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Exchange structure in the conversation between a child psychologist and the client

Counseling is the act of providing professional guidance, usually in the
form of talking, that is conducted by psychologists, social workers or religious
leaders. The purpose of counseling is to help clients finding their own problem
solving by encouraging them to express their feeling and thought. The
conversation between a counselor and the client during the counseling session is
usually imbalance. This means that a counselor has more authority than the client
in leading the conversation. The imbalance becomes bigger when the client is a
child. Therefore, the child psychologist, as the counselor, has to own certain skills
to encourage the client to talk and express his feeling. Based on the reason above,
the writer wants to know how a child psychologist encourages the client by
analyzing the exchange structure and moves of their conversation. In this study,
the writer uses the theory of exchange, move and exchange structure. The
approach of the study is descriptive qualitative. The data were taken from the
conversation between a child psychologist and the child client, during the
counseling session. Furthermore, how the psychologist encourages the client to
express his feeling, are analyzed through its exchange structure and moves. After
the analysis, the finding shows that [IRF] exchange occurs the most. [IRF] occurs
the most because the child psychologist wants to encourage the client to express
his feeling through the [Initiation] and [Follow-up] moves that have been made.
Besides, [IRF] also occurs because of the big imbalance of authority between the
child psychologist and the client. It is also found that each move that has been
made by the child psychologist, which are [Initiation], [Repair], [Re-open] and
[Follow-up], are meant to encourage the client to talk and direct him to a certain
direction in order to help him get in touch with his feeling and finding his own
problem solving. In conclusion, the most occurrence of [IRF] exchange shows
that the child psychologist uses [Initiation] to encourage the client to talk and
express his feeling. After the client gives a [Response], the child psychologist
produces [Follow-up] to appreciate it. [Follow-up] is also used to encourage the
client to talk more in the next exchanges.