Emotional Bond In The Therapeutic Relationship

The Therapeutic Relationship

Define the concept of the emotional bond. What are worker behaviors that build the emotional bond in this case?
The emotional bond probably one of the most important components of the therapeutic alliance and refers to the relationship between the client and the worker and includes the degree to which the client feels that the worker understands, respects and values them (Bogo, 2006). Components of the emotional bond evident in the case study are acceptance, empathy and genuineness. The first component acceptance can be loosely defined as the social worker’s valuing and respect of client’s perspective. In the first example, Dick in talking about the problems in the family states “Mikes does not even try to
Genuineness refers to a social worker’s willingness to step away from the professional stance and reveal aspects of themselves to the client. In the very first session when the social worker engages both Mike and Dick in a conversation about the family cat and even shares a funny personal story about his own cat (paragraph 5, page 96) and then again at an individual session with Mike when the social worker after listening to a few songs with him engages him in a conversation about his musical preferences on the way to McDonalds (paragraph 3, page 98) the social worker in the case study clearly demonstrated genuineness. These examples show genuineness because the social worker engages the clients in small talk about topics that is of interests to them. More importantly, the social worker in each of these conversations discloses personal information another characteristic of genuineness that helps to show the client that the social worker is a “real” person.
Define the concept of collaboration as it applies to the therapeutic alliance. What are examples of worker behaviors that build collaboration in the alliance between the worker and Mike and the worker and
Whereas, according to Bogo (2006), an involuntary client refers to clients who presents for social services as a result of being ordered by a court or pressured by another person to seek help as a means of avoiding a jail sentence, gain access to their children or leave a mental hospital and live in the community. In this case, it states that clients seen in the Washington Homebuilders program were as the result of referrals from either the Child Protective Services (CPS) or Family Reconciliation Services (FRS) when there was a safety concern, family conflict or child behavior that was likely to cause a child to be placed outside of the home (Gladow & Pecora, n.d.). Further, the article talks about the ‘referral sheet from the FRS caseworker’ implying that the family situation was such that Mike was likely to be placed outside of home in the future if this intervention was not occurring (paragraph 3, page 96). This suggests to me that, Dick and Mike (to a lesser extent) are both involuntary clients in this case study. Despite their involuntary status, both clients appear receptive to the social worker and the intervention. This is best exemplified by Dick’s willingness to discuss the particulars of his situation with the social worker in the first session with relatively little prodding and probing from the worker