Emotions and personality in counselling

Chapter X Emotions and personality in counselling Teemu Suorsa University of Oulu Antti Rantanen University of Oulu Seppo Laukka University of Oulu Antti Siipo University of Oulu & Hannu Soini University of Oulu SUMMARY The paper introduces a novel way of bridging physiological, psychological and sociological research. Systemic and subjectscientific conceptions of emotions and personality are discussed. Emotions are defined as indicators of the co-operative state of a community. Personality is seen as translocal and historical participation in maintaining and changing the societal conditions and meaning structures. An exemplary analysis of a counselling conversation is presented. The analysis concentrates on participants’ observable behaviour, the reactions of their autonomic nervous system, and their subjective experiences in and about the counselling conversation. INTRODUCTION Systemic psychology suggests that a human being and her environment should be conceptualized as one unitary system instead of two interacting systems. Psychological processes are seen as comprising both the parts of the organism and the environment. Järvilehto (e.g., 2009) argues that the object of psychological study should be defined by identifying the parts of the organism-environment system that are important in producing the result of current actions. Theoretical conceptions of systemic psychology have thus far been developed mainly in relation to psychophysiological research that examines the organism-environment system in different kind of activities in laboratory settings. Theoretical analyses have mostly not been accompanied by an empirical research that addresses experiences and everyday practices with systemic concepts (see, however Soini, 1999; Suorsa, 2014). Suorsa (2015a) suggested that development and renewal of the systemic approach benefits from a dialogue with subject-scientific psychology (e.g., Holzkamp, 1983) where experiences, everyday practices and societal relations have been emphasised both in theoretical-methodological analyses as well as in empirical research. This paper continues developing a dialogue between these approaches by focusing on the concepts of emotion and personality. The possibilities of this dialogue are further clarified by an example from empirical research that discusses subjective experiences, observable behaviour and participants’ autonomic nervous system within the proposed framework. EMOTIONS The development of human consciousness in general, Järvilehto (2001) argues, is related to an individual’s participation in the production of common results that she alone could not achieve. Consciousness is, thus, not primarily a characteristic of an individual, but of a community of organism-environment systems 2 Emotions and personality in counselling acting together for a common result (Järvilehto, 2001). Consequently, individual emotions develop in relation to the possibilities of the individual contributing to and sharing the common results: “Positive emotions develop as organized action in relation to success in the achievement of common results; negative emotions as disorganization when the results cannot be achieved.” (Järvilehto, 2001, p. 79) Emotional reactions include changes in the central nervous system and autonomic nervous system (Lang & Bradley, 2010). A key element in the nervous system is the limbic network that regulates the autonomic nervous system (ANS) mainly through hypothalamic pathways (Oosterwijk et al., 2012). The ANS consists of sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions (Oosterwijk et al., 2012). Several studies have shown that unpleasant emotions (disorganization) are associated with an increase in sympathetic activity and pleasant emotions (organization) to an increase in parasympathetic activity (Elliot et al., 2011; Thayer et al., 2012). When compared to, say, the discussion on goal-related emotions (e.g. Lench et. al., 2015), a systemic conception of emotions suggests that in addition to emotions indicating an individual’s personal goals and their fate (e.g. loss, obstruction, and being threatened), they should also be understood in relation to the current community, and its common – more or less articulated – orientations toward the future, that may surpass individual and conscious goals. This resembles the subject-scientific conception of emotions that has striven to deconstruct the mystical privateness of emotions as well as the dualism between individual and society by grasping emotions generally as a subjective evaluation of person’s overall, societally mediated situation (Holzkamp, 1983; Markard, 2009). The societal mediatedness of human existence means that a human being does not simply adapt to her living conditions, but participates in maintaining and changing these conditions in accordance with her needs and interests. In the process of maintaining and changing, the individual’s needs and interests also change (Osterkamp, 1999). The subjective evaluation of a person’s overall societally mediated situation is embodied in her emotions (Osterkamp, 1999). Thus, they can also be analysed in relation to physiological measures. The concepts and methodical steps of the subject-scientific approach provide a way of interpreting emotions in relation to sociological theories about societal structures and practices. This can, for instance, mean discussing to what extent a person’s