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The counselling interview: First

impressions
Pittu Laungani
Published online: 01 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Pittu Laungani (2002) The counselling interview: First impressions,
Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 15:1, 107-113, DOI: 10.1080/09515070110104835

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 Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 2002,
Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 107– 113

STAND UP, SPEAK OUT AND TALKBACK

The counselling interview: Ž rst

impressions
PITTU LAUNGANI
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Department of Dental Surgery, Manchester University, Oxford Road, Manchester, UK

abstract This paper examines the nature of a counselling interview. It concerns itself with
the Ž rst interview between the counsellor and the client, when both, the client and the counsellor
are attempting to form their Ž rst impressions of one another. The paper discusses three major
problems that arise in the process of forming impressions, viz., 1) maintaining neutrality and
objectivity, 2) exercising cognitive control, and 3) expressing empathy. It is the contention of this
paper that the above problems have not been clearly understood from their historical, philoso-
phical, and psychological perspectives, and as a result, they have not been satisfactorily resolved.
As a result, they have not been given sufŽ cient consideration by counsellors and psychotherapists.
The article considers the three problems and discusses ways and means by which they can be
clearly understood and hopefully ‘taken on board’ by professionals working in the area.

Introduction
Ask anyone involved with interviews. Ask a personnel ofŽ cer concerned with hiring and
Ž ring his staff; a careers’ teacher guiding a young student; a social worker listening to
client; a journalist interrogating a well-known politician; a doctor examining a patient, a
police ofŽ cer questioning a motorist; a barrister cross-examining a witness in court. Ask a
sergeant barking orders at privates on parade, a counsellor listening (with an inner ear?) to
a client—ask them all. Ask them how well they interview.
They will all, in all probability, give you the same answer. They may word it
differently, some using the currently fashionable jargon, some expressing it more simply,
but in essence all saying the same thing, which is ‘We are all experts in interviewing. We
are all professionals at our jobs. We know what we are doing. We know how to interview’.
Either all professionals are blessed with the unquestioning ‘divine’ ability to interview and
there’s nothing more to be said, or else . . . something’s wrong somewhere. (Given the
present proliferation of ‘professions’—ranging from professional bricklayers and builders,
cleaners and caretakers, chefs and caterers, beauticians and hairdressers, fund-raisers and
funeral directors, to the ‘traditional’ professions, including medicine, law, the armed

Correspondence to: Dr Pittu Laungani, 11, Chelmsford Square, London NW10 3AP, UK; e-mail:
pillarsofsociety@aol.com

Counselling Psychology Quarterly ISSN 0951–5070 print/ISSN 1469–3674 online # 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09515070110104835
 108 Pittu Laungani

services, and the clergy, it’s best not to look too closely at how one might deŽ ne a
professional person.) It would be interesting to know if all professionals have the ‘divine’
touch. But such an endeavour will lead us away from our main theme, which is to Ž nd out
how counsellors undertake their initial interviews with their clients.
Before we enter the ‘mysterious’ world of counselling, let us consider some points.
For a start, what a person might claim to know is very often quite different from what a
person actually knows—this might be referred to as the ‘credibility gap’. This funda-
mental difference between claim to knowledge and actual knowledge often goes un-
recognized. Knowledge being what it is—a frighteningly elusive entity—one would, if one
had any, any sense at all, hardly dare make such categorical claims of what one knows for
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certain! Yet there are people who do.

This leads to an interesting paradox. People who know best, people who have
dedicated their lives to acquiring knowledge in their chosen Ž elds of endeavour, often
claim to know very little. For they are often painfully aware that despite what they know,
there are vast areas within their own chosen Ž eld where their knowledge is uncertain, even
quite shaky. In true Socratic fashion, the only claim they make is that what they know is
very little. On the other hand, those who know very little often claim to know it all.
Does the same apply to interviewing in general and counselling interviews in
particular? It is evident that those who are good at it, those who have the knowledge
and the skills, may be the Ž rst to admit that they can—and occasionally do—make serious
mistakes. The others—those who are not good at it and do not even know that they are
not—often lay claims to infallibility.

