Product Description

Ideal for anyone embarking on or considering a career in human services, counseling, psychology, social work, or any of the other helping professions, this book provides an overview of the stages of the helping process, as well as the skills and knowledge required to be a successful helping professional. Drawing on their years of experience, the Coreys focus on the struggles, anxieties, and uncertainties one encounters on the road to becoming an effective helper. The book emphasizes self-reflection on a number of professional issues and challenges the reader to examine their motives for choosing a helping career, and takes a candid look at the demands and strains they'll face in the helping professions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140431 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Review
"The reason we will continue to adopt BECOMING A HELPER is that the beginning human service students like it so much. They like the writing style, the lively cases, and the personalization. BECOMING A HELPER is a handbook that speaks directly to the issues that beginning human service students are facing and gives them practical techniques for dealing with these issues."

"I found this to be a very useful introductory tool in terms of helping students to really evaluate themselves, their values, beliefs and personal characteristics. Students can really sort out for themselves whether or not they have what it takes to work in a helping profession."

"This book stands head and shoulders above the text that was used in my Introduction to Human Services course. The Coreys deliver a comprehensive and holistic overview of what it means to be a member of the helping professions today. What’s more, they do so with a style that is at once personal and authoritative.



Overall, I would recommend this text to anybody teaching an Introduction to Human Services or Practicum course. I certainly wish that my instructors had adopted this book. I feel that had they done so I would have been better prepared for many of the difficult situations I have experienced as a newly fledged member of the helping professions."

About the Author
Marianne Schneider Corey, a licensed marriage and family therapist in California, is a National Certified Counselor and a Fellow of the Association for Specialists in Group Work. She has been actively involved in providing training and supervision workshops in group process for human-services students and professionals. She also facilitates self-exploration groups for graduate students and continues to conduct training workshops in group counseling with her husband, Dr. Gerald Corey, in various countries. In 2001, the two received the Eminent Career Award for distinguished and major contributions to the field of group work by the Association for Specialists in Group Work.

Gerald Corey is a Professor Emeritus of Human Services at California State University at Fullerton; a Diplomate in Counseling Psychology, American Board of Professional Psychology; a licensed psychologist; a National Certified Counselor; a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Counseling Psychology); a Fellow of the American Counseling Association; and a Fellow of the Association for Specialists in Group Work. Dr. Corey teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in group counseling, as well as courses in experiential groups, the theory and practice of counseling, and ethics in counseling. He is the author or co-author of 15 counseling textbooks currently in print as well as numerous journal articles. Along with his wife, Marianne Schneider Corey, Dr. Corey has conducted group counseling training workshops for mental health professionals at many universities in the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Germany, Belgium, Scotland, England, and Ireland. They received the Association for Specialists in Group Work's Eminent Career Award in 2001. Dr. Corey earned his doctorate in counseling from the University of Southern California.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Resource
This book was the text my instructor assigned in an interpersonal communication class I took a few years ago. It is very readable, as are all books by the Coreys. It covers a wide range of topics and it uses case examples to illustrate the points. It isn't a counselling book in terms of having alot of exercises on questioning or empathy. It does discuss counselling skills, but it is more concerned with the worker's personal development, in terms of ethics, self-awareness, self-care, etc. The suggested activities at the end of the chapter really help the learning process. My only criticism of the book is that a few of the chapters are a tad long.

Introduction to Counseling
This is an excellent book for anyone beginning or thinking of starting a career in counseling. The number one rule of counseling is that the counselor must know oneself. This book's purpose is to get the reader to reflect on oneself in a way that questions one's initial desire to counsel and how to counsel in a respectful way that does not place the counselor's values and beliefs upon the client. For that reason, this book is an essential read for anyone exploring the possibity of becoming a counselor.

Required Reading
It was required reading for a class. Not my favorite book because of the heavy emphasis on counseling. Some of my other classmates really liked it though.