acting and experiencing is moving within the current community’s predetermined possibilities, and to what extent she is extending these possibilities in accordance with her experienced needs and interests. Moreover, the relation between experienced conditions and sociological theories about these conditions, as well as the relation between a person’s subjective grounds and goals for action and the results of her action can be analysed (Suorsa, 2015a). PERSONALITY AND FOG-ANALYSIS Järvilehto (2000, p. 48) defines personality as “a point of intersection of all social relations, the body being the spatial location of the point of intersection”. Even though this idea of personality can be traced throughout Järvilehto’s works, the concept has not been developed in relation to empirical research on personal ways of conducting everyday lives. Suorsa (2014) has suggested that Dreier’s (2011) subjectscientific conception of personality is a promising partner in a dialogue that seeks to develop a systemic view of personality. Following Dreier (2011), we see personality as translocal and historical participation in the scenes of everyday living: Participation can be defined as the located and positioned adopting of a personal stance toward the way things are happening in a given scene of everyday-living … Translocality can be defined as moving in and between different scenes of everyday living … Historicity is defined … as a personal life trajectory in the sense that the composition of scenes in one’s life change historically … On the other hand, historicity is defined as historical changes in the skills one has to acquire to qualify as a competent member of a community … (Suorsa, 2015b, p. 128) Suorsa (2015a) argues that emphasising the future results – possibilities – of human action and experience is a defining feature both in the systemic and subject-scientific approaches. Bearing this in mind, we see historicity as referring also to future scenes of everyday living – the ones consciously anticipated/prepared, 3 Emotions and personality in counselling as well as the ones that a person is not aware of. In research, we see personality as a dynamic whole of the individual’s past, present and future scenes of everyday living. Personal stances in different scenes of the personal life trajectory can be captured as fabrics of grounds (FOG). In a FOG, a description of the scene of everyday living is given from the person’s point of view in a way that includes 1) a general description of the situation, 2) a person’s thoughts, feelings and actions in the situation, 3) a person’s subjective grounds for thinking, feeling and acting this way. In the following, we call this kind of identifying personal stances a FOG-analysis. FOG-analysis can be done, for instance, through data-driven analysis of audio recordings where the researcher focuses strictly on what is actually said in the conversation. However, FOG-analysis gains psychologically new levels if participants identify the FOGs themselves. This enables the research to go further into how the participants describe and explain their action and experiences. FOGs can be further analysed in relation to sociological theories (Suorsa, 2015a). In systemic terms, a FOG is a description of an organism-environment system orienting in the world. As a unit of analysis in personality psychology, FOG captures generalizable individual ways of relating to different kinds of situations – in a manner that embraces e.g. subjective, temporal and societal dimensions of experience. Even though the FOG does not, as such, explicate the societal situation, it reminds the researcher and the reader that the personal stance thus articulated is a dynamic complex of translocal and historical participation into the production of common results (i.e. societal conditions and societally produced meaning structures). Individuals’ emotions are seen as significant dimensions of personal stances that can be analysed also in relation to physiological measures. Subjective descriptions of an emotional state and physiological measures should be interpreted as indicators of the co-operative state of the given community. In the following, physiological measures and personal stances are discussed in relation to observable behaviour in a counselling conversation. The aim is to illustrate the use of the presented concepts in a case analysis. CASE ANALYSIS In this chapter, we present a tentative analysis of a counselling conversation. The data has been collected in the context of a counselling psychology course for advanced students in educational psychology. The data includes a) audio and video recordings of short counselling conversations where students act as counsellors and as clients, and b) physiological measures during the conversation (heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, breathing frequency). We first explain how we approach participants’ 1) observable behaviour, 2) autonomic nervous systems, and 3) subjective experiences seen as personal stances in the case analysis. Furthermore, we illustrate the uses of these approaches in analysing a counselling conversation, with a special focus on emotions. Observable behaviour The CRCS, counsellor response coding system (Rantanen & Soini, 2013) is a systematic observation and coding method that was developed initially from Ivey’s micro-counselling theory (Ivey, 1971). CRCS enables accurate behaviour quantification from videoed