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CRISIS COUNSELING: An Essential Guide for Nonprofessional Counselors by Eugene Kennedy

CRISIS COUNSELING: An Essential Guide for Nonprofessional Counselors

By

Pub Date: April 5th, 1981
Publisher: Continuum--dist. by Seabury

The wrap-up volume in a trilogy that began with On Becoming a Counselor and Sexual Counseling: unassuming guidelines for clergy, educators, medical and legal personnel, etc., from a professor of psychology at Loyola University. Here, Kennedy focuses on the emergency setting, and attempts to combine appeals to sensitivity and common sense with a modicum of information about the situations to be handled--from the extremes of suicide and drug abuse, to the nuances of marital discord and depression. The approach and tone derive from the clinical textbook--and will therefore best suit the serious student of the subject; the cautiousness, in fact, leads to occasional understatement (the idea that women who are raped get what they are looking for is termed merely ""oversimplified""; child abuse is ""this almost repugnant problem""). Still, Kennedy is aware of both the stages of grief and the unwisdom of considering them absolutely fixed; he is able to give a detailed portrait of the potential child abuser; and he helpfully cites some of the signs of increased suicidal risk (social isolation, alcoholism). Bibliographies supplement such broad sketches, moreover. And the counselor's own needs are served too--via chapters On: the ethics and consequences of divulging information obtained in trust (""Silence very seldom increases suffering""); the stress of handling misplaced hostility (an understanding of transference can help); and the omnipresent danger of burn-out. Quiet support for its own specialized audience.