Not only about skills (Imelda Victoria)

On the last monday, the theme for my interviewing technic class is about the use of interview in clinical psychology. Clinical psychology differs in two area, first is adult and second is child. The use of interview in both area were same, use to find information from client’s answer to the questions asked by the practitioners or the psychologist. The information which arise from interviewing will later on used by the practitioners to make a decision whether their client should take another step (such as treatment) or not. But the aim of using interview in both area differ each other. From the information i’ve got on the last monday class, adult clinical psychologist using interview to help client solving their problem or to ease the client’s mind so they could get the red string of their own problem. While child clinical psychology using interview as a tool to find information only. A child can’t solve their problem only by answering a question in interview session. Interview in child psychology will only reflecting some information that could help the child’s problem in someway. Which, from the result of my interviewing session with child clinical psychologist, depends on the practitioner’s own skill and experience.
The more experience the practitioners or the psychologist have, the more they will be able to develop a good intuition. Intuition is needed to make the data or the information from client’s answer more valid and reliable. As we have known, sometime people make up their own answer or their story so they could get the ending which they want, which is known as ‘faking good’. Not all people will do it, so don’t lost our trust to them. Because the more we untrust them or show our doubt, the more they tell lie to us and the more we can’t give help to them. But in child clinical psychologist, the trust that need to be built differ from the adult one. It’s kind of impossible for the child to make up their story and if there is one that could do it, i think it will be a rare case. 
So, we need to develop trust in both case. With children, we need to built their trust to us that we aren’t there to harm them. While with adult, we need to give trust to their story or answer so they could trust us and give more information which is needed to help them solve the problem. From these i found that, to develop a trust, first thing that we should have while interviewing is the willingness to help. I think, as long as we have the willingness to help and accepting the client as what it is, it’s easy either to develop trust or other interviewing skill. And maybe it’s the most basic an the easy one to develop if we want to be a good and skilled interviewer. Because i believe that psychologist didn’t there to only solve the client’s problem, they were there to provide help. Psychologist help their client so they can ease their mind, help them find the red strings of the problem, help them to find solution, and help them identify the problem. If the psychologist never ever have the willingness to help, of course they couldn’t be able to help. No care to client’s problem may lead them to close their ears, not listening to the client’s problem and make things hard to solved or maybe doing a fatal error which  the error take effect to the rest of client’s life.
A psychologist can do interview to gain data or information, they may do it by asking. But don’t ever let the client asking us deep in their heart. To clear the problem, a good cooperation between client and the psychologist or the practitioners is needed. And then in the view of clinical psychology, a slight error might have a fatal impact to the client. A wrong treatment, a wrong conclusion, a wrong data interpretation may lead us to “labelling” For example,  a child with a learning problem labelled as autism, this labelling won’t solve the child’s problem but it will only add a new problem. And for adult case, an adult with trauma get a wrong treatment because of wrong conclusion, will only make their trauma getting bigger. And so on with the other case. So i think if we want to be a good interviewer and we want to use it as a tool for helping other, we must accept everything they told to us and don’t bother with lies because i’m sure that the truth lying behind all lies. The more we are used to it, the more skilled we become. Because everything always have a process, a process that produce experience and sharpen our skill. And also, i’m sure that a GOOD skill come from a GOOD person!

3 Maret 2013