by
Joseph Peters
| Sep 23, 2021
Announcer: Welcome to the Voice of Counseling presented by the American Counseling Association. This program is hosted by Dr. S. Kent Butler. This week's episode is reflections from a creative counselor, Dr. Samuel T. Gladding, and features Dr. Sam Gladding.
Dr. S. Kent Butler: Welcome to the Voice of Counselling from the American Counselling Association. I am Dr. S. Kent Butler, and today joining me is Dr. Samuel T. Gladding. He is an ACA fellow and former president who is also a professor in department of counseling at Wake Forest University. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the David Cay Brooks Distinguished Mentoring Award and the Arthur A. Hitchcock Distinguished Professional Service Award. Sam is known for his infectious humor. He's a prolific author with an extensive list of publications. Today, we're going to just talk about what inspires him. Welcome, Sam.
Dr. Samuel T. Gladding: Thank you, Kent.
Dr. Butler: How are, sir?
Dr. Gladding: I'm doing pretty well, I think. I hope you are.
Dr. Butler: I'm doing well. It's good to see you. It's good to be a part of knowing that I'm following in your footsteps as the ACA president. You have been instrumental in my life, because of all the work that you've been doing and the friendship that you have provided or allowed to flourish between you and I. I'm really happy to be a part of who you are. To get started, one of the things I wanted to talk about was the Samuel T. Gladding Unsung Hero Award. I noticed that this was something that you generated and you put forward. Can you talk about the inspiration behind that and how that all came about?
Dr. Gladding: Sure. I always think that in counseling, we recognize people who've done just wonderful things. Sometimes we don't recognize individuals who've done extraordinary things and have taken no credit for it. This was an award that I thought needed to be funded, to be given, just something that counselors could aspire to if they so wished. Even if they didn't wish, that we could recognize them for what they do. It actually came from Richard Yep and David Kapplan and a bunch of other luminaries in the profession. I just thought, "Well, like most counselors, I have extra money just lying around."
Dr. Butler: There's that humor, folks.
Dr. Gladding: I thought, "Let's do it." I wrote them, and they agreed to it, and the governing council agreed to it. It's been going on now for about a decade.
Dr. Butler: About a decade now, excellent, phenomenal. The recipients, I know that you're not involved with picking those recipients, there's a part of the awards committee that does that. What are some of the criteria that they are looking for and making sure that they find the right person each year?
Dr. Gladding: A really good question. I think they're looking for a lot of things, and yet nothing specific. You can't campaign for this award and I'm pleased about that. We've had just a lot of different people receive this honor and I don't think any of them that I know of have campaigned for being named.
Dr. Butler: They were just nominated and they came forth.
Dr. Gladding: Yes. It's an unselfish award, an award that gives people recognition. I'm just very pleased that it continues to go on.
Dr. Butler: How's life been for you during this pandemic, and what's happening at Wake Forest these days?
Dr. Gladding: Wow, what's not happening, [laughs] and I'm sure it's the same all over the country. We have stayed open. Of course, we've gone to virtual learning in a number of cases. Although I was in the classroom all last year, both fall and spring. The point of all of that is to say that we try to continue in a way that represents the best of counseling and the best of Wake Forest. Our motto is Pro Humanitate, For Humanity. I think we've been able to stay true to that. We've been able to promote counseling as such. We're very much a liberal arts university with a few Ph.D. programs, not in counseling, unfortunately, but we're working on it. Well, we're basically trying to live up to what we were founded on, which goes back to 1834, but who's counting?
Dr. Butler: Who's counting? Where did you get your start? How did you know counseling was going to be the thing that helped make you the counselor that you are today, the author that you are today? Where did you get to start?
Dr. Gladding: That's a really good question. I didn't start out to be a counselor, I was going to be a minister. My grandfather, for whom I was named, was a minister. I grew up trying to emulate him. He was a really good man. I went through college at Wake Forest not realizing I'd ever be back. Then I went to Yale Divinity School thinking, "Oh, I'll probably be coming back here for Continuing Ed." Then my second year at Yale, I realized, "Oh, this isn't me."
