Therapeutic Interviewing: Essential Skills and Contexts of Counseling

Therapeutic Interviewing: Essential Skills and Contexts of Counseling

• Part I, The Context of Therapy, sets the stage for understanding the relationship that occurs during the therapeutic interview.
• Part II, The Context of Therapeutic Skills, focuses on the microskills of counseling, including how to begin and maintain an interview, how to develop empathy through paraphrasing and reflecting skills, how to use questions to set appropriate goals, how to end interviews effectively, and the need to use client strengths to enhance interviews.
• Part III, The Context of Clients, addresses issues of intake and crisis counseling, working with children, and the impact of culture on the therapeutic interview.
• Part IV, The Contexts of Therapy, highlights the physical settings in which therapy occurs, including the office, the home, and alternative settings like schools and residential centers.
• A unique chapter (Ch. 8) explores the potential pitfalls of therapy, including “common errors” and potential challenges with which beginning therapists may need to grapple.