Text as a Means of Remote Psychological Counseling: Language and Semantics of Feature Blogs

Abstract

Text is one of the main methods of interpersonal communication as it transmits values and meanings. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it an important tool of remote counseling. The research objective was to analyze the texts that psychologists use in remote psychological counseling. Methods of typology, content analysis, and comparison helped to identify the semantic content and linguistic means used in such texts. A questionnaire filled in by 40 psychologists who run feature blogs made it possible to study the psychological techniques they use for text-related counseling. Text proved to be an important means of diagnostics and therapy as it addresses the intellectual and value-semantic sphere of the recipient. Its psychological impact depends on its content and linguistic means. The texts of feature blogs revealed such techniques as interviewing, interpretation, self-disclosure, rapport, and psychological support, as well as metaphor-based fairytaleand bibliotherapy. However, techniques of text-related remote psychological counseling demonstrated a number of limitations. Therefore, therapists should inform clients about the limited efficiency of this method.

Keywords

• remote counseling
• psychological counseling techniques
• client-consultant interaction
• text therapy