In this book, the author offers an analytical account of how counselling, as a process, is dynamically constructed through the interaction of counsellor and client. Drawing on research on counselling of clients undergoing an HIV test, the author explores the ways in which conversations between counsellors and patients reflect, embody and subtly alter assumptions about the purpose, method and practice of counselling. This text should be of interest to researchers and students of counselling, psychotherapy and associated helping professions as a critical appreciation of the modes of engagement between counsellor and client. Practitioners - particularly those within the domain of HIV and other health counselling - should be stimulated to reflect on and respond to Silverman's analysis in their own practice. This book should also be useful reading for researchers and students in the traditions of sociological work on interactionism, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, applying these approaches in a sophisticated manner to the interactional and conversational analysis strategies adopted in a health promotion environment.