counselling sessions. CRCS is applied by coding each of the counsellor’s speech sequences in relation to the client’s messages. CRCS was developed in order to obtain the response frequencies of an entire counselling session, but it also enables the creation of time-adjusted matrices after measurement by selecting the speech sequences needed for the analysis. The CRCS instrument is composed of two categorical variables. The first component of the CRCS is the counsellor response variable. Counsellor response comprises 5 categories: reflection, specifying question, conclusion, suggestion and self-disclosure. The response variable can be used so as to explore what the counsellor is doing in relation to the client’s message and to what degree. The second component in the CRCS is the counsellor response focus variable. The foci in the CRCS comprise 5 categories: feelings, explanations, actions, context and strengths. Counsellor response focus can be used to determine which speech content the counsellor is focusing on. Autonomic nervous system (ANS) Participants’ ANS activity was approached with electrodermal activity (EDA) measurement. EDA shows increases in sympathetic activity by detecting changes in the conductance of electricity on the subject’s skin. Increases in sympathetic activity increases sweating which influences skin conductance. EDA was 4 Emotions and personality in counselling measured with a Nexus-II biosignal measurement unit. The EDA-peaks were extracted with a peak detection algorithm. Subjective experience as a personal stance Personal stances were reconstructed in a FOG-analysis with the participants. Within 2 weeks after the conversation, participants listened to the audio recording of the conversation, and completed a form where they were asked to describe the conversation from their perspective, articulate their thoughts, emotions and actions in the conversation, and also describe their subjective grounds for thinking, feeling and acting this way. All participants described the conversation, following this structure, first in general, and second, in a critical part of the conversation that they found to be important in terms of how the conversation turned out to be. The participants were also given, based on the EDA-analysis, a period of time where a peak in client’s EDA occurred. They were both asked to explain the occurrence of this peak. These three different kinds of fabrics of grounds are referred in the following as “general FOG”, “critical FOG”, and “EDApeak FOG”. Findings: Personal stances 1 The main theme of the conversation are the client’s feelings after her friend’s death. In the general FOG, the client describes “throwing herself into the situation” as her biggest challenge as a client. As she was listening to the audio recording, she could not remember what and how she was talking about. She figures that she simply talked out what she thought and felt in that situation. She was happy that she was able to throw herself into the conversation and talk only about her own experience. The counsellor describes in the general FOG that she wanted to empathize the client in the conversation without taking the matter too personally. The counsellor recounts having thought that it would be important for the client to talk about her feelings, and therefore she wanted to focus her questions on the client’s well-being. Other people were discussed only insofar as the counsellor and the client found it necessary. The counsellor recounts that she always tried to bring the attention back to the client. The counsellor wanted that the client would get the impression that the counsellor was really listening to her. Findings: Observable behaviour and autonomic nervous system When the ANS activity of a client and a counsellor are examined together, it enables multilevel comparison where the ANS activity and behaviour of the participants can be compared. Furthermore, we can examine changes in the client’s ANS during counsellor actions. Figure 1 shows changes in counsellor verbal behaviour and changes in the client’s and counsellor’s ANS during a counselling session. The number of sympathetic peaks represents the level of emotional arousal of the counsellor and the client at each time sequence. Figure 1. Changes in counsellor verbal behaviour and changes in the client’s and counsellor’s ANS (EDA) during a counselling session We can observe in Figure 1 that the counsellor’s sympathetic activity increases during each of her verbal responses. A systemic explanation for this would be that the counsellor has a clear task of helping the Emotions and personality in counselling 5 client, and she is uncertain of the results of her actions. This produces a shorter anticipatory distance that increases stress and anxiety levels at these time points. When examining the client’s sympathetic activity, we can observe that it changes mostly in relation to the counsellor’s verbal response. For example, when a counsellor is using a reflective response or specifying response, the client’s sympathetic response decreases. When the counsellor is using a conclusion or suggestion as her way of responding to the client’s message, the client’s sympathetic response increases. A logical explanation for this phenomenon would be that, when the counsellor’s way of responding is exploratory and close to the client’s description of her problem, this produces a parasympathetic response, indicating that the