counselling in action

This is a quotation from the book "Person-Centred Counselling in Action" by Dave Mearns and Brian Thorne. I wanted to include it because there are some people who don't believe that counsellors can be judgmental. They think that the client will have misunderstood what was said to them. Well here you have it in black and white.

A danger for the inexperienced counsellor is that she is drawn into the client's self-fulfiling expectations and becomes increasingly judgemental towards her client. One counsellor reflected upon this during supervision on her work with the client, Andrew: 

I realise that as time has gone on I have come to dread appointments with Andrew. He is just so negative that it has drawn me into also becoming negative with him. In recent times I have been increasingly stern with him and have made far too many suggestions as to how he might change his life. I bet I've become more and more cold with him too. For his part I think this has let him retreat more and more into his 'rejected little boy'.

Unsuitable people aren't being weeded out during training. This counsellor isn't 'inexperienced', she is unsuited to be a counsellor and should not have been allowed to continue.