This work meets a long-standing need in the helping professions by being the first and only comprehensive book on how counselors and psychotherapists can work with clients around values, goal-setting, decision-making and action planning. Helping clients determine their priorities, set goals, make decisions, and take action to improve their lives are common tasks for virtually all helping professionals when engaging with clients. This is the process known as "values clarification" (or "Values Clarification"). While counselors and psychotherapists widely practice values clarification-some knowingly, others unaware-they typically do so with a limited understanding of its theory, methods and various applications.
This book demonstrates, with great precision, case studies, and hundreds of clinical examples, how counselors and psychotherapists in many fields can ask good clarifying questions, conduct clarifying interviews, and employ dozens of values clarification strategies with individuals, couples, families, and groups. To illustrate how values clarification can be used to explore a myriad of counseling topics, the examples throughout the text are often grouped around more specific applications for marriage and family counseling, career counseling, substance abuse and recovery counseling, geriatric counseling, grief counseling, pastoral counseling, financial counseling, school counseling, rehabilitation counseling, counselor/clinical education and supervision, health counseling, and personal growth.
There are clear descriptions of what values clarification is and is not, theory and research, multicultural and diversity issues, and how counselors and therapists can handle value and moral conflicts with clients. Values clarification is compared and contrasted to other approaches to counseling and psychotherapy, including person-centered, cognitive-behavioral, reality therapy-choice theory, existential, individual psychology, solution-focused, narrative, motivational interviewing, acceptance and commitment therapy, appreciative inquiry, life coaching, and positive psychology.
Industry Reviews
"What a great resource! This book represents an important contribution to a long neglected area of practice. Values are truly the basis of so much we do and think, yet they so often go unexamined. How many times have counselors thought that we have covered all the ground and have reached that point in the therapeutic alliance where action is warranted, only to hear, 'Yes, But'? This is a clear indication that we may have helped the client reach a cognitive
understanding but missed the underlying values present in the issues and that must be addressed in any steps toward change. This book clearly addresses often overlooked, and sometimes avoided, crucial
aspect of the therapeutic process."
E.H. Mike Robinson, III, Ph.D., Robert Heitzelman Eminent Scholar and Chair, Department of EdEducational and Human Sciences, College of Education, University of Central Florida
"Dr. Howard Kirschenbaum is the most qualified person I know to write this book. His background in education, psychotherapy, group training and writing is an unbeatable combination for helping therapists and counselors do their best work. This is a remarkable tool that will enhance the skills of anyone in the field of human growth."
Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins, Ed.D., lecturer, consultant; author, Clarifying Jewish Values.
"This is the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and practical book on values clarification. Straightforward examples and real life applications make this book a must read for students and professional helpers from diverse fields. As therapist-educator, I am thrilled to have a resource that will support my students in discovering their inner selves."
Stephen P. Demanchick, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Creative Arts Therapy, Director, Nazareth College Play Therapy Center for Children and Families, Rochester, NY; co-editor, Person-Centered Journal.
"Counseling and psychotherapy is by no means a 'value free' enterprise; both clients and mental health professionals have preferred values and beliefs. Furthermore, both professionals and clients may need help in understanding and clarifying their values in the therapeutic process. Dr. Kirschenbaum has developed an excellent book that not only helps mental professionals develop the skills necessary to facilitate client value clarification, but also assists
professionals in understanding clarifying their own personal values, and thereby avoiding the juxtaposition of those values onto clients in therapy."
Richard E. Watts, Ph.D., University Distinguished Professor of Counseling, Sam Houston State University, immediate past editor of Counseling and Values.
"This is a fascinating book for educators, mental health practitioners, students and academics as it re-introduces and updates values clarification theory, bringing different threads together... I commend this book to any practitioner or educator wanting to expand their understanding of a values clarification process with people in many different settings.
It is a rich and thorough book."
--British Journal of Guidance & Counselling
