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Tough Customers: Counseling Unwilling Clients

NCJ Number
132622
Editor(s)
G A Harris
Date Published
1991
Length
156 pages
Annotation
These 10 papers examine problems and suggest practical techniques for use by counselors who work with involuntary and resistant clients including offenders, persons with psychoses and other thought disorders, and individuals with other serious problems in daily living.
Abstract
The discussions are intended for use not only by corrections professionals, but also by counselors in schools, hospitals, and mental health clinics. They note that counselors often create much of the client's resistance by being unwilling or unable to use the client's language, by defining problems from the client's perspective, and by talking about feelings related to being coerced before considering the official reason for the referral. Individual papers describe alternative treatment methods, methods of identifying and confronting resistance in chronic criminal offenders, white-collar offenders, cocaine abusers, addicted adolescents, mentally ill adolescents, sex offenders, abusing spouses, and elderly persons. Chapter reference lists and author biographies