Power Differentials in the Counseling Relationship: A Conversation Analytic Study on Goal-Setting Meetings in a Clubhouse Mental Health Rehabilitation Community

Abstract

We used conversation analysis to examine social support in a Clubhouse mental health rehabilitation community. We focused on goal-setting meetings, which is a very specific equality-promoting group counseling setting in which professionals and clients provide peer support to each other. We asked how the professionals commented on the clients’ goals and presented their own goals during the activity, pointing to the practices of affiliation that nonetheless served to construct and maintain power imbalances between the professionals and clients. Although the idea of casting group counseling as peer support is motivated by an attempt to foster equality at the level of group interaction, our analysis shows that such organization tends to invoke other inequalities that may be even deeper than the ones with which the participants begin.