NBCC Counseling Theories & Helping Relationships 5

Question 1

A counselor working with a client from a collectivist cultural background notices the client defers to family consensus over personal preferences. Using a culturally sensitive approach, the counselor should first:

Accepted Answer

Explore the client's own meaning and experience of this value orientation

Answer

Culturally sensitive practice requires understanding the client's own experience of their values before imposing a culturally bound framework; the counselor should explore rather than pathologize collectivist values.

Question 2

Erik Erikson's psychosocial stage of 'Intimacy vs. Isolation' is the developmental challenge associated with which life period?

Accepted Answer

Young adulthood (18–40 years)

Answer

Erikson placed Intimacy vs. Isolation in young adulthood, during which individuals work to form deep, committed relationships or risk experiencing isolation and loneliness.

Question 3

The concept of 'transference' in psychoanalytic therapy refers to:

Accepted Answer

The client redirecting feelings from past significant relationships onto the therapist

Answer

Transference occurs when a client unconsciously displaces feelings, expectations, and relationship patterns from past significant figures (often parents) onto the therapist.

Question 4

In strategic family therapy (Haley, Madanes), the therapist's role is best described as:

Accepted Answer

An active director who designs specific interventions to shift problem-maintaining sequences

Answer

Strategic therapists are deliberately directive, designing tailored interventions (including paradoxical directives and ordeals) to interrupt the specific behavioral sequences maintaining the presenting problem.

Question 5

According to Yalom's existential therapy, which of the four 'ultimate concerns' most directly relates to a terminally ill client's fear that their life has been meaningless?

Accepted Answer

Meaninglessness

Answer

Yalom identified meaninglessness—the confrontation that the universe has no inherent meaning and humans must create their own—as the ultimate concern most relevant to fears about living an unfulfilled or purposeless life.

(NBCC) National Board for Certified Counselors Practice Test

(NBCC) National Board for Certified Counselors Practice Test

NBCC Counseling Theories & Helping Relationships 5