15 Summarizing Skills

M. Priya

Introduction:

Counselling is an act of assistance. When a person is in difficulty and seeks out someone in whom he has confidence for advice and guidance, a situation exists for counselling. It is very common situation in everyday life. Younger person seeks the advice of older persons; less successful person seeks the advice of more successful persons. In a situation like this, where one seeks the guidance of another in sorting out one’s problems, there is usually an assumption, which is not always correct, that the guide who gives advice understands the problem of the person who seeks advice, and that the solution given as a piece of advice is the best possible solution. Counselling is not just an act of advising or guiding another person, a common function performed by parents, teachers, doctors and others in our society. The art of counselling depends so much on the specific knowledge, understanding, skill, attitudes and values of the counsellor that it has become a specialised job for which one requires professional training. In counselling session summary and brief statements of longer abstracts of client can be given by professional counsellor who attends to verbal and non-verbal communication over a period of time. This will help the client to know what exactly he going to take out from his problems, this process will help the counsellor to decide about the further process and also check the accuracy of counselling session.

Objectives:

v  To know what is summary

v   To learn steps in effective summarizing skills

v   Summarising as one of the counselling technique

v   To build counselling relationships for better summarization

v   To know why summarizing skills are important

v   To understand the basic requirements for summarising skills

Definition of summary:

It is a brief statement that presents the main points in a concise form. It is also called as s synopsis or recap that is a shorter version of the original and it is a condensed presentation of the substance of a body of material.

Elements of effective summarising skills:

• Uses writer’s words
• Written concisely, specifically and clearly
•  Briefly articulates main idea
• Emphasizes key points supporting main idea
• Represents authors view (not summarizer’s)
• Revised and proof read

Summarising as one of the counselling technique:

Counselling techniques can be viewed from several perspectives. The concept of leadingin counselling refers to the extent to which the counsellor takes responsibility for the content of the interview. This should not be confused with the ratio of counsellor-counsellee talk in an interview,  although  the two are  necessarily related. A  counsellor  using very leading techniques more or less determines the topics considered and contributes his own feelings about the client and his problems on a verbal level. At the other extreme, a counsellor employing as few highly leading techniques as possible lets the counsellee determine the topics and what is said about the topics. He works, verbally at least, only with what the counsellee contributes to the interview, and carefully avoids verbalising his own feelings about what the counsellee states. He attest to help counsellee better understand himself and his environment within the bounds of content and feeling of the counsellee’s verbalizations.

In the counselling process, different techniques are distributed based on research and case

studies over the past. These may be;

• Acceptance
• Restatement
• Clarification
• Summarization
• Summarization clarification

Counselling relationship for better summarization:

The relationship that is built up between the counsellor and the counsellee through interviews is the most important link in the successful operation of summarization. In fact, it is the core of the counselling process. The curative power of counselling relationship is limitless. In the absence of effective inter-personal relationship the psychological suggestions made by the counsellor to alleviate the anxiety and emotional discomfort from which the counsellee suffers fail to produce desired effects. The changes in attitudes and self-concepts desired to be brought about within the client do not occur in the absence of effective counselling relationship. Client’s trust and confidence in the counsellor which emerge from warm and friendly relationship are missing if the counselling relationship is not properly established. It must be remembered that each client-counsellor relationships is unique. All clients have unique psychosocial characteristics. No two clients can be found to be having exactly alike personality make up. Similarly, even the counsellors are not alike in the respects. Hence, when the client and the counsellor meet together there is an interaction between the two sets of unique psycho-social characteristics which determine the unique quality and characteristics of the relationship that is generated. The philosophy of thinking, feelings, attitudes and expectations of the counsellor and the counsellee determine what kind of relationship will be generated. Much depends on what the counsellor summarises or does and how the counsellee perceives all that. But one of the basic facts is that counsellor’s genuine interest in helping the client as reflected in his talks and behaviours, emotional warmth and sincerity and professional commitment to help in achieving the desired relationship. The most important for the counsellor in this regard is to break the resistance of the client and make him believe that he can help him to solve his problems by analysing his problems and giving proper summary about. He should try to relieve, as far as possible, the client of his negative feelings, indifferent attitude and hopelessness about counselling. Much depends on how the counsellee reacts to what the counsellor summarizes or does. If emotional warmth, friendly attitude, genuine interest in helping, genuine acceptance of the client are reflected in his reactions and approaches it serves the great purpose.

Summarising skills can be drawn by longer interpretations of client in which they condense or crystallise the essence of what the client is saying and feeling. The emotions of a client can be observed throughout the session which helps counsellor to sum up the session as well as to give proper suggestions to the client over his problems.

Why summarising skills are important?