Dr. Butler: This isn't me.
Dr. Gladding: I love the school and I love the study of theology, but it just wasn't me. I'm from Atlanta originally. I was driving back to Atlanta from New Haven as opposed to my kids always say, "Where was the old Haven, dad?" There is no Old Haven in the United States that I'm aware of. Anyway, I stopped by-
Dr. Butler: Well, I grew up right outside of New Haven. I think you knew that. I grew up in West Haven, Connecticut.
Dr. Gladding: Oh, did you?
Dr. Gladding: I knew I liked you for many reasons, but-
Dr. Butler: For Yale Divinity School and Kent Butler. Okay.
Dr. Gladding: Yes. Well, my wife grew up in that same area.
Dr. Gladding: That's very interesting. Birds of a feather continue to flock. Anyway, the person that I stopped to see at Wake Forest on my way to Atlanta was someone I think you know. He's dead now but he was Tom Elmore. Tom had mentored me at Wake because Wake is not a very big school. Anyway, I gave him my 20-something angst and he said, "Well, Sam--" He said five words. He said, "Why don't you try counseling?" I think that's five words. Anyway, four or five [chuckles]. What he meant was, "Why don't you get some counseling?" I thought he meant, "Why don't you try this as a profession?" He probably knew me better than I knew myself. I did, and it was a really good fit. I have no regrets.
Dr. Kent: No regrets. That's phenomenal that that's your pathway there. Again, what I've been trying to look at this year is how people get tapped in and how do we tap people in not only to leadership but into the counseling profession, into our counseling offices as clients. For you to say that he taped you, in a sense, to say, "Hey, why don't you try counseling?" That's a pretty good entryway into the profession. You brought so much to the profession with regards to the work that you've been doing. I want to ask you, where did the concept originate? When did you realize that the combination of humor and counseling worked?
Dr. Gladding: Really, really good. Well, I noticed initially that most of my clients were not laughing their way into my office, and that sometimes I’d say something and they would laugh, and that was probably accidental. It was. They felt better after they had had a laugh. I thought, well, let's look at this. I also felt better after I'd had a laugh. Not that counseling is funny, it's not, but even the serious side of matters can be [crosstalk]
Dr. Kent: You found that it calmed you?
Dr. Gladding: It calmed me?
Dr. Gladding: Yes, it brought me joy. I discovered it purely by accident. Then, afterwards, I started realizing there were a lot of people who really believe in the power of humor as well as catharsis. Sorry, continue.
Dr. Kent: In a way, it enhances learning, especially for students, and also it helps clients to build a rapport with the counselor. Is that how you see it most effectively working?
Dr. Gladding: That and the insight that it gives. There's a book, and I've forgotten the author right off, that's called It's Hopeless But Not Serious. I think it's Paul Watzlawick. Watzlawick basically says that when you lighten things up, you often get a much better insight into yourself and into the subject and into the matter that you're dealing with and often find a solution.
Dr. Kent: You've been able to not only use this in your practice, but you've been able to write about it and to use it in your writing. I know that one of the books that we use at my university that was authored by you starts off with a joke, or fun, or something, each chapter. What inspired that and what was your hope? How did you tie that to the chapter?
Dr. Gladding: Well, I think people are hooked on humor. It used to be hooked on phonics.
Dr. Kent: Hooked on Samuel T. Gladding, there you go.
Dr. Gladding: But now it's hooked by humor. People enjoy a laugh as long as you don't degrade the subject at hand. I find that that I enjoy that, too, and it can even come up with silly solutions.
Dr. Kent: There's so many different ways to get through to a client to help them work through whatever is going on. Humor does seem like a positive way to go about doing it because it brings laughter to the room, it brings a sense of freedom. Do you see it as the opposite of tears?
Dr. Gladding: I see it as complementary to tears. Sometimes we talk about the fact that we laugh so much we cried. Humor opens us up to possibilities and I love it for that reason than others.
