TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 2-FULL ISSUE

210 The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 2 degrees of certainty and conditions. Most responses (65.1%, n = 203) fell into the yes, with no conditions grouping. Example responses included: “Deeply concerned” and “There’s a lot of misinformation out there! It’s a complex subject and I have seen varying degrees of ability to explain things easily and correctly. Also I think sometimes people want it to provide answers that it can’t or read more into the research than is truly there.” The second category identified was yes, if/only (3.5%, n = 11). One example response included in this subtheme was: “I would only be concerned if counselors use their knowledge of the brain to profess some magical or intellectual superiority in controlling a client.” The third category was none, but (3.2%, n = 10). For example, responses included in this subtheme were: “none—except more research is needed,” and “none other than the importance of competence.” The fourth category we identified was just like any other (3.2 %, n = 10). Some participants indicated that they had ethical concerns that were no different than for other methods of counseling. For example, one participant stated they felt “the same as with any other evidence-based practice: counselors need quality training and an understanding of what it means to be ‘competent.’” A fifth category was unethical not to integrate (3.2%, n = 10). An example response included in this subtheme was: “At this point, it would be unethical NOT to formally integrate these studies” (emphasis in original). Nearly 20% of participants (19.9%, n = 62) believed there were no ethical concerns regarding the integration of neuroscience in counseling. Given the methods of the study, the “n/a” responses were kept separate from the no ethical concerns group, as the analysis aimed to stick close to the participants’ actual words rather than infer their intention. Therefore, “n/a” could have been listed for any number of possible reasons that could not be determined in the current study. These responses were further divided into the following groups: (a) participants who believed there were explicitly no ethical concerns (13.8%, n = 43), (b) participants who believed there were no ethical concerns at the current moment (3.8%, n = 12), and (c) participants who believed there were no ethical concerns as long as certain conditions were met (2.2%, n = 7). This continuum provided a richer understanding of the emergent themes, as discussed below. Themes of Participant Concerns Most participants (78.2%, n = 244) identified ethical concerns. From the continuum above, these are the responses from the following groups: unethical not to integrate; no ethical concerns but; ethical concerns if/only; ethical concerns with no conditions; and ethical concerns just like any other. The analysis of these responses produced a total of four themes and ten subthemes and are summarized in Table 1. The four major themes were: neuroscience does not align with our counselor identity , neuroscience is outside the scope of counseling practice , challenges with neuroscience and the nature of neuroscience research , and potential harm to clients . For each subtheme, response frequencies are reported to provide a contextual understanding of how commonly the theme occurred. Subthemes all were deemed equally meaningful, regardless of the response frequency. Theme 1: Neuroscience Does Not Align With Our Counselor Identity The first theme was reflective of participants’ concerns that integrating neuroscience into counseling might be inherently inconsistent with or even violate counselors’ identity. Specifically, participants emphasized the loss of humanistic principles by either directly using the word “humanistic” or using terms consistent with humanistic principles (e.g., holism, human-first, subjective data, process, compassion, relationship, and wellness). Two subthemes related to the overarching theme were as follows: Subtheme 1.1) overemphasis and/or overreliance ( n = 27), and Subtheme 1.2) reductionism and/or