Community Counseling

Contemporary Theory and Practice

 

David B. Hershenson, Paul W. Power, and Michael Waldo

 

This authoritative text offers practitioners and counselors in training, who are employed in a variety of settings, a comprehensive overview of topics called for by the national accreditation standards for community counselor education. Of benefit to all counselors is that much of the book’s content can be applied not only to client populations representing age groups from late adolescence to the elderly, but also to members of different minority groups.  The following premises serve as a guide in addressing the current challenges faced by counselors in delivering the needed services to all clients: Healthy human development, not psychopathology, provides the scientific basis for counseling; the counseling process aims to assist the client to identify, develop, and use personal and environmental resources to achieve stated goals; it does not aim to diagnose and treat psychopathology; the desired outcome of counseling is to have developed the ability to choose, to cope, and to grow, not to be cured. Key conceptual models, case examples, and discussion questions aid readers in the exploration, understanding, and actualization of theory and practice.

Kerr, Becoming a Therapist Parsons, Fundamentals of the Helping Process