Counselling as emotional labour
Counselling as emotional labour
This thesis is a study of counsellors and the significance that their work has in their lives. It approaches counselling work as a particular form of emotional labour and refers to it as 'pure' emotional labour. The fieldwork undertaken for the thesis involved collecting material through a range of qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation. These data were analysed with a view to examining various aspects of how informants' counselling work related to their wider lives. Particular attention was paid to the routes into counselling work and their counselling careers, social and personal characteristics, the nature of the counselling relationship, the costs and rewards to them and the notion of a shared counselling culture expressed both formally and informally. The thesis also considers the significance of the growth of counselling in contemporary society, arguing that earlier interpretations of this growth as an expression of secularization offer only a partial explanation.
The main findings of the research were that counsellors (many of whom work in a voluntary capacity) derive great personal benefit from their counselling work in addition to the satisfaction gained from helping others. Theories of emotional labour were found to be of great value in making sense of many of the counsellors' negative experiences, but it is argued that such theories need to take into account neglected aspects of emotion work that are positive. Furthermore the argument is developed that while sociology has much to offer the study of counselling (for example through the analysis of professionalisation), the study of counselling also has much to teach sociologists. In particular it is suggested that emotions are not easily accessible to social scientists who employ conventional interviewing methods, and that theorising emotions sociologically is fraught with difficulties as well as having great potential.
University of Southampton
Hawker, Sheila Elizabeth
1eb34118-bbb3-4755-a216-52ef342d2128
1998
Hawker, Sheila Elizabeth
1eb34118-bbb3-4755-a216-52ef342d2128
Hawker, Sheila Elizabeth
(1998)
Counselling as emotional labour.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
This thesis is a study of counsellors and the significance that their work has in their lives. It approaches counselling work as a particular form of emotional labour and refers to it as 'pure' emotional labour. The fieldwork undertaken for the thesis involved collecting material through a range of qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation. These data were analysed with a view to examining various aspects of how informants' counselling work related to their wider lives. Particular attention was paid to the routes into counselling work and their counselling careers, social and personal characteristics, the nature of the counselling relationship, the costs and rewards to them and the notion of a shared counselling culture expressed both formally and informally. The thesis also considers the significance of the growth of counselling in contemporary society, arguing that earlier interpretations of this growth as an expression of secularization offer only a partial explanation.
The main findings of the research were that counsellors (many of whom work in a voluntary capacity) derive great personal benefit from their counselling work in addition to the satisfaction gained from helping others. Theories of emotional labour were found to be of great value in making sense of many of the counsellors' negative experiences, but it is argued that such theories need to take into account neglected aspects of emotion work that are positive. Furthermore the argument is developed that while sociology has much to offer the study of counselling (for example through the analysis of professionalisation), the study of counselling also has much to teach sociologists. In particular it is suggested that emotions are not easily accessible to social scientists who employ conventional interviewing methods, and that theorising emotions sociologically is fraught with difficulties as well as having great potential.
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Published date: 1998
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Local EPrints ID: 463399
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/463399
PURE UUID: 5ff3bab7-db72-4b36-b64f-0c18e6800c2a
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Date deposited: 04 Jul 2022 20:51
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 19:04
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Author:
Sheila Elizabeth Hawker
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