Women's experience of becoming a counsellor : a phenomenological inquiry
| dc.contributor.author | Austin, Bonny Louise | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-08-12T19:31:15Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-08-12T19:31:15Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 1993 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 1993 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Psychological Foundations in Education | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies | |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Arts M.A. | en |
| dc.description.abstract | This study investigated, from a phenomenological perspective, women's experience of becoming a counsellor. As the review of the literature indicates, many women choose occupations which involve providing service to, and caring for others. Often these occupations pay poorly and have lower status than many male-dominated occupations. In addition, many women may unconsciously choose these careers due to the sex-role socialization process. Although research has explored factors influencing the career choices of those involved in the helping professions, most of this research has focused on isolating and manipulating variables thought to effect the career choices of helping professionals. No other studies have examined women's career choices from a phenomenological perspective. Furthermore, the research that does exist has not exclusively investigated the motivations and experiences of women who choose a career in counselling or therapy. The purpose of the current study was to explore inĀ depth, from a phenomenological perspective, women's subjective experience of how they have come to be counsellors. Three professional counsellors were interviewed for this study. Interviews were then transcribed verbatim and analyzed using index cards. First, a narrative was written for each woman emphasizing reoccurring themes; second, an overall account of all three women's experiences was composed, indicating the fundamental structure of the experience of becoming a counsellor for the women in this study. The overall account noted similarities as well as differences in the three women's stories. Results of the study showed that the women's experiences of becoming counsellors began in childhood and carried on throughout their adulthoods. Reoccurring themes were found within the individual accounts as well as in the three women's stories combined. Major reoccurring themes for all three participants included nurturing, supporting, listening to, taking responsibility for and caring for others throughout the course of the participants' lives. In addition, all three participants developed a desire to understand the psychological worlds of themselves as well as those of others. Finally, the women emphasized that they were not always conscious of how they came to be counsellors; it just felt like a natural thing to do. In this sense, their identity as a counsellor became intertwined with their identity as a person. In spite of the common themes which emerged from the data, there were many differences in the women's stories, making each story a unique one. The concluding chapter of this thesis discussed relationships between the present findings and the literature, application of the present findings for counsellors and counsellor educators, and recommendations for future research. | en |
| dc.format.extent | 142 pages | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/16999 | |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | en_US |
| dc.title | Women's experience of becoming a counsellor : a phenomenological inquiry | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
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