Counseling The Single Adult

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy Volume 1 | Number 1 Article 4 10-1-1975 Counseling The Single Adult Addie Furiman Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/irp Recommended Citation Furiman, Addie (1975) "Counseling The Single Adult," Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy: Vol. 1 : No. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/irp/vol1/iss1/4 This Article or Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the All Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact , . Counseling The Single Adult ADDIE FURIMAN Margaret Hoopes: I don't know of anyone that is better qual ified to introduce Addie Jean Furiman than I am. I've known Addie Jean for about 14 years and \~ went through our masters program together and then a number of years later went through our doctorate program together. For those of you who knoli what the blood, sweat and tears of a masters and doctorate program means, then you know that we have some very strong ties, Addie is from Logan, Utah and did her undergraduate studies at Utah State. Her masters degree was at B.Y.U. and a degree in counseling psychology at the University of Minnesota. They tell me that they asked thirty people to participate on the"panel, and of the thirty, they had seven, I believe, who were either never married, who refused to come or couldn't make it at the last moment. The three who are here, representing three of the thirty, are single parents. Because of this I appreciate their attendance, and I think that they can share some of their experiences that can also be useful to you in your own careers. One of the difficulties of this age group of never married, widowed or divorced in the church, is that they probably represent the widest variation of interests of any other group in the church. They also represent the widest variation in age of any group in the church. You're talking about people from 18 to 100, from all walks of life, with different priesthood callings and different church callings. So in a sense, it is ~fferent experi ence. That's her formal education. For those of you who know her, you realize, of course, that her informal education has contributed a great deal to her life and to other people also. She has a great curiosity about people, about how they interact, and has the ability to give a great deal. I think that I will now let her expose that to you. By way of how we are going to structure the next little while, I have a series of questions that I am going to raise, and then ask the panel to respond to them, both out of their own experi ence, and of the other people they know who are single parents, either divorced, widowed or never married. Then we will probably have a little time at the end for a few questions and answers from the audience, so that if you want to go into an area that for you would be useful, we will have some time for that, although I would guess it would be somewhat limited because of the number here. Addie: Margaret is the only person that came to ask me to get information about what to do. She is the only person that asked me, "What don't you want me to tell them," instead of "What do you want me to tell them." I appreci ate her sens iti vity. It is a pleasure to be here today, and particularly around the topic that we've been asked to present. It has been a very good method on my part, they asked me if I would conduct the panel, and then, just like every thing else that happens that's good, some unknown person arranged for the panel, and arranged to have them here. And I appreciate that kind of effort, and I hope that it is useful to the people that are here. Now to move right ahead, and not use any more of the time that we need, let me introduce the panel to you brieflr, and then I am going to ask thetT' to say a llttle bit to us about themselves in addition to what I introduce them as, in order that you might have a little better understanding of their background. One of the reasons why I think it is an interesting topic is because most of us spend our lives either married or single and that for most of us in the room today, we Iii 11 at one time be either married or a single parent. And so it does add some other common experience. Maybe it is one, because of the usefu 1ness of the peop 1e on the panel today, that mav help our own experience at some other time. I hope that would happen. I have Larue Petty on my far right. Currently she is working as a secretary in a bank in Utah, and in the church she serves as a stake Young Special Interest Representative; so she is not only on the church council, but she also as a career, and in addition to that she raises four chi ldren. I just finished conductin9, la~t year, two individual studie~ for the church, and one was on single Parents. The 'other was on s.ingle females in the church. Today we were going to talk about, and still are for awhile, the issue or the topic that you have been given--and that is counseling the single adult in the church. Another interesting fact is that we had to solicit Jan Tyler ten mi nutes ago to represent the "never ma rri ed" . I think that gives you some idea of the difficulties in assembling a panel such as this, and why I think it's kind of interesting. Irv Lindsay, sitting next to Larue, is . currently working at Utah Trade Technical College in Provo, and also works with academic standards at B.Y.U. He is the multi-regional president of Young Special Interest in that area. When he is not working he has time to raise two children on the side. Ellen Bates is next. She is currently enrolled at B.Y.U. She is the mother of three children and a recent convert to the church of about one year. She teaches a Sunday School class of 15 and 17 year olds. 14 -I Jan Tyler, who has just been recruited and who has to leave in order to attend a class, is currently director of the Family Consultation Clinic at B.Y.U. I think that it is under the office of the Marriage and Family Department. appreciate her coming at such a short notice. I'd like to begin, then, with kind of a general question, and I will tell you what my purposes are with the questions I ask. I have told the people on the panel that today their purpose i~ to help you and me. One purpose is to try and increase our awareness of what it is like to be a single parent. The second is to try to help us as professionals to se'e what we can do to increase our skills and our attitudes, and maybe you will have to change them such that we can be more useful when we are counseling with single parents, particularly in the church. So to begin with I have asked them to be spontaneous as possible with the traveling microphone. I'd like them to address themselves, to look at just what it is like to be a single parent in the world today, and then we will just move fro (...truncated)