Dr. Kent: Does it ever distract?
Dr. Gladding: Yes, it can. That's one of the drawbacks to it that people can think of, "Well, we're just joking." Of course, humor is not that.
Dr. Kent: What do you say to the person who thinks they're funny and they’re just not, and they try to use it in different spaces? Now, I'll use myself as an example. When I first started teaching, I was having a hard time as an African-American male to go in and have students see me as competent enough to be able to show them that I knew what counseling was and how to help them learn to become counselors. I'm also a tall guy. I'm six foot, four, pretty good size, and a lot of times people would say, “I'm intimidated by you.”
My entry into helping people feel comfortable was the use of humor. I've been able to successfully use humor or so I think anyway. In my mind, I think I'm doing a good job. Class laughs or somebody's laughing at something that I'm doing, but it comes at a cost because I have to now make sure that I am implementing that into the work that I'm doing. I'm wondering for you, how do you help someone recognize when they're using a gift in a good way or when it could be something that could be harmful?
Dr. Gladding: Well, like much of our counseling, I'm going to depend on them to recognize it. If they don't recognize it, then I'm going to point it out and just say, "Jim, or Jane, or whoever, I noticed you did this. Tell me about that." I almost feel like Fritz Perls [laughs] when I'm saying this, but it seems to work. It's like the pretend technique that we often use in counseling. Once you pretend, you can't go back again. You can't go back to blank, "Oh, I didn't know this was going to do this." I like it.
Dr. Kent: That's pretty good. You like to write.
Dr. Kent: I don't know how many books and book chapters and journal articles that you have been a part of. What's your inspiration when you write? How does Dr. Samuel Gladding sit down at the computer, or whomever, and start writing?
Dr. Gladding: First of all, I have to tell you, I can't spell. [crosstalk] and so, how I ever got involved in writing, I am not sure. Maybe I like [unintelligible 00:20:06].
Dr. Butler: Who was catching the spelling errors before spell check?
Dr. Gladding: I usually was. If not me, whoever the editor was.
Dr. Butler: They didn't turn you away. You must have had something good on paper. The spelling.
Dr. Gladding: I guess. I wrote for my college newspaper. I wrote for the yearbook, both in high school and in college. I wrote for the literary magazine on humor. Sometimes I had to entertain myself. That's how I did.
Dr. Butler: How it all came about. When did this start to stick though? When did the counseling community start seeing your work as so relevant that now you see it in many classrooms across the community?
Dr. Gladding: I think it was gradual. When I first started writing for ACA publications and counseling publications, I was very much in a minority. In fact, a friend said, "Don't send that in. They're just going to reject it." I said, "Well, bring 'em on."
Dr. Butler: Bring them on. All right. You had a fighting spirit.
Dr. Gladding: Interestingly enough, they didn't reject it. In fact, I kept getting requests for more of it. I think we all like to humor ourselves. And so, I kept writing.
Dr. Butler: Kept writing. Good. Of all the textbooks that you've written, I came to know you from the Group books. What's your favorite part of counseling to write about on the humorous side? Because humor is just a part of it at this point. What would you say would be your forte? Like I said, I came to know you, from Group. And I know that you've written in other disciplines as well. Group was really something that I saw as your mainstay for the most part. What about you?
Dr. Gladding: Another thing maybe to realize is that I was not in the top half of my class. When my fellow master's students were being offered jobs, I was sitting there waiting, hopefully anticipating interviewing, but not really knowing. I thought, "Well, let's see where this goes." I received just enough encouragement to keep writing.
Dr. Butler: You say that you weren't in the top half of the class. That just goes to show that perseverance and-- Grade don't necessarily always tell the story of what somebody's promises of how great somebody can become. You're really a testament to the fact that, yes, I may not have gotten the best grades, but look, the understanding of counseling and how to help people understand it better and get through it in terms of understanding how to become a counselor is more important in some cases than having A-grade.
Dr. Gladding: Yes. The other thing is my first job out of my master's program was in rural North Carolina, and it was like I had to improvise.
