2011

Recognizing that counseling students, and even professionals practicing in the field, could use an additional set of vignettes to interact with, and more comprehensively express challenges in the intake interview, the current authors pose ten new ones in this article. In Irvin Yalom’s book, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (2005), he includes a chapter dedicated to problem patients. In this chapter he presents general client types with a description, effects on the group, and therapeutic considerations. Modeling his theoretical design, the ten vignettes each represent a “type” of client that represents different and unique challenges in the intake interview process. Furthermore, to reduce anxiety commonly connected to assessment based activities (Centra, 1993), and to make the interaction more creative, the use of commonplace storybook characters have been used.