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Abstract
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Telephone contact is a meeting of voices, a contact purely in sound. Communication between participants is limited to what they explicitly can glean from the tone, rhythm and color of each other's voices. No clues of sight, touch and smell are possible.
The relative anonymity that this affords a client calling a helping agency, and the advantages of this anonymity for the client, have often been noted. Most notably, the client has the power to end the communication at any moment, simply by hanging up the phone. This power can serve to reduce his anxiety and make it possible for him to call for help while he may be unable to visit a clinical for a face- to-face interview.
In this paper, however, I shall examine the therapeutic advantages involved in the parallel fact that the therapist also remains anonymous. The therapist remains faceless, and this too can have important consequences for the progress of the therapy.
A client may call a telephone counseling service because he is simply unable to go for help on a face-to-face basis. The inability may stem from practical problems - distance, transport difficulties...
Keywords: Suicide prevention
Language: en |