Helping Skills: Facilitating Exploration, Insight, and Action

With this third edition of Helping Skills, respected clinician and researcher Clara Hill has revised and updated her popular textbook, continuing her comprehensive exploration of empirically supported, basic helping skills for undergraduate and first-year graduate students.

Following Hill's well-established three-stage model of helping (Exploration, Insight, and Action), the text presents an integrative approach that is grounded in client-centered, psychoanalytic, and cognitive-behavioral theory. Hill's model recognizes the critical roles of affect, cognition, and behavior in the process of change, filling a void left by textbooks that focus more narrowly on the processes facilitating change.

The text includes many student-friendly features and provides in-depth information on:

-the theoretical foundation of the three-stage model of helping
-the different goals used in each stage (e.g., attending and listening, restatement, challenge, self-disclosure, and feedback)
-the general principles of ethical conduct and strategies for resolving ethical dilemmas
-numerous practice exercises, labs, and Web forms that illustrate (and help evaluate) the complex interaction between client and helper
-how students can intervene most effectively from moment to moment, based on their intentions and the client's reactions

New material for this edition includes:

-a revised approach to the three-stage model, emphasizing goals and tasks of the stages and the ability to traverse among the stages in a helper-client relationship
-more attention to multicultural issues
-and better delineation of steps of the Action stage for four discrete tasks (relaxation, behavioral change, behavioral rehearsal, and decision-making)

With her accessible yet instructive style, Hill instills enthusiasm for the process of learning to help others. She also encourages students' personal and professional growth with questions that challenge them to think about and discuss the process of becoming helpers and their reasons for doing so.

The Instructor and Student Resource Guide Web site has also been updated to offer students and instructors helpful resources. The instructor area of the site is restricted to instructors only and includes sample multiple-choice questions, short-answer essay questions, and syllabi. Students may download practice exercises, labs, and evaluation forms specified in the text.

Customer Reviews:

Very readable, clearly written, good examples

By Rosemarie Tobin - July 7, 2003

While rather simple for some of the more advanced counseling students in my pastoral counseling class, this book proved to be an excellent primer in basic helping skills. It was a good review for me as well (I have over 20 years experience in rehab counseling).

Solid writing, easy to read, and informative

By A Customer - May 2, 2003

I first used this book in my graduate program in a class for communication and leadership. This skills taught in this book are outstanding. Now, I plan to use the ideas from this book in my own career, as well as helping an undergraduate peer staff at a university learn the basic helping guidelines. This book is highly recommended.

Fabulous guide for research and practice.

By Lynette Heim Bikos - May 9, 2002

We just completed a doctoral level seminar by using this book to guide process research. It's fabulous. While the book is certainly appropriate for teaching basic counseling/helping skills at the upper undergraduate and graduate levels, I also believe it has applicability for advanced practicum and research. Good work!