In Basic Attending Skills: Foundations of Empathic Relationships and Problem Solving, students learn and master the fundamental skills of listening, including attending behavior, questions, encouragers, paraphrasing, reflection of feelings, and summarization through a straightforward, step-by-step process. Readers discover how the essential skills of listening and interviewing are critical for counseling, psychotherapy, and meaningful interpersonal communication.
Allen E. Ivey received his counseling doctorate from Harvard University and is distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Courtesy Professor, Counselor Education, University of South Florida, Tampa. He is past-President and Fellow of the Society for Counseling Psychology of the American Psychological Association, APA’s Society for the Study of Ethnic and Minority Psychology, the Asian-American Psychological Association, and the American Counseling Association. He has received many awards throughout his career and has authored over 40 books and 200 articles and chapters. His works have been translated into 23 languages. His recent work has focused on applying Developmental Counseling and Therapy and neuroscience to the analysis and treatment of severe psychological distress.
I loved that it has little activities to follow along and practice these skills and prompts for reflection. It's both a great teaching and professional development tool in the space of allied health.
This book was far more basic than my other textbook for class (Fundamentals of Helping) and very specific to counseling/group therapy, as opposed to school counseling, etc. I was SUPER frustrated by the fact that there is not a single citation in the entire book. It's like a workbook, which is fine, but the book will suggest that "research shows..." and then not even provide an ENDNOTE to guide the reader to those studies. This is a pet peeve of mine in any non-fiction book, let alone a textbook.
Honestly, the points felt pretty obvious for the most part. There were companion videos as well, and they honestly looked like cheesy 80s-90s era instructional vids (though they weren't actually that old.)