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Counselling Difficult Clients
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Counselling Difficult Clients


February 1998 | 168 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
Counselors and other mental health professionals will inevitably encounter clients who are difficult to work with because they do not conform with the basic requirements of forming a trusting relationship and accepting help or advice. Such clients can place enormous strain on those who are trying to help them and this book sets out a range of practical guidelines for the management of these difficult, disturbed, or disturbing clients. The authors concentrate on the everyday difficulties of the transaction between practitioner and client in their respective social contexts, rather than locating the problems solely within the client and indicate ways in which these difficulties can be successfully overcome. Complementing rather than competing with practitionersÆ own treatment styles, Working with Difficult Clients acknowledges that not all professionals have access to team-based resources. Providing practical advice backed up by carefully chosen examples and with a sound theoretical base, this book will be an invaluable resource for counselors, probation officers, social workers, and other mental health professionals.

 
The Counselling Transaction
 
The Influence of Past Interactions
 
Counselling Transactions in Context
 
Assessment for Counselling
 
Practical Points
From Beginning to End

 
 
Preserving Respective Roles
 
Restoring the Public-Personal Equilibrium
 
Utilising Contextual Influences
 
Interface with Other Models

`[In this book] "difficult clients" is meant as "difficulties with clients"... I like to be challenged in my thinking and there was much about this book that I found thought-provoking and challenging, and which made me re-examine my basic philosophy and approach to counselling... Counselling Difficult Clients is a well-organized book. I liked the use of case work to illustrate both theoretical concepts and practices... For the newly trained counsellor this book offers organizational, practical and theoretical advice... it gives a good academic overview of understanding how client-counsellor interactions can become difficult, together with some preventative techniques and case-work examples' - Counselling, The Journal of The British Association for Counselling

`This book raises awareness of the human qualities professionals bring to every psychotherapeutic relationship. It is an accessible description of how counselling can go dreadfully wrong. There are several case examples to which the authors return again and again to illustrate their points. All mental health professionals use counselling skills to some extent in their work. This is a pragmatic analysis of the difficulties that may arise in any therapeutic relationship. Nurses, doctors and social workers, as well as counsellors themselves, will find it useful' - British Journal of Psychiatry

`The book follows a logical progression and uses case-studies to particularly good effect' - Therapeutic Communities

This is a refreshing text for those interested in counselling but without experience. I would recommend this to counsellors in training and those interested in teaching and training counsellors and psychotherapists' - International Review of Psychiatry