• To know the emotions of client and counsellor in process of counselling
• To brief out the long statements given by client to know exact problem occurred
• To pull out the key parts of the extended communication
• To bring the sessions to a close, by drawing main threads of discussion
• To be used to start up subsequent session if applicable
• To review the work done by counsellor to help/solve the client issues
• To end up the session or to move the counselling process forward

    Summaries are similar to paraphrasing, except they are used less frequently and encompass more information. It is the gathering together of a client’s verbalisations, facts, feelings, and meanings and the presenting of them to the client in outline form is the process of summarisation. It involves attending to the client, experiencing the feelings and thoughts of the client and integrating and ordering the complex content of the interview. The summary reviews the content and a main feeling expresses in the session, brings together common elements, and clarifies. Summarisation also gives the counsellor a chance to hear if his or her thinking is accurate. It provides a pause to the interview.

Requirements for summarising skills:

Here are some of the basic requirements given for better summarizing skills

Ø  Basic listening sequence

Ø   Clarification

Ø   Diagnose/determine

Ø   General theme

Ø   Focussing on main points

Ø   Abstracting

Basic listening sequence: the basic listening sequence is organisation of attending skills into a coherent and systematic frame. Many counselling and therapy theories use the basic listening sequence to draw out accurate data. Reflection of meaning is not included here as part of the basic listening sequence. As a more interpretative, reflective skill, it usually follows from effective use of the basic listening sequence. Basic listening sequence is most useful in the interview, where one is interested in gathering data about a problem and the client’s assets and in determining goals with the client. Most important in the use of the basic listening sequence is the ability to obtain results in terms of clear, organised data.

Clarification: assuming that the counsellor really does understand what has just been expressed, it is nota simple task to select the phrases which will communicate this to the counsellee. There is a difference in perceiving what the counsellee has expressed and verbalizing this perception for him. An even greater difficulty is that of timing. If the counsellor could somehow stop the interview for a few moments at just the right time, he could summarize to himself what has been expressed, selection the most appropriate phrasing and then start the interview again with a clarification. One of the methods of developing clarification skill is or the counsellor to listen to recordings of his own interviews and attempts to identify places where clarification would have been appropriate. Finding these he should stop the recorder and attempt to verbalise the clarification, and then check its validity by replaying the expressions clarified. Systematic practice of this kind tends to develop the counsellor’s confidence and skill so that he can begin experimenting more with clarification in counselling sessions for better summarising.

Diagnose/determine: a first task of the counsellor after listening to the counsellee is to determine/ diagnose where the client is. One important part of that diagnose is to understand the client’s constructs syatem-through what set of glasses the client views the world. By the skilful use of interviewing techniques and qualities, the counsellor can set about understanding how the client organises and acts on the world. This is the underlying purpose of assessment/ diagnosis/ interpretation of the client, whether completed by interview or test or by other means.

The basic issues in effective assessment and diagnosis of clients and their needs are-

• What is the client’s presenting problem? What does the client think is wrong, when does it occurs and what are the results?
• How does the client view the world? what are the client’s constructs and what effect does this representational system have on the problem?
• What is the client environmental and situational contexts? What effect do issues such as socio-economic class, race, living arrangements etc, have on the client’s personal constructs and life?
• What are your basic theories and constructs in regard to this unique client? What does this client mean to you? What environmental factors, particularly agency affiliations, impose on you?
• What do you and the client do next?how do you handle the immediate problem? If solving the immediate problem is insufficient, then what? What about the development of an overall treatment plan?

Assessing the client’s status is a complex and involving process requiring skilled use of questioning techniques, broad knowledge of socio-economic considerations, awareness of alternative lifestyles, and many other factors.

As the counsellor summarizes the problems defined by the client considerable care and effort need to be given to:

• Who is the individual; what are her or his important characteristics, family background, life style etc? what are the important cultural environmental factors for this individual?
• What happened or is happening? The details of the problem are needed. How often does it occur? Under what circumstances?
• When does the problem occur? When did it begin? What are the important time sequences? What immediately preceded the problem situation? What were the patterns of this problem over the life cycle of the client?
• Where does the problem occur; in what settings; under what conditions; with what type of people?
• How does the client react to the problem? How does the client feel about it?
• Why does the problem occur?

  However, the careful assessment of the problem often leads to obvious answers and better summary. To determine the precise nature of the problem, it is also possible to administer psychological tests to enhance summarizing skills of a counsellor.

General theme: in summarization, the counsellor combines two or more counsellee thoughts, emotions, feelings into a general theme. This is used as a skill during choice points of a counselling process in which the counsellor wants to draw connections between clients conversations/ topics. Otherwise, when the client appears to be jumping from one topic to another without any meaning or focus into the direction, but a summarisation can help the client to decide which topics, discussion and conversations are important. It is also used as a way to close a session or to transfer to next process.