The Ž rst interview

In certain ways, a counselling interview is like a game with its own set of rules. But it is a
game with a difference. For in a game, the rules are overt and can, on demand, be made
explicit; and the parties concerned may agree to abide by the rules, amend them, or even
 aunt them. But in a counselling interview some rules, though not all, are covert and
remain unknown to the client. This may place the client at a certain disadvantage.
The Ž rst interview is in many ways crucial. It provides an opportunity to both the
counsellor and the client to learn something about one another. Each is involved in
assessing the other. The outcome of the Ž rst interview often sets the scene or creates a
‘template’ for all subsequent counselling sessions. For instance, inexperienced clients—
clients who have never before met a counsellor—may be quite anxious about their initial
interviews. They may not know what is expected of them or what to expect. Each client
will tend to perceive the counsellor in his/her own idiosyncratic ways. Some may imbue
the counsellor with magico-spiritual powers. This is more likely to happen in the case of
clients from the Indian sub-continent (Laungani, in press). Others may see the counsellor
as an expert who will solve their problems, and some may even come to look upon the
counsellor as friend. The impression the counsellor creates on the client may be related to
a variety of factors, including the age, the gender, the ethnicity, the demeanour and the
general approach of the counsellor.
The counsellor too is actively involved in forming impressions of the client. Seasoned
counsellors learn to cultivate a ‘professional face’ when dealing with their clients—what
 The counselling interview 109

T. S. Eliot once referred to as ‘preparing a face’ to meet a face. The professional face
contains several interesting features. There are three, which are of concern to us. They are:

1. neutrality and objectivity;

2. cognitive control; and
3. empathy.

Neutrality and objectivity

The idea of being neutral and objective seems to be the hallmark of a professional
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counsellor. It has undeniable merits. To sit back and listen to one’s client without making
any overt (or covert) judgements, to suspend one’s biases, prejudices, one’s preconceived
notions, is the stuff which good and competent counsellors are made of. Isn’t it
remarkable how many counsellors claim that they remain neutral, calm, dispassionate,
and objective when listening to their clients? But is that what really happens? Is this what
most experienced counsellors do? Let us turn the clock back to the 17th century and see
where this idea of neutrality came from. This attractive and popular idea of neutrality of
perceptions, to a large measure, can be traced to the inductive writings of Bacon (1561–
1626).
Bacon argued that the reason why we do not correctly ‘read of the book of Nature’ is
because of our inherent biases and prejudices. Truth has no guises. It is our own
prejudices which impede us from perceiving truth. He suggested that we should ‘purge’
our minds of such prejudices: then and only then shall truth become manifest. Like
shining light it will stand revealed. The belief in the neutrality of perceptions has Ž ltered
down through the ages and has come to acquire the status of a myth. But the idea, as we
shall see, is mistaken.
Popper, in his book, Conjectures and Refutations (1963) has argued that no perception
of any phenomenon is ever neutral. He explains that all perception is theory-laden or
theory-saturated. This is because to perceive involves a hunch, a guess, or an unveriŽ ed
hypothesis. This holds true at all levels, from the trivial to the complex. Let’s say you see a
black dot against a white background. You might point out that that is a perfectly neutral
perception: it involves no pre-dispositions, no hunches, no guesses whatever, on your
part. Moreover, you add triumphantly, everyone else would see it the same way: a black
dot against a white background.
‘Wrong!’ says Popper. For you to perceive black against white, you would have had
to imbibe the concept of colour. You would need to have some understanding of colours,
the ability to distinguish between colours, and some understanding of the concept of the
superimposition of Ž gure against background. It is this prior knowledge which enables
you to perceive correctly. One can see that perception of even the most simple and trivial
phenomena rests on complex theoretical structures.
When one turns to perceiving people, the problem becomes even more complex.
One is forever constructing ‘theories’, ideas and hunches about people. And one uses
those hunches (which of course may turn out to be totally false and misplaced) in the
course of one’s interactions with others. The hunches may be acquired stereotypes. ‘Red
headed women have a Ž ery temper’. ‘Fat people are jolly’. ‘People with shifty looks have
 110 Pittu Laungani

something to hide’. Even Shakespeare had Julius Caesar talking in stereotypes when he
exclaimed:

