當事人和諮商師發展友誼關係之經驗：當事人觀點

The Client's Perspective on Friendship with a Former Counselor

研究目的：旨在探討諮商結束後，當事人和諮商師發展友誼關係的經驗與觀感。研究方法：採用敘事研究整體內容分析法，針對兩位參與者各進行約六小時的深度訪談，以主題呈現友誼關係的重要經驗。研究結果：參與者小如定義友誼關係為「細水長流、相互扶持」，感恩與珍惜友誼關係的發展；參與者小倩定義友誼關係為「多一個人愛我」，友誼關係在彌補未完整結案的遺憾。友誼關係受到先前諮商關係、結案狀態、友誼開始與維繫狀態、友誼角色定位之影響。研究結論：當事人和諮商師的友誼關係涉及界線協調、角色調適、權力位階的議題，若友誼關係之界線角色清楚，權力相近，則可能對當事人有正向影響，反之，則可能讓當事人遭遇到調適關係轉變的困難。

Purpose: Dual relationships are important and controversial issues on counseling ethics. Friendship between a client and former counselor is one kind of dual relationships, and the pros and cons are still debatable. Hence, to explore clients’ experiences about friendship with a former counselor will provide important ethical implications. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to understand clients’ experiences with and perceptions of friendship with their former counselors. Methods: A narrative research holistic-content perspective was adopted to conduct in-depth interviews for this study. Two female participants, age 50 and 24, were interviewed for about total 6 hours each. The interviews were analyzed to discover the themes relating to their experience of friendship. Results: Participant 1(P1) defined friendship as a long-lasting and supportive relationship. P1was grateful for and cherished the friendship. P2 defined friendship as a relationship that allowed her to be loved, and felt that it offset her regret and feelings of incompletion with counseling termination. The analysis indicated that the friendship is influenced by the former counseling relationship, the completion of counseling termination (which means there is no unfinished business of the counseling relationship), beginning and maintenance of friendship, and role definitions of a client and former counselor in the friendship relationship. Conclusions: This study revealed that friendship between a client and former counselor involves issues of boundary coordination, role adjustment, and power ranking. If a client and former counselor develop an equal power friendship that has clear definition of roles and boundaries, the friendship can have a positive impact on the client. Otherwise, the client may have difficulties with role disequilibrium with the change of the relationship.