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Elements of Counselling: A Handbook for Counsellors in Southern Africa (revised edition), Joan Schön, Lauren Gower and Victor Kotze. Westhoven: Sophiatown Community Psychological Services, 2010. ISBN 978-0-620-46606-6.
In this revised edition of the original handbook, the authors aim to deliver a counselling text that speaks to everyday people, counsellors and practitioners from diverse backgrounds working within the South African context. The book is largely written from a psychoanalytic perspective. However, whilst basic psychoanalytic concepts are applied and utilized at various points in the book, the text remains exceptionally well written and accessible to the wide audience it intends to reach. The psychoanalytic framework, thus, serves to provide a framework for understanding 'ourselves and others' from a very human place. To achieve these aims, the authors divide the book up into four core sections. The first three discuss each of the three phases of counselling, while the fourth section discusses specific issues common to the uniquely South African counselling context. The entire text is generally easy to read with appealing illustrations, dialogues and very real case study examples. The authors also include informative 'Tech boxes' which generally discuss theory, with very useful 'Wordpower' boxes to define important concepts used within the text. Each chapter ends with some reflection questions that are facilitative of reflecting on oneself as a counsellor in light of the material read in the preceding chapter.
The authors and their collaborators do a fine job of choosing topics that appeal to seasoned therapists and beginning counsellors alike. The first chapter of the first section calls readers to reflect on their own journey as a counsellor, while at the same time impressing upon readers the importance of self-awareness in the process of counselling. Using their user-friendly 'hands on' approach, the authors facilitate the counsellor's understanding of how they can use their awareness and understanding of themselves to listen to their clients more effectively, and in so doing, how this makes them better able to hear and help their clients. The second chapter discusses the process of counselling on a theoretical level. After defining counselling, the authors discuss the aims of the counselling process, introducing Carl Rogers to the readers. In the final portion of this chapter, some basic skills and terminology are discussed....