Let me have men about me that are fat,

Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. (Act I, Scene 2)

Stereotypes are the hooks on which one hangs one’s initial impressions. They may be
based on one’s past experiences, one’s learning, one’s level of education, or whatever.
One may modify them in light of new experiences; but it is impossible to get rid of them.
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They act as our guides. The counsellor can no more give up assessing the client than the
client, the counsellor. Both are engaged in mutual assessments, regardless of whether they
operate at an overt or covert level. Consider the number of observable variables to which
both the counsellor and the client are exposed in the Ž rst interview: age, gender, ethnicity,
height, weight, level of education, clothes, type of speech, tone of voice, gestures, facial
expression, etc. To these, add all the covert and attributed variables which also come into
play during the interview: nervousness, Ž dgety behaviour, feelings of sadness, anger,
aggression, to name but a few.
Let us move from philosophy to psychology and see if similar arguments hold.
Evidence from research on the primacy factor, or Ž rst impressions, does not support a
stance of neutrality of perceptions. The pioneering experiments by Asch (1946), Brown
(1965, 1987), Heider (1946) and Higgins and Rholes (1976) have demonstrated clearly
that Ž rst impressions allow us to integrate and synthesise information into a meaningful
pattern, even reconciling con icting and contradictory information. What is not very clear
though, is whether Ž rst impressions are accurate or inaccurate, favourable or unfavour-
able, and whether they in uence the observer in making accurate long-term assessments.
But the impact of Ž rst impressions is a well-established Ž nding. There is further evidence
to show that positive and negative Ž rst impressions create their own positive and negative
halos. A person judged favourably tends to get seen in favourable terms despite objective
evidence to the contrary—and vice-versa.
No honest counsellor can remain unaffected by the power of Ž rst impressions. There
is no point in pretending that one’s perceptions of a client are neutral. They aren’t.
Although one cannot avoid the power of Ž rst impressions, it might do counsellors good to
take on board all their prejudices and biases, all their preconceptions and predilections,
accept them as part of their being, and use them as assumptions or working models in the
interview situation. That would be a far more honest and just way of dealing with Ž rst
impressions than denying their existence, as many tend to do.

Cognitive control
‘The professional needs always to be in control’, appears to be the guiding philosophy of
most counsellors. The client may weep and cry, have emotional outbursts, betray
tensions, display wild swings of moods, but the counsellor needs to remain calm and
rational even under the most trying conditions.
 The counselling interview 111

Why is the counsellor expected to exercise such a high degree of cognitive control in
a counselling and/or therapeutic situation? There is a well-founded belief that it is through
the judicious exercise of one’s cognitive processes—the exclusive powers of reason—that
one can uncover the nature and the structure of reality and acquire knowledge of the
external world and of the human mind. The origins of the cognitive model can be traced
to the writings of Descartes (1632–1677), who was one of the greatest rationalist
philosophers of the 17th century. The advantages of using a rationalist approach cannot
be overstated. It allows the counsellor to exercise some degree of control over the
interview. The counsellor can remain calm and unperturbed in the face of emotional
outbursts by the client. Such an approach also permits the counsellor to continue,
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change, alter and even terminate the interview, if it threatens to get out of hand.
The exercise of cognitive control is facilitated by the fact that Western society tends
to be ‘work and activity centred’ (Laungani, 2000, 2000a). In such a society, people tend
to operate on a cognitive mode, where the emphasis is on rationality, logic and control.
Public expressions of feelings—particularly negative feelings and emotions—are often
frowned upon. Such displays are often seen as being vulgar. Given the cultural
moratorium on the public expression of feelings and emotions who does a person in
distress turn to? It is evident therefore that in such a society a need arises for the creation
of professional therapeutic and/or counselling settings, which permit the legitimate
expression of feelings and emotions by clients and their handling by experts trained in
that area.
There is one danger to which a counsellor needs to be alerted. In the process of
exercising cognitive control, there is a strong likelihood that the client may come to
perceive the counsellor as being cold and uncaring. ‘Here I am, crying my bloody heart
out, and he (or she) just sits there, doing nothing!’ might become the client’s lament.
Contemporary research on therapeutic outcomes points out that that the one important
factor which in uences outcomes positively, is the perceived warmth of the therapist. To
put it very simply, we like people who are warm and reciprocate our feelings, and are
indifferent, if not hostile to persons we see as being cold.
Warmth, you will agree, is an emotional dimension—not a cognitive one.

