“This text should be required reading for all clinical practitioners and for students enrolled in programs to become clinical practitioners, if they want to further develop their therapeutic relationship skills. Every clinical practitioner has an ethical obligation to seek to facilitate positive changes in clients, and this text provides considerable material on how to facilitate such positive changes.”

UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGING THE THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP

Fred R. McKenzie, Aurora University

Working with clients can be challenging, even for therapists with years of training, and working with difficult clients can be even more daunting. Understanding how the emotions of both therapist and client affect their relationship is as important as understanding theory and technique, and effective management of that relationship is crucial to successful treatment.

Understanding and Managing the Therapeutic Relationship is the first book to integrate the theoretical, practical, and emotional aspects of the clinical relationship. Through a combination of classical and contemporary theory, comprehensive practical case applications, and empirically grounded knowledge from such varied sources as attachment theory and neuroscience, McKenzie has created a text that captures the emotional aspects of the therapeutic encounter in a way that is informative and useful to both the beginning clinician and the experienced therapist.

This book works well in both advanced and introductory courses in social work theory and practice, counseling psychology practice, clinical psychology practice, and human services practice. It also proves a useful reference for doctoral level classes.

Features

• How to utilize models that help distinguish between the emotions of the client and therapist
• How to work with emotions in treatment
• Contemporary recommendations from literature and multimedia
• Case examples that show the interaction of theory, technique, and emotion

Contents

	Foreword by Charles Zastrow
	Preface
	Acknowledgments
	Chapter 1		The Theoretical and Empirical Underpinnings of the Therapeutic Relationship
	Chapter 2		Engagement and Assessment in the Therapeutic Relationship
	Chapter 3		The Intersubjective Realm
	Chapter 4		Cultural Competence, Biases, and Blind Spots
	Chapter 5		Closure, Transitions, and Endings
	Chapter 6		Putting It All Together
	Works Cited
	Selected Bibliography

About the Author

Fred R. McKenzie (MSW, George Williams College, PhD, Loyola University) is associate professor, former director of the school of social work, and presently dean of the College of Professional Studies at Aurora University. He has been a full-time faculty member since 1991. Prior to that, Professor McKenzie served as associate director for clinical services at SPECTRUM Youth and Family Services and executive director of Barrington Youth Services. He has been in private practice in Illinois for nearly thirty years.

2011 paperback, 128 Pages, ISBN 978-1-933478-35-7, $24.95