Beyond the Common Versus Specific Binary: A Culturally Situated Responsive Calibration Model for Counselling

Counselling researchers have spent decades arguing about why counselling works. One philosophical camp locates the active ingredient in specific techniques tied to specific disorders. The other locates it in factors common to all bona fide therapies, chiefly the relationship between counsellor and client. This article develops a process-based perspective on the debate, examining how relational and technical elements are used within an unfolding therapeutic interaction. Drawing on the equivalence findings, the contemporary alliance literature, the unresolved question of causal mediation, the ro