Empathy
Closely related to warmth is empathy. Empathy is a complex process. It is regulated by
both cognitive and affective (emotional) components, which interact in a systematic
manner to produce an emotional understanding (Bhandari and Parthi, 2000). To be truly
empathic, you would need to be sensitive to your client’s feelings, you would need to have
the ability to share your client’s emotions, and you should be able to identify with your
client’s present position or status. If you were a psychoanalytically oriented counsellor,
you would see empathy as an affective understanding of another person’s emotional state
reached through momentary identiŽ cation. In other words, empathy involves the ability
of an individual to ‘crawl’ into the ‘skin’ of another person and construe the world from
their perspective. To feel what the other person feels, to see the world as the other person
sees it, to experience in a symbiotic way the emotional experiences of the other person
may be deŽ ned as empathy. It should however be emphasized that for a given emotional
 112 Pittu Laungani

or affective response to be seen as empathic, it needs to be perceived as such by the

recipient. Unlike virtue, empathy is not its own reward. It has to be acknowledged by the
beneŽ ciary.
Several research workers have proposed that the notion of empathy is best under-
stood in developmental terms; consequently, a variety of developmental models of
empathy have been proposed (Elizur, 1985; Hoffman, 1976, 1982; Kozeki and Ber-
ghammer, 1992).
It is clear that no one is born with an inexhaustible reservoir of empathy. It is a
learned emotional response, which develops in conditions where the parents are suppor-
tive, responsive, warm, and accepting of their children’s emotional reactions. Hoffman
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(1976, 1982) in fact, argued that parents should allow their children to be exposed to a
broad range of experiences and emotions so as to enable them to develop their sensitivity
to the feelings of others. To shield children from distressing experiences, such as a serious
illness, or death in the family, under the mistaken belief that such experiences might
traumatize the child, may turn out to be counter productive (Hoffman, 1976; Laungani,
in press). The child will have serious difŽ culties in acquiring the psychic maturity to
empathize with others.
Where does this Ž nding leave those counsellors who have not had the good fortune of
having been socialized in conditions which are ideal to the development of genuine
empathy? And since empathy has been identiŽ ed as a necessary condition for effective
counselling, how is such empathy to be achieved by those counsellors who have failed to
acquire it? And furthermore, given that counsellors in general are expected to exercise a
high degree of cognitive control, how do they reconcile reasoned calm with emotional
turbulence?

Conclusion
The astute reader might have cause to feel aggrieved and even angry at the seemingly
negative tenor of the article; and experienced counsellors may take exception to some of the
criticisms offered. In defence, they might argue that what I have portrayed is a grossly
exaggerated caricature of the initial counselling interview session. Such a portrayal has as
much bearing with reality (in terms of what counsellors actually do) as a shadow with
substance. If that is the case (and I cannot deny the possibility that that may well be the case)
it would give me considerable pleasure (not unmixed with pain) to read and learn from their
arguments and counter arguments, what I have missed in the course of my own work.
My purpose in writing this article has been to raise awareness of some vital issues
related to counselling. It is hoped that this article will promote serious and sustained
discussions in the area, which, in the Ž nal analysis, will lead to a better and more objective
understanding of the problems with which we are all so deeply concerned.

Acknowledgement
I should like to express my gratitude to the Editor, Waseem Alladin, for taking up my
suggestion of a regular column in which controversial issues can be expressed to challenge
and stimulate the readership of Counselling Psychology Quarterly.
 The counselling interview 113

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