Who Should Counsel Pakeha Men?

Not every counselor is equally equipped to deal effectively with Pakeha men. My experience with the Marriage Guidance network led me to believe that some counselors, women in particular, are so damaged by years of experience with resistant or unresponsive male clients that they have lost their ability to work well with them. The primary qualification for a counselor working with Pakeha males is the belief that they can change. If that commitment is missing, then therapy is pointless. This is not an issue of gender-that only men can counsel men effectively-but an issue of empathy and training. The bond of solidarity between two women or between two men is not necessarily easier to create than any other human bond. Every attachment between two people requires voluntary empathy and interpathy (the reciprocity of shared empathy, or mutual positive regard). Clear, tested, reflective insight and experience from a counselor of either gender are far more important than simple identification based on the presumption that two persons of the same gender immediately understand each other.

The crucial factors in predisposing a counselling relationship to success, when working with Pakeha men, are (a) both the counselor's and the client's belief that men can change; (b) a consciousness of the life situation of the other; (c) a capacity to discern influences internal and external to the client; (d) sensitivity to communications verbal and non- verbal; and (e) a sophisticated understanding of interpersonal dynamics. Men's counselling of men holds different rewards from women's counselling of men, but the issue of the counselor's gender is less important than the level of skill, education, and experience she or he brings to the relationship, and her or his willingness to offer types of counselling which both recognize and transcend gender stereotypes. Forgiving realism and a tenacious hope are the keys to wholeness and integration. [38]

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