client’s stress level and anxiety goes down. When the counsellor uses suggestive or conclusive responses and brings elements of her own experience into the conversation, this creates a dissonance between the counsellor and the client, which is expressed as a higher level of anxiety. However, it is interesting to observe that, during the last counsellor response, that is a specifying question, the client’s sympathetic response surprisingly increases. This may indicate that there is some dissonance in the way or focus of specifying that causes an opposite reaction in the client when compared to other counsellor actions. In the systemic view, this interactional process can be described as behavioural acts that each lead to higher or lower levels of agreement. When examining emotions during this process, the client’s emotional reactions change in terms of her agreeing or disagreeing with the counsellor at each time point. Findings: Personal stances 2 Whereas the general FOGs of the client and of the counsellor seem to be somewhat harmonious, giving the impression that this has been a good conversation, the EDA and CRCS analysis as well as the critical FOGs suggest that there might, however, be something that the counsellor could have done otherwise in order to reach her goal of maximising the client’s benefit from their conversation. Whereas the client describes the beginning of the conversation as critical, the counsellor finds the later part of the conversation, where she was being more active, important. The counsellor had an intention of helping the client in this short conversation. Was this done at the expense of giving the client time and space to explore her experience? In the conversation afterwards, the client says that she was not looking for help, and maybe would have been offended if the counsellor had tried to help. The client says that she only wanted to use this opportunity to start talking. This description can be seen in relation to how the counsellor explains the peak in the activity of the client’s sympathetic nervous system. Even though the time sequence given to participants was the same, participants focus on different parts of this sequence. The client sees the peak in relation to the counsellor recapitulating her story. The counsellor sees the peak in relation to the client’s description of her negative feelings. One can speculate whether the intensity of the client’s feelings took the counsellor by surprise and thus made her somewhat confused and thus willing not to focus on the intensive feelings, striving instead to support the client in moving forward. After the conversation, the counsellor mentions that she was happy that she was able to stay that calm during the conversation. This can also be seen in relation to considerable peaks in the counsellor’s EDA, for instance during the same sequence that the participants discussed. When discussing her feelings during the counselling conversation, the client says that since the friend of their family died “it has been terrible”. She has been particularly worried about her husband, who was a good friend of the deceased. She is also worried about the wife of the deceased. It is interesting to note that the client describes her feelings with a Finnish phrase “voida huonosti” that can be translated as “not feeling herself”, or “feeling bad”. The Finnish word “voida” has, however, in addition to meaning “feeling” the meaning “being able”. Thus, the way the client expresses herself also carries a meaning: “not being able”, that resonates in a nice way to Järvilehto’s (2001) definition of emotions as evaluation of one’s possibilities of contributing to common results. “Being worried about others” turns out to be a meaningful theme in this conversation that the client also kept on thinking afterwards. As she was listening to the recording, the client started to think that she is “once again taking the lead and running everywhere to help others. Why?”. In Järvilehto’s (2001) words, the client, as she is reflecting her feelings, is considering her action possibilities and future results that she may achieve with other people. The client also describes feelings of anger (“why did he have to go and die”) that come to her unexpectedly during everyday activities, such as putting orange peel into the organic trash can. It is during 6 Emotions and personality in counselling her daily activities that the finality of her friend’s death strikes her; a memory that the friend used to tell her something about her way of filling the dishwasher, and a sudden realization that he will never do that again. This can be conceptualized by talking about past, present and future scenes of everyday living in the client’s life trajectory: something that used to be is currently not and will never be again. This sudden realization is accompanied, the client says, by anger. The next time she talks about the anger, she is, however, starting to ponder whether it is really anger that she is feeling, or some kind of a “wet cloth” that splashes into her face. She is searching for new words for her experience. At the end of the conversation, she bursts into tears and says that she simply misses her friend so much. Järvilehto (2001) describes anger as an expression of disorganization of the system that entails evaluation of one’s possibilities for action in the respective behavioural context, whereas fear is disorganization in a situation in which the person