Key Issues for Counselling in Action

Effective counselling is based on a strong working relationship between counsellor and client. Building and maintaining this therapeutic alliance, demands both skill and an ability to negotiate challenges which arise during the counselling process.

Key Issues for Counselling in Action prepares new practitioners for face-to-face work with clients by looking at what is required at each stage of the process and examining issues which practitioners most frequently need to deal with along the way. The topics covered are relevant to all counsellors, regardless of theoretical orientation.

The book explores the everyday issues counsellors face when:

- getting started

- making an assessment

- working at relational depth

- setting goals, and

- ending the relationship

Advice is also given on more difficult challenges, such as dealing with:

- reluctant clients

- stuckness

- client dependency, and

- unplanned endings.

Key Issues for Counselling in Action is a bestselling text which has been used to train many thousands of counsellors as well as supporting their continuing professional development. This second edition has been completely re-written and includes new material on the use of touch, self-care, culture and counselling evaluation.

Windy Dryden is Professor of Psychotherapeutic Studies, Professional and Community Education (PACE) at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Andrew Reeves is a University Counsellor at the University of Liverpool Counselling Service and Editor of the journal, Counselling & Psychotherapy Research.

Windy Dryden is one of the leading practitioners and trainers in the UK in the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) tradition of psychotherapy. He is best known for his work in Rational-Emotive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (RECBT), a leading CBT approach.  He has been working in the field of counselling and psychotherapy since 1975 and was one of the first people in Britain to be trained in CBT. He has published over 200 books and has trained therapists all over the world, in as diverse places as the UK, the USA, South Africa, Turkey and Israel. He is Emeritus Professor of Psychotherapeutic Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Andrew Reeves is an Emeritus Professor in the Counselling Professions and Mental Health and Associate Affiliate Professor at the University of Malta.  He is additionally a Senior BACP Accredited Counsellor/Psychotherapist, a Registered Social Worker and a Senior Accredited Coach and Coach Supervisor with EMCC. He is a past Chair of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, a Fellow of BACP and a Senior Fellow of Advance HE. He has published extensively on working in counselling and psychotherapy, and particularly in working with risk in a range of organizational settings. He is past Editor-in-Chief of the journal Counselling and Psychotherapy Research and has a long-standing commitment to ethics in the counselling professions, including in writing and research.