This book covers the basic skills necessary to serve and help clients in a therapeutic relationship. It takes an experiential, student-centered approach and reflects upon therapy as an art, rather than just a diagnostic tool. This helps students understand that a skilled therapist looks at every situation and person differently and draws on their embedded skills to best serve the client.
The skills covered include listening, building and maintaining relationships, establishing trust, assessing and diagnosing client issues, exploring and collecting meaningful information, moving from insight to action, reading verbal and nonverbal behavior, among others.
Author Biography
Leah Brew is Chair and Professor in the Department of Counseling at California State University, Fullerton. She teaches, presents and publishes in the areas of basic counseling skills and multiculturalism. Specifically, she has several publications and projects that have been centered on working with multiracial couples, families, and individuals. She collaborated on a project to establish Competencies for Counseling Multiracial Populations, which was endorsed by the American Counseling Association. She has a small private practice where she specializes in working with diverse clients who struggle with depression and anxiety and are survivors of trauma. She also supervises students at a community agency who are working toward their master's degrees in counseling. She is active in the profession of counseling in the state of California, and helped to obtain the Licensed Professional Clinical Counseling credential in California, the last state to license counselors. She was also appointed a gubernatorial position as the LPCC representative on the state licensure board, and has taken a leadership role in improving supervision requirements in the state. Jeffrey A. Kottler is one of the most prolific authors in the fields of counseling, psychotherapy, and education, having written more than 90 books about a wide range of subjects. He has authored a dozen texts for counselors and therapists that are used in universities around the world and a dozen books each for practicing therapists and educators. Some of his most highly regarded works include Creative Breakthroughs in Therapy, The Mummy at the Dining Room Table: Eminent Therapists Reveal Their Most Unusual Cases and What They Teach Us About Human Behavior, Bad Therapy, The Client Who Changed Me, Divine Madness, Change: What Leads to Personal Transformation, Stories We've Heard, Stories We've Told: Life-Changing Narratives in Therapy and Everyday Life, and Therapy Over 50. He has been an educator for 40 years, having worked as a teacher, counselor, and therapist in preschool, middle school, mental health center, crisis center, nongovernmental organization, university, community college, private practice, and disaster relief settings. He has served as a Fulbright scholar and senior lecturer in Peru and Iceland, as well as worked as a visiting professor in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Nepal. He is professor of counseling at California State University, Fullerton.