Dr. Butler: You had to laugh.
Dr. Gladding: I did have to laugh.
Dr. Butler: I'm sorry. Anybody out there from North Carolina? I'm just having humorous moments with Dr. Gladding.
Dr. Gladding: We're all in this together.
Dr. Butler: We're all in this together.
Dr. Gladding: So much of it was improvising. I remember saying to this young woman one time, "You haven't said much." I was a big Rogerian. She said, "No, I have. I like to write, but I don't like to talk." I said, "Well, how about this? How about you write some things next week and let's talk about those?" She did. I can remember her words like they were saying, "The words they must come out. I feel them as just scurrying about." I could almost feel an animation there that there was something she really want to say but didn't know how to say it. Actually, wrote about this too and it was true. People sometimes need not only to be discovered but to be uncovered. I feel like I helped her there to not be so covered up.
Dr. Butler: Wow. That's pretty deep.
Dr. Gladding: It was really an eye-opener for me and I've never regretted it.
Dr. Butler: Because there's something about honesty, especially as a counselor, to help someone get to know themselves. If they can see some of that through someone opening the door, taking the blinders off, so to speak, even using humor to help a person recognize that they have worth, that they are valuable, that they just have to get over the hump of maybe what they're dealing with and what they're going through in the moment.
Dr. Gladding: That's a good way to put it. Once they can begin to feel relaxed, then again, when we relax in any kind of situation, we're much more likely to talk, to gain insight, to just to have a good time, as well as to gain insight.
Dr. Butler: We're going to need to take a break in a few minutes here, but I want to come back and talk about that. What have been some of your most rewarding moments working with clients teaching in the classroom? What have been those things that have really given you the spark to continue on? Because there's no stopping you at this moment. I understand that you still got stuff in the work in the hopper to try to get out there. When we come back, we'll talk more with Dr. Samuel T. Gladding.
Dr. Gladding: Sounds good.
Dr. Butler: All right. Thank you. This is the Voice of Counseling. I'm Dr. Kent Butler, and we'll be back momentarily.
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Dr. Butler: Welcome back. I'm Dr. S. Kent Butler, and we're continuing the conversation with Dr. Sam Gladding. One of the things that I picked up several years ago and got a chance to use in my classes, I use it in my introduction to counseling course, is The Counseling Dictionary. How did that come about? What was the spark behind that book being created?
Dr. Gladding: Well, I figured I had written so much that one of my children said, "You know, dad, they've got all these words out there, why don't you gather them up together and put them in a dictionary?" I thought, hadn't that been done before? Actually, I found psychology had done it, psychiatry had done it, social work had done it, but we hadn't done it in counseling. I considered it a challenge.
Dr. Kent: It definitely a tool. Like I said, I use it as a supplemental book in my class because I really felt that students needed to know what the terms were and how to go about doing that. I really believe in students becoming counselors. Can you talk a little bit about all the books that you've written to help people get there? In many cases, I see books as the blueprint. I see it as this is what you need to do in order to make it. There's a way that you have to read a counseling book, in my perspective, so that you don't become robotic, you don't start asking questions that was on Page 34 of the book, that was on Page 188 of the book. You really are there being present with your client.
In your eyes, how do you see students becoming counselors without it being that they get stuck in-- a lot of times they get stuck, and then there's this thing that they call-- I forgot what they call it now. When the student gets glassy-eyed or whatever have you, and they feel as though they don't know what they're doing. Again, there's a term for it. It's not coming to mind right now, but they are not able to grasp it. Even when they graduate, sometimes they still haven't been able to say, "Hey, I am a counselor." What do you think in your textbooks or in your teaching helps students become?
