Counselling Difficult Clients
- Kingsley Norton - Henderson Hospital
- Gill McGauley - St George's Hospital Medical School
Counselling and Psychotherapy (General)
Counsellors and other mental health professionals will inevitably encounter clients who are difficult to work with because they do not comply with the basic requirements of forming a trusting relationship and accepting help or advice. Such clients can place an enormous strain on those who try to help them. This book sets out practical guidelines, backed up by examples and a sound theoretical base, 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.
`[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