The Counseling Process

This concise introduction to the counseling process elaborates a three-stage model of counseling, including disclosure, exploration, and action planning, and describes the counselor skills, attitudes, and knowledge essential to therapeutic change. The text assumes an integrated theoretical position, introducing ideas from a variety of theoretical perspectives and explaining how each might contribute to the counselor's work. Full chapters cover: working with children, working with older adults, crisis intervention, gender and multicultural factors, and professional ethics. The Fifth Edition offers a greater focus on skills, incorporates new case studies, and incorporates material on brief therapy.

Professor Emeritus Lewis Patterson taught counseling theory, career development, adult development and psychopharmacology at Cleveland State University, where he was director of doctoral studies in the College of Education. Dr. Patterson began his work as a counselor educator while a doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University, and served on the counseling faculty at Boston University before coming to Cleveland.

Dr. Elizabeth Reynolds Welfel is a Professor Emeritus of Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology at Cleveland State University (CSU), where she served full time on the faculty for 26 years. Prior to her tenure at CSU she was a member of the counseling faculty at Boston College. She earned her doctorate from the University of Minnesota. She has published and lectured extensively on the ethics of professional practice for mental health professionals throughout her career. She is also the co-author of THE COUNSELING PROCESS: A MULTITHEORETICAL INTEGRATIVE APPROACH (with Lewis Patterson), co-editor and co-author of THE DUTY TO PROTECT: ETHICAL, LEGAL, AND PROFESSIONAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS (© 2009, APA Books), and co-author of several other books on ethical and legal issues in practice. She was awarded Cleveland State's Distinguished Faculty Award for her teaching and research in ethics in 2004.