Telephone counselling with adolescents and countertransference phenomena: particularities and challenges

ABSTRACT

Telephone counselling with adolescents is well known in many countries all over the world, due to its special characteristics, which seem to suit to adolescents. Some of these characteristics are the low cost, the easy access, the anonymity, as well as the possibility for the callers to have the control over the call regarding its duration as they can hang up the phone whenever they feel like it. Based on the experience gained from the operation of the telephone counselling helpline in Greece for children and adolescents, countertransference phenomena that appear during telephone counselling are presented in the present article. More specifically, the link between those countertransference phenomena and the special characteristics of telephone counselling, with the characteristics of the period of adolescence, with the existence of psychopathology in the callers and, moreover, with factors regarding the counsellors themselves is presented.

Keywords:

• adolescents
• phone counselling
• child helpline
• countertransference