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Resistance and adherence to the norms of genetic counseling
Author(s) -
Brunger Fern,
Lippman Abby
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
journal of genetic counseling
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 52
eISSN - 1573-3599
pISSN - 1059-7700
DOI - 10.1007/bf01408406
Subject(s) - genetic counseling , resistance (ecology) , context (archaeology) , psychology , genetic testing , medicine , social psychology , clinical psychology , genetics , ecology , paleontology , biology
Genetic counseling for women of advanced maternal age who are considering prenatal testing continues to be based on a principle of nondirectiveness. We interviewed 11 genetic counseling students and four counselors about how they experience and manage, in practice, the tensions between the ideology of nondirectiveness and the acknowledged reality that one can never be truly nondirective. We found that our respondents creatively resolve this tension—simultaneously resisting and adhering to the values of nondirectiveness and information‐giving—in individual and situation‐specific ways. This resolution is facilitated by the extent to which information given to counselees is fluid, mobile and context‐dependent, but these very features of “information” also have critical implications for both the norms and the practice of genetic counseling.