해석학적 이해를 실천하는 상담자- 가다머의 철학적 해석학을 중심으로

Abstract

Counseling is the process of facilitating a client’s insights and helping him/her gain self-understanding. It is the counselor’s understanding for a client that must be premised if we say the successful result of the counseling is to reach the client’s self-understanding. When the counselor’s proper understanding is communicated to the client, the client feels that his/her context is understood after then. This experience gives the client the opportunity to gain insights into his/her distress. Therefore, the counselors face the question, ‘How can I understand the client well?’. However, before we contemplate how to understand well, what should be questioned is ‘What is understanding itself?’. It is difficult to understand well without knowing what understanding means. This study attempts to clarify the nature of understanding through the consideration of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and apply it to counseling. Counseling is the process of creating a shared understanding by fusion of horizons. Counseling takes the form of a dialectical dialogue comprised of questions and answers between a counselor and a client. This study proposes the following four aspects of counselors who put hermeneutic understanding into practice based on philosophical hermeneutics. First, the counselor should participate in the experience of counseling to practice understanding, interpretation and application for the client’s text. Second, the counselor must be open to accept a transformation of his/her own horizon. Third, the counselor should be able to sensitively capture the negativity emerging from the client’s text and return it a question related to the client’s insight. Last, the counselor should help the client find the meaning of his/her own pain and suffering by interpreting the client’s incomprehensible distress in an appropriate and pertinent words.