not cover all possible types existing in
the process of counselling. However, their description and conceptualisation puts them in coherent
taxonomy and allows use of the taxonomy as a
pre-structure for further similar kinds of research.
Comparing our work with the similar studies
mentioned in the introduction, there is a lot of
overlap. This suggests that positively experienced
moments explored in this present study capture
the same kind of phenomenon as helpful significant events (Elliott, 1985) or good moments
(Mahrer and Nadler, 1988) in therapy. The differences are mainly due to the different research
methodology used or to different kinds of conceptualisation and interpretation of findings. Our
study used a qualitative methodology, looked both
at client and counsellor perspectives, and was
more specifically focused on grasping the pattern
of therapeutic interaction (including the intentions
of participants) leading to positive experienced
moments, and the felt experiential quality of these
moments.
In the introduction, we mentioned that positively
experienced moments could be moments of experiential change, Whilst there is a kind of felt
change, one cannot confuse that change with the

"Ambivalence was
a consequence of
the counsellor's
failure to support
the client at the
specific moment or
of the counseUor's
clarifying
confrontation that
was helpful and
empowerin 9 for
the client to a
certain extent but
also somehow
embarrassing. The
experienced
ambivalence could
also be a result of
the vulnerability of
the client's
explored issue,
which could make
the client more
sensitive to the
counsellor's
interventions"

COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPYRESEARCH,2001, VOL 1, NO 1 .i~,

THE CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE OF THERAPY: MOMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT

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"There were
many areas of
personal learning
arising for the
principal
researcher, as a
result of being
involved in this
study"

therapeutic change. Not every positively experi- Hill and O'Brien (1999), Rennie (1998) and Safran
enced moment is a moment of rising new self- and Muran (2000).
structure. Some are just moments of bettering the Ladislav Timulak and Germain Lietaer, 2001
therapeutic relationship; some are just steps to
further fruitful exploration, etc. What we can say, A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s
however, is that these moments may carry in them- The Department of Psychology of the Faculty of
selves the potential for deeper engagement in Philosophy, Comenius University Bratislava, Slovakia
therapeutic endeavour and/or hopeful therapeutic provided support for this project. A part of the
end.
study was conducted during a study visit of the first
There were many areas of personal learning aris- author at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven,
ing for the principal researcher, as a result of being Belgium supported by The Flemish Community
involved in this study. These include:
Ministry.
A substantial part of the manuscript was pre11 using more metacommunication with clients pared as a part of a doctoral dissertation of the first
about the aims of counselling and its means;
author. We would like to thank Vtadimir Htavenka
I a greater interest in the client's perception of col- who was an official supervisor of the doctoral dislaborative work;
sertation of the first author, and also did a part of
I! becoming more sensitive to accommodating the auditing. We would like to thank the clients and
client's requests if possible;
counsellors who participated in the study; our raters
I! more often offering responses focusing on deep- and auditors and peer reviewers - Katarina Timuening of the client's understanding (e.g. "what ~ikov~, Katarfna Karaszowi, and J01ia Halamowi;
comes to your mind when you think of what you John McLeod for editorial help and anonymous
want from that relationship?") or on attending reviewers for helpful comments. We would like to
to the client's experiencing (e.g. "what is the thank the English language correctors: Andrea
worst thing in that situation?");
T~mov~, Mike Scoggin and Ed Hesek. A part of
II when trying empathically to grasp the client's the study was presented at Czecho-Slovak
experience not to forget the growth-promoting Psychotherapy Conference in Luha~:ovice, Czech
aspect of it;
Republic, in October 1999 and part was presented
It allowing oneself to be more active in the clarifi- at the Conference on Client-Centered and
cation of the client's experiences;
Experiential Psychotherapy in Chicago, in June
II being more open to self-disclose if the client asks 2000.
for it;
11 thinking of one's own motives in a specific inter- References
action (i.e. "am 1 really trying to help or do I
Barker C, Pistrang N and Etliott R (1994) Research
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own resonation (e.g. feeling, symbolisation,
understanding) with the client's process while
still focusing on the client's frame of reference
(when thinking that it could be of benefit for the
client), and many, many more that could be (and
perhaps will be) the subject of a new paper.
We intend to continue this study by applying the
same method to an investigation of longer-term
counselling, with more distressed clients, and with
counsellors working according to a therapeutic
manual, which extends (or make more explicit) classical person-centred formulations consistently with
the findings presented in this study and some other
formulations from recent research-based papers,
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