TPC-Journal-V4-Issue1

89 The Professional Counselor \Volume 4, Issue 1 trustable, educates, informative, professional, versatile, adaptable, flexible, active, guide, creative, discipline, work, therapeutic relationship, curious, healthy, motivated, reflective, framing, intelligent, strength, ecological, humble, sensitize, acceptance, verbal, focused, aware, systemic, problem-solving, catalyze, assertiveness, decision-making, practical, positive, growth, development, fair, influence, self-knowledge, respectful, tolerant, reflects, cheerful and certified. Once more, the defining words were classified into semantic categories, obtaining 48 definitions, as well as detecting those with the most semantic weight, resulting in a SAM group with the 15 most relevant categories. The authors derived these categories by considering higher frequencies and weight. The participants indicated that being empathic was the closest concept to counselor professional identity. The authors established empathic as FMG = 100, and cross-multiplied the other concepts to obtain their distance. Table 2 shows terms that professional counselors used to define counselor identity, weighted in order of relevance. Table 2 Professional Counselors’ Identity Semantic Defining Categories VMT FMG Empathic 62 100% Commitment, dedicated, responsible 54 87.09% Ethical 48 77.41% Serves vulnerable population, social service 46 74.19% Prepared, experienced, updated, supervised, studious, research 36 58.06% Listening 34 54.83% Authentic, genuine, congruent 28 45.16% Support 27 43.54% Guidance, orientation 24 38.70% Honesty, integrity 24 38.70% Integrative 23 37.09% Trustable 22 35.08% Educates, informative 22 35.08% Professional 18 29.03% Flexible, versatile, adapts 16 25.80% The resulting defining concepts also were divided into two categories: (a) the way counselors work and (b) the way counselors are. The authors believe it is important to understand how counselors actually perceived their role in their work (e.g., professional behaviors, attitudes, approaches, roles, and functions) and also the way they identify themselves personally (e.g., characteristics and abilities; see Table 3).