Counselling of Parents Raising Children with Disabilities: the Role of Meanings Transference in the Course of Psychological Work

   Introduction. Parents raising children with disabilities face many problems and stress factors, and psychological counselling can provide them with psychological support. To a large extent, the success of such counselling depends on the effective transference of meanings of the educational psychologist. Even though there are studies on the factors of the effectiveness of psychological counselling for parents of children with disabilities, little is known about the specific methods and strategies used by educational psychologists to convey meaning and communicate effectively with parents.

   Purpose. A literature review on the peculiarities of meaning transference in the work of an educational psychologist when advising parents of children with disabilities in physical or mental development, as well as an empirical analysis of the results of monitoring the activities of a psychologist in preschool and the process of meaning transfer in counselling parents with children with disabilities.

   Theoretical Justification. During psychological counselling, if there are common goals, a combined psychological situation develops between a psychologist and a client, and the mechanism of its development is the transference of meanings. The combined psychological situation presupposes the intersection of the goals and meanings of the subjects, and there is an interchange of meanings, knowledge and experiences.

   Discussion and Conclusion. The process of meaning transference is a formation mechanism of a combined psychological situation “psychologist-client” in the counselling process, contributing to the solution of psychological problems of parents with children with disabilities. For the counselling process, the high significance of the common motives and goals of the counselling subjects was revealed. We have found that empathy and openness between the psychologist and the client play a significant role in the process of meaning transfer. Effective semantic transmission leads to the emergence of psychological neoplasms in parents in the process of counselling.

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