For example: Client- “I really feel guilty about run away marriage, rather it was infatuation and was not really for love. It was just the licence to get closer to her convenient thing to do. I feel like I’ve messed up her life with false decision, and now I feel obligated to her. Starting up a new family, financial responsibility and having children has always been important to me and at my age I feel like I have started soon. Everything in my life feels so unsettled right now by taking up this decision. I just started hunting for job to feed my wife and myself. In order to satisfy her, I know that I have to work overtime until everything settles. I just don’t think that I can handle all of these responsibilities at the same time.

Counsellor: “There are a number of areas in your life which make you to take such decisions and feel overwhelmed with many responsibilities. So far you’ve specified that your dissatisfaction with your marriage, the pressure you feel to start a new familylife and your new search for job each contribute to life stress what you feeling now”. A summary integrates elements of what the person has been discussing and serves at least three major functions.

1.It may help to manifest in a more comprehensible and integrated manner what the person has been discussed about, and thus helps the person put facts and feelings together.

2. It may serve as a motivation for further exploration of a particular topic ordiscussion.

3. It normally serves as a necessary insightto check for you because it pulls together situations discussed over an extended period of time and allows the counsellee the opportunity to clarify any misconstructions you have in your thinking about him or her.

Summarizations are frequently used when:

• Counsellor wish to structure the commencement of session/ discussions by recalling the key points of a previous session.
• The counsellee’s presentation of a topic has been either confusing or lengthy and inconsequential.
• A counsellee seems to have expressed everything which is of important to her/him on a particular topic, and summarizing provides closure so you can move on.
• It helps the plans for taking the next step in counselling and requires mutual valuation and agreement on what has been learned with one or several sessions/discussions.

Focussing on main points:this can be done by several discussions or session in order to highlight them, at the same time counsellor gives the “gist” of what has happened so far if he is accurate. In the beginning summary counsellor recalls what has happened at the last meeting because sum-ups happen at the beginning and also at the end of a session. In an ending session, counsellor’s are attempting to condense what has happened over so many minutes  or hours  into  a few minutes’  worth  of  main   points.

Abstracting: This involves an even greater amount of leading. This may not seem logical at first, but consider for a moment what happens when one person summarises what another has said. It is essentially abstracting. From a given segment of an interview, the counsellor selects those ideas and feelings which seem most important and attempts to feed them back to the student in a more organised form. Obviously, the counsellor summary statement may be inaccurate or unacceptable to the student, thus destroying rapport. However, when abstracting is effective it transposes various statements, providing the counsellee with a firm base point, so to speak from which to continue.

Here is the conversation made during counselling session and about summarising – Counsellor: you fell that your family really want to do the right thing for you but they are not sure how to go about it?

Counsellee: yes, I like them and don’t want to offend them in any way, but I have my own life to live too. They really don’t know as much about this (school courses) as I do. They are a little outdated. I mean that’s natural and all, and I am sorry they are, but it’s so. Counsellor: you are sorry that they don’t understand, but it’s a fact that they don’t.

In the illustration above the counsellor summarized a relatively brief counsellee expression. There are times when the counsellor wishes to summarize a longer segment of an interview. While this can sometimes be accomplished with a simple summary statement, it is frequently more appropriate to use a technique which we can label summary-clarification. By definition, the larger the segment being summarized, and more abstract the summary. The more abstract the summary becomes, the greater the contribution of the counsellor to the interview content.

Conclusion:

Counselling techniques can be viewed from several perspectives. The concept of leading in counselling refers to the extent to which counsellor takes responsibility for the main content of the interview i.e. summary. This should not be confused with the ratio of counsellor-counsellee talk in interview, although the two are necessarily related. Some counsellors and therapists are satisfied to conduct a thorough review/ summary of the individual and often fail to look into factors in the environment. While there are an infinite number of ways to examine the environment of a client, developmental stages, life facts, personal definitions of the problems are the basic assessment, an equally important issue is how client views the problem. For one person, the breaking of an engagement may be a severe emotional trauma while, for another, no particular thought or feeling may be attached. The way person represents and thinks about a problem may be as important as or more important than the problem itself. In these two situations counsellors summary may differ. So a professional counsellor knows how best he can summarise based on the needs of client.

References:

1. Pal,O.B (2011). Guidance and Counselling, APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi.
2. Narayana Rao. S (2008). Counselling and Guidance, Tata Mc Graw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd, New Delhi.
3. Hamrin, S.A., B.P. Paulsen (1950). Counselling Adolescents. Chicago, Science Research Associates.
4. Stefflre, B.P., King and F.Leafgren (1962). Characteristics of counsellors judged by their peers, Journal of counselling psychology, 335-340.