“This is an excellent book for beginners which incorporates very complex issues within a very clear writing style. It is the best book I have seen written for this level, and I want to use it for my class.”
Susan Neufeldt, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara

“This is an exceptional book. It will make an excellent first text for helpers in training. I am confident that students will respond favorably to it because of its writing style and substance. There are helpful gems of wisdom scattered throughout the book.”
John Dagley, Ph.D., University of Georgia

“This is a good foundational book and the content is excellent. The primary strengths of the book are the exercises for skill-building, the writing style, and the use of therapy dialogues, examples, analogies and metaphors.”
Lisa Flores, Ph.D., University of Missouri

“What a pleasure it was to read and review this outstanding book! Throughout the book, the authors have been sensitive to cultural differences and issues and have provided useful exercises and dialogues.”
Mark Kiselica, Ph.D., University of Missouri

The primary focus of this book is on skills, strategies, and procedures used in the helping professions. It is an easy-to-read and highly informative text that explains the nuts and bolts of what helping is all about. The model for the book involves the four core areas of exploring client concerns, promoting client understanding, chartering a new course, and working for positive change. Activities within the four core areas are explored through the use of exercises and dialogues between helper and client.

A consistent structure within each chapter makes it easy to assimilate the information provided. The hypothetical dialogues at the end of each chapter demonstrate how helpers use the skills described in the chapters in real-life helping situations.

The book is appropriate for adoption for the beginning skills course in all the human service, education, and health professions such as counseling, social work, psychology, family therapy, nursing, and pastoral counseling. The text contains hundreds of ideas to help people become skilled in the art of helping others.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Hypothetical dialogues at the end of each chapter showing skills for effective helping
• Exercises at the end of each chapter that let readers engage in role playing to practice skills discussed in the chapter
• Cultural concerns are woven throughout the text
• Includes step-by-step ideas for skill development

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Introduction to Professional Helping
2. Seeking Professional Help
3. Diversity, Culture, and Helping

The Helping Process

4. Beginning, Maintaining, and Ending the Helping Process
5. Outcomes and Effectiveness of Helping

The Helping Relationship

6. Special Relationships Between Helper and Client

Exploring Client Concerns

7. Exploring the Unique World of the Client
8. Nonverbal Exploration Skills
9. Verbal Exploration Skills
10. Exploration Tools

Promoting Client Understanding

11. Striving Toward Honest Understanding
12. Skills for Promoting Client Understanding

Charting A New Course

13. Settings Goals
14. Identifying Actions

Working for Positive Change15. Taking Action

16. Evaluation

Helping Issues, Aspects, and Topics

17. Ethical and Legal Issues
18. Helping Theories
19. Research

Wrapping Up

20. Forty-Year Professional Journey

448 pages
0305/paperback/ISBN 978-0-89108-302-3
$68.00

This insightful book is packed with examples of core skills and techniques. The text shows how to do intakes, how to pace clients, and how to use probing to gather client information. Most importantly, the book illustrates how to use specific interventions, such as directives, reflective questions, and narrative techniques.

You’ll find dozens of examples and hands-on practice ideas. Individual Counseling shows how to make connections between the counseling skills students learn and the actual implementation of those skills. It includes helpful hints for dealing with client rambling, ways to handle confrontation, how to write case notes, and much more.

Special Features

• Includes helpful hints for beginning counselors
• Shows journal writing samples and describes why they are important
• Details strategies for case conceptualization
• Outlines helpful hints and intervention techniques

Contents

1. Challenges of Learning Counseling Skills
2. Intake and Professional Disclosure
3. Basic Empathy: Reflective Listening
4. Basic Inquiry Skills
5. Helpful Hints for Beginning Counselors
6. Advanced Skills: Influencing Skills
7. Intervention Techniques
8. Termination Skills
9. Case Conceptualization: The Covert Skills

224 pages
2002
paperback/ISBN 978-0-89108-288-0
$38.00