is uncertain about her possibilities of coping with the situation (and means thus simultaneous preparation for many action possibilities); in anger there is a distinct disturbing factor, an object that is interpreted as a cause of the disorganization. Järvilehto concludes that these kinds of attempts “towards explanation and evaluation are the result of personal learning of the emotions in the given culture” (Järvilehto, 2001, p. 86). In terms of the organism-environment system, we can note that an integral part of the client’s organism-environment system is missing, and the system is in a process of reorganization. This produces powerful feelings. The intensity of experience is present also at a physiological level in the counselling conversation. The physiological observations should, however, not be interpreted as the simple stress reaction of an individual. Nor should one rush to the conclusion that this 15-minute discussion was just a nice example of a certain phase of recovery from a trauma or ‘getting over’ of the death of loved one. If we take Järvilehto seriously, the individual experience should be seen as a sensor reflecting the co-operative state of the community from the standpoint of the subject. What would this sensor, then, be reflecting in this case? What kind of “organizational patterns” does it discover? General attitudes toward dying or toward young widows? Self-evident roles that women in Northern Finland adopt toward their husbands? Furthermore, we can ask how the experienced needs and interests change in the process of maintaining and changing the societal conditions. Finding out what the co-operative possibilities are to which the client’s feelings are connected, would require a more thorough and sociologically informed co-research: discussing the interpretations of the present article with the client/counsellor, identifying together the essential moments of the co-operative state that the feelings reflect. According to the client, the opportunities for discussing her feelings about her friend’s death are rare. The community’s ability to recognize what one of its members has to say depends greatly on how the counsellors and therapists help their clients to work through difficult emotions. It is one of the great advantages of the approach presented that it’s basic concepts – here: emotions, personality – direct researchers’ attention in a manner that makes it impossible to ignore the socio-material and participatory nature of human action and experience. SUMMARY This paper introduced an approach to counselling research that further builds the dialogue between systemic and subject-scientific psychology (Suorsa, 2015a). In particular, we focused on the analysis of participants’ subjective experiences (FOG-analysis / personality), systematic observation of their verbal behaviour (CRCS), and measures of their autonomic nervous system (EDA / emotions). Empirical examples that include different kinds of experiences and everyday practices also help to develop theoretical concepts further. It is clear that more empirical research needs to be done in order to articulate the full potential of this approach. The research will create knowledge about the relation between what counsellors think they are doing and what they are actually doing during counselling sessions. The physiological approach contributes to an understanding of the counsellors’ actions and their relation to the clients’ actions and experiences. It also provides a basis for physiological research on well-being. Furthermore, we can ask how the conceptions of the counsellors relate to those of the clients and to different kind of ideals presented in theories of counselling. This approach also creates knowledge about the world in which the clients live, and what they think is working and how in a counselling conversation. It is distinctive in the approach presented that the essential dimensions of counselling can be researched within the same conceptual framework. Discussing subjective experiences, observable behaviour, and physiology with the concepts of result of action, emotion, and personality open up novel possibilities for Emotions and personality in counselling 7 bridging physiological, psychological and sociological research. Conscious emotions and measures of the autonomic nervous system are seen as dimensions of personal stances that reflect the co-operative state of the community. The subject-scientific concepts, such as fabric of grounds, provide a way to grasp the societal mediatedness of human existence. Adopting this insight into the field of counselling research helps us to understand the meaning of counselling as re-forming the collective (Nissen, 2012). The proposed framework emphasises the interweaving of the persons and the world in the production of the common results (i.e. societally produced conditions and meaning structures). Grasping human beings as organism-environment systems enhances our understanding of the unity of the bio-material and social-cultural aspects of human existence. Thus, the systemic and subject-scientific approaches also contribute to the much-discussed necessity of developing concepts and methods that embrace the sociomaterial context and a-subjective dimensions of experience and action without ignoring the questions of human responsibility and possibilities for joint action. REFERENCES Dreier, O. (2011). 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