Dr. Gladding: Well, I love the word you're using there, becoming. I think Gordon Allport wasn’t the only one to write about that. We do become part of our environment, part of our outlook, definitely part of our history, and part of our mistakes as well. I tell my class sometimes that I was counseling this young man and I said a minimal encourager like, "Uh-huh," and he said, "Uh-uh," I said, "Oh, crunch" [laughs]. I said, "Well, if it's not uh-huh, what is it?" He said, "Well, it's part of me, but not as much of me as you're implying it was." I'm always, and I know you do this, and I think all good counselors do, hopefully, that I'm always listening to how clients are affirming themselves, are not affirming themselves. If it's not uh-huh, what is it? That has gone off on numerous tracks which I have really loved exploring with clients. I hope I am making sense there.
Dr. Kent: Yes, I think so. Until somebody can really see themselves, and again, if we're not affirming them or we're not helping them, then they're going to be off track as well. Part of our job is to help them see themselves. If we can't see them correctly, then how can we provide the feedback that's necessary, whether it's a minimal encourager or not? If we don't see them for who they are, or how they're representing, or how they're coming to counseling, then we can miss the mark and cause more harm than good in the long run.
Dr. Gladding: Yes, definitely. You were talking about your early days teaching and humor and other things and could a 6′4″ Black man really understand this thing. Of course, I'm your opposite in the sense that [laughs] I’m a 5′2″.
Dr. Kent: I wasn’t going to go there, Sam [laughs].
Dr. Gladding: It's okay. I don't know. I feel like we play the parts that we're given, and how we play them makes a big difference in the life of our clients and the lives of ourselves.
Dr. Kent: How did you bring cultural competence into your realm? You, in a very real sense, represent white male counselor. Tell me, how do you help your clients see beyond what I think the perception of counseling is for some people/
Dr. Gladding: Well, I don't think I could ever represent the John Waynes of the world or the-- you name the actor or actress, but what I can represent is what it's like to be me. Realizing that, just like in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, I’m paraphrasing this, there's some lines in there that, "If we're cut, do we not bleed? [unintelligible 00:37:54]" It's really important not to know. I try to be sensitive to the environment around me and to work with people in that regard.
Dr. Kent: I think it's important to work with folks and to see people for who they are. A lot of times what happens is people go into counseling with a false sense of what it really is. [crosstalk] think that "Oh, I've been told that I can give advice really well, I can do this really well," but not recognizing that the truth of the matter is we're really supposed to soak it up and help and take it and learn from what they're bringing to us and give it back to them in a way that they can see it, our clients, and so that they can now understand how they might be portraying themselves to the world and helping them to work through whatever it is. A lot of times people think that "Oh, I can just go in and fix it." Well, that's not our role. Our role is not to fix it. The word I was looking for before was imposter syndrome.
Dr. Gladding: I thought that was you [laughs].
Dr. Kent: A lot of times people get caught up in so many different things that is not a part of becoming a counselor. Once you know who you are, once you are okay with that, once you see people for who they are, then it becomes that much easier for you to help them. I think the work that you've done, the types of books that you have created, the opportunities that you have created through your teaching has been very powerful. When I see you at conferences walking around, I'm quite sure you have a lot of fans because that's what we do. When I first met you, I didn't talk to you at first because you were Sam Gladding. What's that like knowing that you have now mentored and/or helped countless number of students become counselors?
Dr. Gladding: Well, I do think we tend to put people on a pedestal. I did that with Courtland Lee initially.
Dr. Butler: We have that in common.
Dr. Gladding: Yes, and I did it with Carl Rogers. This is what makes it so human and so funny in some ways and serious in others is that I once wrote an article comparing Carl Rogers and Heinz Kohut. As you know Rogers, of course, is Mr. Person-centered, Heins Kohut is let's talk about your Id when you were a kid and [laughs] all the Freudian stuff. A couple of weeks after that article came out, and it came out in a big journal, JCD, I got this letter from California and I knew where, who it was from, where I was from. I had no idea of what the content was. I run into the house, our kids were still pretty small. The letter, my wife said, "Open it, open it." I did, and I could look down the bottom signature and it was Carl Rogers.
