Agency in Young Clients’ Narratives of Counseling: “It’s Whatever You Want to Make of It” Kerry Gibson and Claire Cartwright University of Auckland Although there is a growing body of research that looks at how adult clients are active agents in their own counseling, there is little similar research that looks at the experiences of young people in counseling. This research explores how client agency is constructed in retrospective accounts of a school counseling experience provided by 22 young people (aged 16 –18). The narrative analysis shows how participants constructed their agency as clients in a number of different ways: in asserting their choice over whether to see a counselor; in their evaluations of counselors; in the selection or rejection of aspects of counseling and by portraying themselves as primarily responsible for the benefits obtained from counseling. In these ways, young clients seemed able to shape their construction of counseling to better match their own priorities. But participants also seemed aware of potential threats to their ability to exercise their agency and described how they struggled to express their needs overtly to their counselors. This raises the possibility that young people’s assertions of agency may be best understood in the context of their relative powerlessness in counseling situations. Although there is potential to harness young clients’ agency in the service of better counseling outcomes, their strong commitment to a view of themselves as agents may result in them experiencing greater accountability without a corresponding access to power in counseling. Keywords: adolescents, counseling, client factors, agency, narrative research There has long been recognition of the importance of “client factors” in accounting for good outcomes in counseling (Clarkin & Levy, 2004). A growing body of research within this field points to the value of understanding how clients use their counseling experiences to meet their own needs. This research suggests that instead of simply following a counselor-led process, clients may actively pursue an agenda of their own. As Bohart (2000) puts it: “clients are active agents who operate on therapist input and modify it and use it to achieve their own ends” (p. 132). This can include developing unique and creative outcomes for themselves, some of which the counselor may not even be aware (Bohart & Tallman, 1999; Duncan & Miller, 2000; Levitt, Butler, & Hill, 2006; Rennie, 2001). Researchers in this area argue that what has been called “client agency” works to enhance the effects of coun- seling. Clients have been said to actively seek out what they need from counseling and work to integrate their counseling experience into their lives outside of therapy (Bohart & Tallman, 1999). Research has also suggested that clients enter counseling with a clear idea of what they want and help to steer their counselor toward interventions that are helpful for them (Rennie, 2000). Recent research suggests that clients consciously recognize and value their own agency in counseling. They see their motivation as central to the change process, believe they are actively working toward change, and feel a sense of accomplishment in their own work within therapy (Hoener, Stiles, Luka, & Gordon, 2012). Perhaps in an attempt to correct for the underrecognition of clients’ contributions to counseling in dominant medicalized rep- resentations of psychotherapy (Wampold, Ahn, & Coleman, 2001), researchers have tended to focus largely on the benefits of client agency for counseling. Agency has been described as being both essential to the effective engagement of clients in counseling as well as a desirable outcome of counseling itself (Jenkins, 1997; Williams & Levitt, 2007). Duncan and Miller (2000) personify client agency in the romantic notion of the “heroic client.” But the appeal of this kind of representation of client agency needs to be tempered with a degree of caution. Even Bohart and Tallman (1999), who promote a positive view of client agency, noted that there may be a variety of life circumstances that could prevent a client from experiencing agency in counseling. Some of these circumstances may be in the client’s life outside of counseling, but there may also be constraints within the counseling relationship itself that prevent clients from experiencing or exercising agency effectively. Rennie’s (1994a) research shows that although clients were active in appraising their therapists, their ability to voice their own opinions in counseling were tempered by a fear of criti- cizing their therapist, concerns about the therapist’s self- esteem, the need to be a good client, and a feeling of indebt- edness to the therapist. This research suggests powerful pressures in the counseling relationship that could work against Kerry Gibson and Claire Cartwright, School of Psychology, University Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. This research was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee Ref No. 2011/359. Funding for this project was provided by the University of Auckland, Faculty Research Develop- ment Fund. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kerry Gibson, School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Tamaki Cam- pus, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. E-mail: kl.gibson@auckland.ac.nz This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Journal of Counseling Psychology © 2013 American Psychological Association 2013, Vol. 60, No. 3, 340 –352 0022-0167/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0033110 340