Robocounselling
Rogerian Therapy
Rogerian therapy is very simple. The basic attitude of the counsellor to the client as described in Rogers' three core conditions (genuineness, acceptance, empathy) are central to many other counselling approaches. Of course a computer programme is not human. However, somewhat surprisingly, these core conditions do have their counterparts in robocounselling.
Genuineness is the quality of the counsellor being real, transparent, and not trying to hide any of his personal thoughts or feelings from the client. The client has no expectation of any personal reaction at all to her from the computer, good or bad, whatever the client says or however she acts.
Similarly, the client cannot possibly pick up any criticism or hint of disapproval or lack of acceptance, as the computer programme is not alive.
Lastly, of course the computer cannot feel with the client and see life from her internal frame of reference. However, the main reason for this empathy is so that the counsellor can reflect back the client's topic, in summarised form, both as to factual content and emotional content. In this way the client is given perhaps a different view on her topic, and from this is able to see it more clearly. If the client follows the procedure used in this Rogerian robocounselling module properly, she will get to review the details of her topic afresh, accomplishing the same goal.
There are obviously many aspects of human counselling missing from this automated approach. But there are many advantages too. Overall, it is really not bad at all.
Great! Let's get on with the instructions
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