She said, "What did he say? What did he say?" [chuckles] I said, "It's not enough that I got a letter from Carl Rogers? Do you know how many people get these things?" She said, "I want to know what he said." I started reading it to her, and about the third sentence, he just really started giving me down the country. There's no unconditional positive regard being expressed here. You put yourself out there and you take what comes back.
Dr. Butler: You take what comes back.
Dr. Gladding: Anyway, the long and short of that was my saying to her, "Well, not everything that you're intended comes back in the way you intended it to come." I just licked my wounds. [chuckles]
Dr. Butler: I guess you're saying something that's really important too for all of us to recognize is that when we put people up on a pedestal or we say certain things about individuals, we sometimes take away their humanness. You walk down the street, you see somebody that you knew or you thought you knew or a celebrity or something like that, and they do something that you think is off-putting, and now you have this whole different outlook of this person when they never told you that was them in the first place. You created this facade for them. Then they show up and they tell you, "Hey, I'm human."
Dr. Gladding: You're right. If we don't put them on a pedestal, then they can have a chance to be more human with us and we with them.
Dr. Butler: I hope you still have the letter. Do you still have the letter?
Dr. Gladding: I do. I'm putting it out there for a bid. [laughs] I'm not.
Dr. Butler: There is the humor. Yes, I don't think Carl Rogers would appreciate that. He didn't appreciate the article too much. He may not appreciate you taking his letter and then putting it out there in a different way.
Dr. Gladding: Yes, well, my wife said after I read it. It's pretty scathing. A couple of weeks later he died, actually. I told her, and she said. "Well, you know you had something to do with that, don't you?" [chuckles] I said, "Honey, he was 87."
Dr. Butler: You didn't hurry him along, let's put it that way.
Dr. Gladding: She said, "If you hadn't written that article, and he hadn't read it, and his blood pressure gotten up, he'd probably still be alive today."
Dr. Gladding: I'm determined someday I'll write a letter or an article on that. I don't think right now. It's still fresh.
Dr. Butler: Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. That is a very personal account, and for you to share that. Even how I see you and how you see yourself and how others have seen you throughout your career, to have someone respond that way to you also shows the humanness that's in society, in our world, our community. That you're willing to share that will help others recognize that that's one person's view. It doesn't make up the whole of who you are or what you bring to the table.
Dr. Gladding: That's true. That's really true. We talk about our clients taking risk. Sometimes I think we need to remember that we as counselors must take risk, and we'll see where it leads.
Dr. Butler: I believe your time is your time, and so hopefully, it was just his time. I wouldn't put it on you, but I would say that you have a gift. You have something that you have from this person however you want to see it, however you take it. I have to believe that it has also helped you in your career or helped in how you moved forward from that point on. I'm speechless as to how to respond to that. On one hand, everybody is like, "Mr. lovey-dovey Carl Rogers did what?" Then to think about it in that regards. People have different ways of seeing how somebody is putting their mark or their stamp or how they see them into the atmosphere. I'm still proud of you for still writing the article because that's how you saw it.
Dr. Gladding: Well, and I learned.
Dr. Gladding: Yes, and that's good.
Dr. Butler: Well, thank you for sharing that.
Dr. Butler: Thank you so much. That brings us to the end of our time together. I really appreciate having the opportunity to talk with you. Again, your work speaks for itself. You've been a shining light for counseling. From counseling, being in the Group world, the dictionary, all the writing that you've done on humor, that's been instrumental. I appreciate you. I appreciate that when I came up to you, maybe not the first time, but the second time you knew my name. That's who you are, you take the time to get to know people. I appreciate that. I'm glad that you were a guest on today's podcast. I appreciate you.
Dr. Gladding: I appreciate you Kent, and this is a real honor to be interviewed by you for a number of reasons. Not only for your scholarly work, but for your leadership and for your humanity.
Dr. Butler: I appreciate you. I get that from having people like you in my life. I thank you. I thank you so much. From the American Counseling Association, I am Dr. S. Kent Butler with my guest today Dr. Samuel T. Gladding. Thank you for joining us and make it a good day. We'll see you next time.
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