Firstly. Interview:
The interview is the usual method in the psychological counseling process, which is used to identify the counselor’s personality and problem by talking to him and discovering his abilities, personal characteristics, and the environmental conditions in which he lived. Therefore, the interview is a purposeful and organized conversation in which the counselor tries to form an idea or collect information about the counselor whom he wants to advise. And his guidance.
The interview can be defined as an interactive relationship between a guide and a mentee, where friendliness and understanding prevail, in which the guide seeks to obtain help from the guide to solve his problem, which he was unable to solve alone. Strang defines the interview as a dynamic face-to-face confrontation between the counselor who seeks help and develop his insight into his problem and the counselor who is able to provide this assistance during a specific period of time and place.
The counseling interview is divided into different types, including:
- Inquiry interview: in which the advisor requests information from the advisor about the study, specialization, and work appropriate for him.
- Clinical interview: which requires the utmost psychological counseling skills, starting from forming a friendly relationship with the counselor, applying psychological tests, diagnosing the problem and how to treat it. This type of interview takes long sessions and hours so that the counselor can help the counselor and solve his problem.
- Vocational Interview: Through which the vocational guide can help employers direct their workers and employees towards the appropriate profession for them, according to their physical, psychological and social strengths.
Despite the multiple interviews, there are some requirements for conducting the orientation interview, which are as follows:
- Formation of human relationship: In order to be the beginning of any successful mentoring relationship, the mentor must establish a warm human relationship between the mentor and the mentor that is based on trust and mutual respect, because this makes the mentor feel that the mentor understands him, respects his feelings, and appreciates his circumstances, and then opens the door for the mentor to know the mentor’s secrets and the real problems that he suffers from.
- Planning and registering for the interview: After meeting the counselor and learning preliminary information about his problem, the counselor must plan how he will try to obtain information about the counselor (family, companions, school, institution in which he works, and the counselor himself), and how he will try to make the counselor aware of his problem and the appropriate psychological tests for him. In addition, the counselor must decide how to record the information that he will use to preserve the information and data of the person with the problem in a way that makes it easy for him to interpret and understand it and not distort it, such as writing, audio and video recording. The counselor must ask permission from the counselor if he wishes to record the information through audio and video recording.
- Time and place: After planning the counseling process, the counselor must take care to determine the time for each counseling session, which ranges from 20 to 30 minutes for children and 45 minutes for adolescents and adults. The distance between each interview must be neither far nor close, and it is good for the counselor to schedule one or two interviews within One week.
As for the place, the guide must provide a guiding place that inspires comfort, calm, reassurance and relaxation, and not a place that is noisy or intrusive by some employees because that will disturb the interview and violate its confidentiality.
- Continuing the interview: After the previous procedures, the counselor delves into the interview with the counselor, in order to understand his problem, his personality, his beliefs, and the behavioral methods that the counselor follows when facing stressful and problematic situations. During the interview, the counselor must encourage the counselor to speak, and monitor his emotions when talking about his problem, and Pay attention to the periods of silence of the counselor when asking him about some points related to his problem (for example, what are your feelings towards your father?) because silence has special meanings, such as expressing pain and guilt and not revealing anything that he hides from the counselor. He also pays attention to the tone of the voice, the movement of the eyes, and the position of the body.
- Training: Some counseling sessions in the interview require the counselor to develop the counselor’s emotional, social, and cognitive skills, such as training him on how to speak tactfully in front of others, training him on how to control his anger when facing problems at work, or how to empathize with his family members and colleagues at school. The counselor also corrects his vision. The guided person’s mistakes about the outside world and the people around him. If the guided person believes that the world is a bad, evil, and selfish place, then he must change this negative view into optimistic and good ideas, such as the belief that the world is a place where there are good, honest, and loving people and that it is possible to live in it with love and peace.
- . Ending the interview: The counselor must be aware of the time in which he must end each counseling session or complete the counseling interview, and each counseling session ends in light of the time he specified previously. However, there are some situations that require the counselor to give the mentee additional time in the event that: The counselor felt that there was an important topic that was closely related to the counselor’s problem, or that would reduce the time of the interview, especially if the counselor felt tired and bored or had a nervous breakdown. As for the completion of the counseling interview as a whole, this depends on the counselor’s ability to solve his problem, the level of maturity of his personality, and control of his external environment.
Thus, it can be said that the counseling interview has many advantages: it is suitable for understanding the personality of the counselor and his problem, and it allows the counselor to express himself, his inner emotions, and his painful experiences. It also provides an atmosphere of familiarity and affection when the counselor presents the problem; Despite this, the interview has some drawbacks, including that the interview depends on what the counselor says, and may give information that affects its truthfulness and consistency, and that some counselors are unable to express well about their problem. In addition to this, the interview is not suitable for weak minds and children, and requires time, effort, and money. a lot.