Agency in young clients' narratives of counseling: "it's whatever you want to make of it"

Abstract

Although there is a growing body of research that looks at how adult clients are active agents in their own counseling, there is little similar research that looks at the experiences of young people in counseling. This research explores how client agency is constructed in retrospective accounts of a school counseling experience provided by 22 young people (aged 16-18). The narrative analysis shows how participants constructed their agency as clients in a number of different ways: in asserting their choice over whether to see a counselor; in their evaluations of counselors; in the selection or rejection of aspects of counseling and by portraying themselves as primarily responsible for the benefits obtained from counseling. In these ways, young clients seemed able to shape their construction of counseling to better match their own priorities. But participants also seemed aware of potential threats to their ability to exercise their agency and described how they struggled to express their needs overtly to their counselors. This raises the possibility that young people's assertions of agency may be best understood in the context of their relative powerlessness in counseling situations. Although there is potential to harness young clients' agency in the service of better counseling outcomes, their strong commitment to a view of themselves as agents may result in them experiencing greater accountability without a corresponding access to power in counseling.